»(theLID« is not a finished product. It is the initial attempt to create a new type of movement that uses the body to compose tonal art. It is the first part of a project to which Harper will be dedicating himself in the years ahead.

›It’s all about listening.‹ Ayman Harper

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkgmRJYnqM0Interviews with the team: www.vimeo.com/43812443

Ayman Harper was born in 1979 in Clear Lake City, Texas, and attended the High School for the Performing & Visual Arts in Houston. After dancing with Hubbard Street Dance in Chicago he joined Nederlands Dans Theater II. Between 2001 and 2006 he was a member of Ballet Frankfurt and The Forsythe Company under the direction of William Forsythe. During that time he also choreographed pieces for Nederlands Dans Theater II, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and Dominic Walsh Dance Theater, as well as for numerous other projects. He lives in Berlin and works as a freelance choreographer and dancer while also teaching dance.

Jermaine Spivey was born in Baltimore, Maryland.  In 2002 he completed his studies in dance at the Julliard School and moved to Lisbon, where he was a member of Ballet Gulbenkian from 2002 to 2005. From 2005 to mid-2008 he was a member of the Cullberg Ballet. Since 2008 he has been working with Kidd Pivot, as well as with Rumpus Room Dance and the Hofesh Shechter Dance Company. He has been honored with numerous prizes, including the Princess Grace Award and a scholarship from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts.

Matmos is M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel, who make idiosyncratic, ambient electronic music for which they use compilations, analogue keyboards, recorded noises and guitar, embedding random happenings within the sound sequence. Many songs are based on the principle of conceptual limitation and consist completely of excerpts from a single source, such as operating-room sounds or contact microphones on hair. Sometimes the compilations and recordings give rise to rhythmic sequences, other times there is no beat, resulting in ominously ambient sound-spaces.

Tomi Paasonen was born in Helsinki in 1970, where he began studying with the Finnish National Ballet School when he was eight. His ballet career includes solo appearances with John Neumeier’s Hamburg Ballet, Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet in San Francisco and the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago.  Throughout his time as a dancer in Hamburg, San Francisco and Chicago, he also created pieces of his own. He is currently interested in pushing his stage-art structures and multimedia practices towards interactive works, and in expressing what the physical body of the 21st century has to say.