something we could do
Choreography: Melinda Jean Myers, in collaboration with the dancers
Composer/Sound Designer: Ramin Roshandel
Costume Designer: Margaret Wenk-Kuchlbauer
Film: Melinda Jean Myers
Edited by: Auden Lincoln-Vogel
Dancers: Jacqueline Bass, Isabella Buscaglia, Laren Chang, Sabrina Duke, Erin Evans, Mary Grace Henderson, Molly Watt
Special thanks to these courageous dance artists who continued to shine through this process and show up with integrity against the odds of this unprecedented time. And here's a shout out to our outdoor collaborators: the rain, the wind, the park frisbee and football players, the traffic, the grass, the sticks, the sunburn, the skin rashes, the wet socks, and the biting insects. This work wouldn't have been the same without you!
something we could do photos
Melinda Jean Myers is a dance artist, choreographer, and Assistant Professor of Contemporary Dance and Choreography at University of Iowa. She earned her MFA from University of Iowa (2012) where she received a Stanley Graduate Award for International Research and Iowa Arts Fellowship. She earned her BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts (2005). She was honored to perform internationally with the Trisha Brown Dance Company for four years (2006-2010), and currently re-stages their repertory. She created three new works as a devising ensemble member of Lucky Plush Productions (Chicago, IL) and toured nationally with the company for five years (2012-2017). As a member of The Cambrians, her collaborative work Clover (2015) was named one of Chicago Tribunes Top 10 Dances of 2015. She was chosen to produce her one woman cabaret greatBIGworld through High Concept Laboratories’ Sponsored Artist program at Mana Contemporary in 2014. The Chicago Tribune review mentioned, “Myers has proved herself a winning performer, boasting a brilliantly unstudied comic touch.” Her interdisciplinary dance works have been presented South Korea, Germany, NYC, and throughout the Midwest.
Ramin Roshandel’s compositional work is based around incorporating ‘experience’ as a fundamental concept through a non-experimental approach in performance. Considering phenomena such as instability, cultural identity, and communicational language on one hand, and being inspired by Iranian music microtones as a setār (an Iranian instrument) player on the other, has led him to consider indeterminate, improvisatory, and abstract structures in his music to contrast or converge with post- or non-tonal forms.
Roshandel has performed as a setār soloist in the premiere of Jean-François Charles’ opera, Grant Wood in Paris. Additionally, he was awarded a 2019 University of Iowa Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio summer scholarship and is a New Music on the Point alumnus. His pieces have been performed by The JACK quartet and LIGAMENT, as well as at the Midwest Composers Symposium (MCS) and the Exchange of Midwest Collegiate Composers (EMCC).
He is currently in his third year as a doctoral student in the Composition program at the University of Iowa, where he has studied under Josh Levine and Sivan Cohen-Elias and currently working with David Gompper. He holds a Master of Arts degree in Music Composition from the University of Tehran and a Bachelor of Arts in Iranian Music Performance from Tehran University of Art.
His articles on Hossein Alizadeh’s Neynavā and Elliott Carter’s Dialogues have been published in Persian journals.