Bios
Paige Cunningham-Caldarella is a dance educator, choreographer, performer, and was an Associate Professor of Dance at Columbia College Chicago where she taught modern and contemporary dance techniques, ballet, dance pedagogy, and performance based classes. Cunningham-Caldarella has been awarded a Chicago Dancemakers Forum grant, DCASE Individual Artist grants, and a Teaching Excellence Award from Columbia College. As a performer with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, she toured both nationally and internationally, and has worked with The Seldoms, Colleen Halloran Performance Group, Darrell Jones, Timothy Buckley, and Onye Ozuzu among others. She holds a B.F.A. from the Juilliard School and an M.F.A. from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Silas Riener is a graduate of Princeton University and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 2007-2012. He has performed with Chantal Yzermans, Takehiro Ueyama, Christopher Williams, Joanna Kotze, Jonah Bokaer, Rebecca Lazier, Tere O’Connor, Wally Cardona, and Kota Yamazaki. His own work has been curated at EMPAC, The Chocolate Factory, LMCC’s River to River Festival, and Danspace Project. He has been creating dance work with Rashaun Mitchell since 2009, their work together has been seen at BAM, REDCAT, MoMa PS1, The Walker Art Center, On The Boards, The MCA Chicago, ICA Boston, SFMOMA, Madison Square Park, The Joyce Theater, and Museo JUMEX. His ongoing collaboration with artist Martha Friedman has resulted in works seen at Andrea Rosen Gallery 2, The Henry Museum, Locust Projects Miami, and Jessica Silverman Gallery.