Meet the Artists of Cycle
Company Artists
Elise Butterfield
Elise is a dancer and curator living and working in Chicago. Elise enjoys working with artists whose practices do not fit neatly into disciplinary divides. Her creative work is informed by her commitment to collaboration, exploration, and community building. Elise is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's dual Master's in Arts Administration & Policy and Contemporary Art History program.
Photo by Ryan Bach
Sofía Gabriel
Sofía Gabriel is a performance artist from Mexico City, currently based in Chicago. Trained in classical and contemporary dance, her practice evolved from technique-focused work to exploring improvisation and play; engaging in somatic dialogues with sound, painting, and new media. She believes in feminism as a body-centered resistance to patriarchy, aiming to forge new discourses that can be equitable and just for all humans. Her practice consist in creating, performing or facilitating collective actions or cathartic experiences that can foster healing, connection, and collaboration for social change. Sofía is a performer at the Space Movement Project, and has been an artist residency at High Concept Labs in Chicago and Proyecto Ace in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Photo by Ryan Bach
Anne Kasdorf
Anne Kasdorf is a collaborative dance maker and improviser who has found a long term creative home with The Space Movement Project. Since joining the group in 2006, she has served in numerous creative and administrative roles. As an independent performer, she has additionally appeared with Zephyr, Dance Avondale, Thwack Dance, dropshift and in Wili Dorner's Bodies in Urban Spaces. Anne is an arts administrator and dance educator with a background in freelance writing and development. She is the Education Program Manager for South Chicago Dance Theatre overseeing a roster of school partnerships throughout the Chicago area. As a Learning Specialist in Hubbard Street's Education & Community Programs, she designs curriculum, mentors emerging faculty members and has led partnerships through CPS, Special Olympics Chicago, Northrop/University of Minnesota, Saratoga Performing Arts Center and many other arts and service organizations. Anne holds a BFA in Dance Performance & Choreography from Ohio University.
Photo by Lumosco
Leah Raffanti
Leah Raffanti has created and performed with TSMP since 2007. After graduating with a Theater Arts (Dance) and Women’s and Gender Studies degree from Beloit College in 2005, Leah pursued a Masters degree in Social Work from the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration which she completed in 2009. Leah lives in Chicago with her husband and two wonderful daughters. In addition to her dance and family life, Leah works as a Field Representative at the Chicago Teachers Union. Leah feels lucky to be able to share her artistic and personal journeys with the members of TSMP.
Guest Artists
Dorothy Carlos
Dorothy Carlos is an experimental cellist and electronic musician working in improvised performance and multi-channel sound in New York City and Chicago. Her work utilizes extended techniques and digital manipulation, merging free improvisation and computer music. She is interested in digital techniques as an opportunity to construct imaginary realities and capture a sense of intimacy. Solo performances have been presented internationally by e-flux, Experimental Sound Studio Chicago, Big Ears Festival, default, Center for New Music and Associated Technologies (CNMAT) at UC Berkeley, Chicago Jazz String Summit, and Bemis Center. Dorothy has been featured as a collaborator on projects presented at the Swiss Institute (New York), Night Gallery (Los Angeles), Artists Space (New York), Performance Space (New York), Untitled Art Fair (Miami), Gaudeamus Festival (Utrecht, NL), Emerging Change Festival (Berlin), and the Fall River Museum of Contemporary Art. Her work has been featured in The Wire, New York Times, Artforum, and The Quietus, and released digitally with D.O.T. Audio Arts and American Dreams. Dorothy holds a Bachelor’s degree from NYU where she studied classical cello and anthropology and an MFA in sound from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Photo by Evan Ray Suzuki
Andrea Cerniglia
