Creating Art in Space
In the early '80s Jeanne Robinson choreographed "Higher Ground," her dance tribute to space, and mankind's drive to reach the stars. The piece's finale included a sequence of simulated zero-g dance.

Immediately after the piece premiered she was invited to join NASA's "Civilian In Space" program - to ride the Shuttle into space and dance in Zero Gravity.

Her opportunity of a lifetime vanished when the program was scrubbed after the Challenger, carrying the first "Civilian In Space" Christa McAuliffe, exploded shortly after takeoff.

The Stardance Experience will be co-directed and co-written by Jeanne Robinson and James Sposto, with Ms. Robinson envisioning and choreographing the zero-gravity dance and Mr. Sposto producing.

Jeanne Robinson is a writer, choreographer, former dancer and teacher.  She studied at the Boston Conservatory and the Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey and Erick Hawkins schools, and performed with Beverly Brown Dance Ensemble in New York.  Artistic Director of Halifax’s Nova Dance Theatre for over 8 years, she choreographed thirty original works.  Her Hugo and Nebula winning 1976 novella, "Stardance" co-written with her husband, writer Spider Robinson (www.spiderrobinson.com) pioneered the concept of zero gravity dance, and inspired three novels.  In 2006 the Library of Congress invited her to Washington D.C. to be a guest of the First Lady at the White House for the National Book Festival. Robinson is a lay-ordained Buddhist monk in the Soto Zen lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi.

 

James Sposto is an entrepreneur, filmmaker and co-founder/creative executive of new-media advertising/design and communications agency Sposto Interactive (www.sposto.com).  Both he and his company have won numerous awards for various national advertising campaigns, commercials, Web sites and interactive experiences.

 

 

Kathleen McDonagh is one of Vancouver's premiere dance artists; a dynamic performer, teacher, and choreographer, she is also the director of g space, a studio specializing in the physical training modality of the Gyrotonic® Method. McDonagh has been a principal performer with many of Canada's contemporary dance companies having performed locally, throughout Canada and internationally for the last 18 years. In 2003 Kathleen was the 2nd recipient of the Isadora Award that recognizes artists for their outstanding contribution to Dance in Vancouver.

 

James Raymond (www.jamesraymond.com) is a film and television composer whose most recent work includes the new Lifetime series "Side Order of Life."  He is the son of David Crosby, chief composer for their band CPR and for Crosby-Nash, and plays keyboards for Crosby, Stills & Nash.

 

 

Hugo award-winning space artist and visual effects designer Ron Miller (www.black-cat-studios.com) created the space imagery surrounding our Stardancer. Ron has inherited Chesley Bonestell’s mantle as the greatest living painter of space themes.

 

 

First to come aboard was documentarian Michael Lennick (www.foolishearthling.com), creator of the groundbreaking 13-part series ROCKET SCIENCE for Discovery Channel. Michael's technical background includes designing the visual effects for such projects as David Cronenberg's Videodrome and the TV series War of the Worlds .