Photo by Sorcha Augustine
Professors Portrait, Pre-Production
from the Portrait Project
The PROFESSORS PORTRAIT will be the fourth film in our ongoing series, The Portrait Project. In these portraits, my collaborator Jack Flame Sorokin and I look closely at working dancers during different stages of life and career in dual modes: movement and language.
The PROFESSORS PORTRAIT profiles Bliss Kohlmyer and Andee Scott, professors and practitioners of dance at University of South Florida and Texas A&M University, respectively. Being a dance artist and a dance professor at the same time is a particularly tough balancing act; to practice as an artist while also teaching well. In this portrait, we meet these two friends inside a vivacious, intellectual dialogue peppered with the questions, opinions, disagreements, and playfulness connected to each woman’s pursuit of that balancing act.
Bliss Kohlmyer (Co-Artistic Director of project agora, 2010-2020) was in residence at Bates Dance Festival and performed at the San Francisco International Arts Festival, Dance Gallery, Breaking Ground, and Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Bliss’ choreographic work has been commissioned by LINES Ballet Summer Program, Dickinson College, Florida State College, Loyola Marymount University, Jacksonville University, Florida Dance Festival, Sam Houston State University, SUNY Fredonia, Beijing Normal University, Moving Current Dance Collective, Jacksonville Dance Theatre, Péndulo Cero Danza Contemporánea, Tampa City Ballet, Robert Moses’ Kin, and Sarasota Contemporary Dance Company, among others.
Her tutorial on “Dance Making and Watching” was published by Human Kinetics in 2021. The In Studio Series at Sarasota Contemporary Dance presented the duet Listen Hold, Listen hold, listen hold, by Robert Moses. Recently, she collaborated with Betsy Miller for her solo Remember this, part of the American Woman Project.
Bliss danced and toured internationally with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, the Sean Curran Company, Janice Garrett and Dancers, Robert Moses’ Kin, and the San Francisco Opera Ballet, among others. She received her MFA in Dance from the University of Washington in 2011, and is currently an Associate Professor of Dance at the University of South Florida.
Andee Scott is an interdisciplinary dance artist whose focus in recent years on dance as public art has led to her creating, curating, and producing large-scale, site-specific dance performance events in and around St. Petersburg, FL, including MOVE! St. Pete, and Dance in the Time of Coronavirus.
As a maker, Andee is re-thinking what it means to both make a dance and watch a dance, devising non-traditional performance experiences for both dancers and audience. Her multi-media work has been performed nationally and internationally, most recently in Sweden, Mexico, and China, and she has received commissions to create new works for both dance companies and university programs. She was a resident artist at the Djerassi Resident Artist Program in 2011.
As a dancer, Andee is invested in improvisation as a physical practice and is currently practicing and touring Jeanine Durning’s The Invitation Situation. She was a dancer with Sharir+Bustamante Danceworks and a founding member of Blue Lapis Light in Austin, TX, and a member of Deja Donne in Italy.
As an educator, Andee has been invited to teach master classes and workshops in the US and abroad. She is an associate professor at Texas A&M University.
