Lyric Opera 2022-2023 Issue 7 - Carmen

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 30 Ballet. He has performed works by Paul Taylor, Katherine Dunham, Donald McKayle, Bill T. Jones, Milton Myers, Cleo Parker Robinson, Nai-Ni Chen, Adam Houghland, Jessica Lang, Christopher Huggins, Kevin Iega Jeff, Winifred Haun, and Wade Schaaf, a mong others. KARA HUNSINGER | DANCER Lyric debut The California native graduated with a BFA in Dance from the University of Arizona, where she performed works by George Balanchine, Nacho Duato, Tamara Dyke-Compton, Autumn Eckman, Alexei Ratmansky, and Christopher Wheeldon. Hunsinger has danced with Hawkinsdance, Visceral Dance Chicago, DanceWorks Chicago, and Boykin Dance Project, and has also trained with Alonzo King LINES Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Ballet West, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Ate9, Share Dance Intensive, and San Francisco Conservatory of Dance. NOELLE KAYSER | DANCER & ASSISTANT CHOREOGRAPHER Lyric debut The Chicago-based performer, choreographer, and educator has performed with numerous companies including PARA.MAR Dance Theatre, LED Boise, Open Space Dance, NWDance Project, Visceral Dance Chicago, The Cambrians, Fly on a Wall, gloATL, and Luna Negra Dance Theater. Past and upcoming choreographic commissions include DanceWorks Chicago, Ballare Carmel, SALT Dance LINK Choreography Festival, Visceral Dance Chicago Trainees, Chicago Dance Crash, Boykin Dance Project, COMMON Conservatory, Cerqua Rivera Dance Theater, Kit Modus, and Moonwater Dance Project. Kayser has taught at PARA.MAR Dance Theatre, NWDance Project, Visceral Dance Chicago, and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, among others, and she is the rehearsal director for PARA.MAR Dance Theatre. She has performed in theater productions with The Alliance Theater, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 7 Stages, Theater for the Stars, and Scrap Theater Group. BRIAN JOSIAH MARTINEZ | DANCER Lyric debut Martinez received his BFA in Dance Performance and Choreography from The University of Southern Mississippi, where he also performed as a guest artist with Hub Dance Collective. He continued his training with Hubbard Street’s Professional Program, under the direction of Alexandra Wells. He has danced with PARA.MAR Dance Theatre in kiss . and Dos Lado s, and in Robyn Mineko Williams’ Empty Orchestra . He created the lms Next to the Portrait of a Red Haired Lady for Chicago’s New Dances and Breaking Mundane for New York’s Future Dance Festival. His work Shadow & Light was performed by Kinetics Dance Company and The University of Southern Mississippi’s Dance Department. Martinez is Artistic Director of Boykin Dance Project, a new contemporary dance company. MORGAN REED M C DANIEL | DANCER Lyric debut The dancer graduated from the Ailey/ Fordham BFA program, where she worked with esteemed choreographers including Jae Man Joo, Francesca Harper, Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish, and Tina Bush and performed with the Metropolitan Opera in their production of Der Fliegende Holländer. She joined South Chicago Dance Theatre as an emerging artist, and she spent a season with Visceral Dance Chicago. McDaniel had a residency with Ballare Carmel in Monterey, California, where she performed work by Noelle Kayser, Jennifer Archibald, and Ihsan Rustem. JUDE M. PERRY-EVANS | DANCER Previously at Lyric: Fire Shut Up in My Bones (2021/22) . The New York-based artist was recently featured in Harlem Opera Theater’s 100th anniversary presentation of Shuf e Along and in the Queens College Opera production of The Image Make r. He is a featured dancer in the Uprooted: The Journey of Jazz Dance documentary and the Hal King The Musical lm. Perry-Evans has appeared in such productions as Dance Africa at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and Voices of Congo Square in his hometown of New Orleans. He has performed with Phoenix Danse, De La Soul Dance Company, Forces of Nature Dance Theatre, Long Island Ballet Theater, Sekou Miller Dance Company, Alpha Omega Theatrical Dance Company, The Workshop Theater, and Balance Dance Theatre, and was a founding member of Urban Souls Dance Theater in Houston. AMANDA SACHS | DANCER Lyric debut The New Jersey native trained in San Francisco with the Alonzo King LINES Ballet Training Program. In 2014, Sachs joined The Francesca Harper Project in NYC, and in 2017 joined TU Dance in Minneapolis, where she performed Alvin Ailey’s solo Witness and Night Creature , Walking with Pearl: Africa Diaries by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and numerous other works. She is an original member of Come Through , produced by Liquid Music in collaboration with Grammy-winning musician Bon Iver and TU Dance. Sachs joined NW Dance Project in Portland in 2021, where she performed works by Ihsan Rustem, Yin Yue, Joseph Hernandez, Sarah Slipper, and Luca Veggetti. She is featured in Bon Iver’s Naeem and We lyric videos, and has performed at the Bonnaroo and Eaux Claires music