Andrea Cerniglia (chu-NEEL-ya) (she/her) began dancing at an early age while growing up in the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts. Dance has always been a large part of her life and her training ultimately led to a BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Much of Andrea’s exposure to modern dance came during her collegiate years; she quickly fell in love with the form for its endless freedom and ability to give the audience such a powerful and visceral experience. Currently a contemporary artist based in Chicago, IL, Andrea is a performer, choreographer and seasoned educator. She is the founder and artistic director of dropshift dance, dedicated to a collaborative and investigative studio practice and pushing the boundaries of movement and expressivity in performance. Andrea’s collaborative relationships outside of movement, include the realms of dance film, visual art and installation piece, and musical composition. Her work engages viewers in a visual, aural, and human experience offering immersive and interactive practices. Andrea holds her Graduate Laban Certificate in Movement Analysis from Columbia College Chicago, and utilizes many layers of Rudolf Laban’s framework and Irmgard Bartenieff’s Fundamentals within her pedagogy and creative practices. She is a long-time collaborator and teaching artist with Zephyr Dance with whom she performed from 2004 to 2013. Her work has been shown internationally in Vancouver, BC as well as locally at Defibrillator Gallery, Links Hall, The Hairpin Arts Center, I AM Logan Square Gallery, The Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival, Hamlin Park and Holstein Park, Chicago, IL. She has performed at such Chicago venues as the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Dance Center of Columbia College, Harold Washington Library Theater, the Athenaeum Theater, and the Ruth Page Center for the Performing Arts. Andrea has also performed across many cities in Tuscany, Italy, throughout the United States, and in New York City at the Ailey Citigroup Theater, Dance Space, the Cunningham Studio Theater, Mulberry Street Theater, and Triskelion Arts. Andrea has been a part of residency and master class work within the elementary grade levels as well as at such colleges as Columbia College Chicago and Illinois Wesleyan University. She has been designing movement curriculums for pre-primary and primary classrooms at Casa Dei Bambini Montessori of Mayfair as a dance education consultant since 2018. She has taught and designed arts integrated curriculum in the Chicago Public schools through various arts integrated education programs uniting classroom curriculum with dance. In the spring of 2009, she was named Artistic Director of the Dance Foundation Youth Company Chicago, a dance group providing opportunity and scholarship to Chicago’s underserved youth founded at Fisher Dance Center, now R&B Dance, where she continues to support dance education and appreciation.
Photo by Shelby Kroeger
Molly Strom
Molly Strom graduated from Columbia College Chicago, Magna Cum Laude, with a BA in Dance with a concentration in pedagogy and performance. She trained with Robert McKee from Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago, Emily Stein, Paige Cunningham-Caldarella, Dardi McGinley, Carrie Hanson, Sarah Schafer, Joanna Rosenthal-Read and Michael Snipe Jr. She performed works by Lisa Gonzales, Debra Levasseur-Lottman, Teena Marie Custer, Fara Tolno and a restaging of Charles Weidman’s Lynch Town under the direction of Gail Corbin in 2013. Since graduating, Molly traveled to Barcelona, Spain to work with local artists including Nadine Gerspacher, Emilio Gutierrez and Bene Carrat. Her performances include works by Rachel Vogeney, Kaitlyn Dessoffy, Lydia Feuerhelm, Mags Bouffard and Cattywampus Dance. In 2014, she became a company member of Zephyr Dance. Some of her performances include aMID Festival at Link’s Hall, Word_Movement_Action at Defibrillator Gallery, Propositional Worlds, 9X22 Dance Lab in Minneapolis, Minnesota, LinkSircus; Celebrating 40 years of Link’s Hall, Recurrences, Elevate Dance Chicago, On the Cusp, Not Dead Yet and S45. With evening length works including Valise 13, Shadows Across Their Eyes and On Notice. In 2023, Molly performed in a restaging of Merce Cunningham’s iconic 1956 work Suite For Five with direction by Paige Cunningham-Caldarella. Most recently, she performed in the first annual 3320 dance series at Dovetail Studios. Teaching has become an integral part of Molly’s career, “When you share your experiences with other people, you help take away their fears,” - Rick Warren. With her passion for sharing the art form, Molly takes pride in the work she does with students in the evenings and on weekends. She is thrilled be in her third year with the Joffrey Ballet Academy Children’s program “Joffrey for All.” Her studio work expands as curriculum leader at Viking Gymnastics and Dance where she can support her students and fellow faculty with safe and smart approaches to teaching a love for dance. