Dialogues @ Mark Morris Dance Center
LISTEN. COMMUNICATE. RELATE.
The Hosted by Founding Artistic Director Tania León.
Featuring Johnny Butler, composer & Alex Oliva, choreographer; Marta Cascales Alimbau, composer & Keerati Jinakunwiphat, choreographer; Peter Fonda, composer & Annie Rigney, choreographer.
Events in the series open with inspiring performances, followed by thought-provoking town hall-style conversations and a forum for meaningful exchanges of ideas between composers, performers, and audiences.
About the Artists
Johnny Butler is playing saxophone under the George Washington Bridge by the little red lighthouse, filling the scenery with the sound of a mossy creek, a craggy mountain plateau in the sun, an icy tundra at dusk. The vibrations remind you of traveling, moving to a new city, starting a new job, finding a new apartment. You imagine an orchestra tuning before a concert, a renaissance court jester, a luxuriating queen. You see fluorescent watercolors spilling off the page, pooling on the floor. You look inward and think about when you were young, your secrets, the ones you don’t want anyone to know. Johnny is a Lucille Lortell, Obie, and Grammy-award winning musician who plays the saxophone, flute, clarinet, piano, guitar, composes, engineers audio, dances, makes films, and uses a wireless microphone and handful of electronics to create vast soundscapes while dancing, blending the music, the dancer, and the daydream.
Alex Oliva is a creator of worlds, a storyteller. A dancer, like a creature disappearing into the foggy night air, bent, broken, reaching back to you. She'll make you laugh even if she scares you or makes you cry. She'll take you away from here, but she's here for you. After attending the LINES Ballet School Training Program, Alex made a career as a freelance performer, choreographer, and teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area while pursuing her BFA from Saint Mary’s College of California, graduating summa cume laude in 2014.
Marta Cascales Alimbau is a pianist and composer from the Mediterranean city of Barcelona, now based in New York City. Her music uniquely blends classical elements with a contemporary, minimalist, and poetic approach.
She studied Piano and Composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp and Taller de Músics ESEM in Barcelona, supported by scholarships from the SGAE Foundation, the European Commission International Mobility Program, and Creative Europe.
Marta debuted with her EP Light-House (Piano and Coffee Records, 2018), quickly establishing herself within the modern classical scene. Subsequent releases include several singles on the New York label Sonder House and her album Anoche (2020). Her work has appeared on Piano Day Vol. 2 (LEITER, 2023) alongside artists such as Yann Tiersen and Liam Mour, under Nils Frahm’s Berlin-based label.
Keerati Jinakunwiphat is a choreographer, dance artist, and teacher. Born in Chicago IL, Keerati received her BFA from the Conservatory of Dance at SUNY Purchase and was a recipient of the Adopt-A-Dancer Scholarship. She has additionally studied at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, and Springboard Danse Montreal. She has worked with and performed works of artists such as Kyle Abraham, Nicole von Arx, Trisha Brown, Jasmine Ellis, Hannah Garner, Shannon Gillen, Paul Singh, Kevin Wynn, Doug Varone and more. Keerati joined A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham in 2016 and performed and collaborated with the company for seven seasons.
Annie Rigney is a New York based dancer, choreographer, and educator. Her choreographic interest and movement research lies in the intersection between extreme physicality and healing; in the conflict between the need for art to challenge and provoke the status quo and the simultaneous healing and uniting power of movement. Annie’s work has been commissioned by institutions including Martha Graham Dance Company, NYU Tisch, the Conservatory of Dance at SUNY Purchase, Alvin Ailey/Fordham BFA Program, the University of the Arts, and Resilience Dance Company and presented at venues including the Joyce Theater and 92NY. She has danced with the Batsheva Ensemble, Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak Dance Company, and in Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More. Annie is a 2025 Harkness Promise Award recipient and a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow, an adjunct professor in the Ailey/Fordham BFA Program, and an alumnus of the Conservatory of Dance at SUNY Purchase.