Kate Ashton (Lighting Designer) Recent design for dance includes Skybetter and Associates, James Sutton/ Anthony Ferro Dances, Jim Martin Music/Dance, Emily Harper’s Natural Dissection, Raw Delivery, Imago Dance Theatre, Ellen Stokes Shadle, Makram Hamdan, and DanceWorks. At New York University’s graduate Department of Design for Stage and Film:resident lighting designer for Second Avenue Dance Company. Theatre design includes: Death of a Salesman and The Apostle Project (Theater Mitu), Rods and Cables at 3LD, Summer and Smoke (Theatre Row), Bristol Riverside Theatre’s Summer Musicale Series, The Winter’s Tale (Columbia University), Blind Mouth Singing (NAATCO), The Danish Meditations/Slots, Girl Talk, Black Door Theatre Company. NYU: The Plough and the Stars, Moonchild. Upcoming: DR.C at 3LD with Theater Mitu. MFA, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. www.kateashtonlighting.com

Lauren Cregor (Composer) writes for a beautiful variety of artists across the country, including award-winning theatre group Waterwell, SYREN Modern Dance, various corporations, filmmakers, and is now finishing her master’s in composition at New York University. As a performer, she can be heard regularly with her band at such NYC venues as Joe’s Pub and the Don’t Tell Mama’s. Her third original album is slated for a 2008 release. She can be found electronically on iTunes and at www.laurencregor.com.

Xéna Lee (Set Artist) is a modern painter who likes to use freedom from stylistic constraints to get to the essence of things. Her interest is in the transcendent moments of human experience. She has won several awards and has shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including in New York (SoHo and Chelsea), Scotland (Edinburgh), France (Tonneins-Unet and Paris), Italy (Modena), Spain (Barcelona), and Qatar (Doha). Her artistic vision owes much to Frank O’Cain of the Art Students League, and she is grateful to SYREN Modern Dance for making possible the power of interdisciplinary exchange.

Eric March (Graphic & Web Design) is an artist and designer living in Long Island City, New York. He has designed posters, logos and other promotional material for a number of performing arts groups, including SYREN and Waterwell Productions. Originally from Libertyville, IL, Eric came to New York in 2001 after completing his BFA in Painting at Indiana University. In 2005 Eric spent the year outside painting a la prima cityscapes of Brooklyn. This culminated in a solo show of his paintings, A Brooklyn Year, at Park Slope Gallery at the end of 2006. He is currently exploring new approaches to portraiture and continuing to design. To see more of his work, please visit his website: www.ericmarch.com.

Tony Marques (Lighting Designer/Technical Director) is a freelance production stage manager and lighting designer, has mainly worked in the field of dance. Last year he designed three world premieres for “The Kings of Dance,” two new works for Jennifer Tipton on The Paul Taylor Dance Company, a world premiere for Rebecca Kelly Ballet’s 25th anniversary NY season, Wendy Osserman, SYREN, and Nicholas Andre Dance Theater. He has also designed concerts for C Eule Dance at the Cunningham Studio, The Take Dance Company at Joyce SoHo, SYREN at the Ailey Citigroup Theater and Thomas-Ortiz Dance Company at DTW. Added to that, was an invitation to design an Off-Broadway Show, “Silent Cry,” at the Lion Theater, Theater Row, and another to design a Christmas show for vocalist Linda Eder at the Palace Theater on Broadway.

Lisa Niedermeyer (Guest Video Editor) jump started her dance video experience in 2002, as Video Production Asst. at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. She then returned to Jacob’s Pillow as a video artist for the festival’s first Dance on Camera Workshop with Victoria Marks, Carmella Vassor-Johnson, and Deirdre Towers. Since then Lisa had been going strong with many projects including; featured video artist for the premiere broadcast of the dance video series, “Move the Frame”, on Brooklyn Cable Access in NYC, directing and editing “Circle of Compassion Circle of Peace”, a 12 minute documentary video of Tibetan Nuns creating a sand mandala, as well as video projection design with jill sigman/thinkdance with whom she has traveled to Germany and Croatia. Lisa has been a frequent guest curator for the dance film screening series Kinetic Cinema and is Project Manager for Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival's Virtual Pillow initiative.
Photo by: Mickey Pantano

Elizabeth Payne (Costume Designer) is entering her 2nd decade designing costumes, some of Elizabeth's past projects of note include (off Broadway) The/King/Operetta (Waterwell), Marco Millions...based on lies (Waterwell), The Persians- a comedy about war with 5 songs (Waterwell) and Bushwars. Dance design credits include Larry Keigwin's Angels of Anxiety (The Duke at 42nd Street) and Natural Selection (American Dance Theatre, NC), SYREN Modern Dance's Abravanel (The Ailey Citigroup Theater), and Peter Kyle Dance (Joyce Soho). Elizabeth holds a BA in Art and Theatre (Morehead State, KY) and an MFA in Design for Stage and Film from the Tisch School of the Arts, NYU and is currently lecturing in costume design at Susquehanna University.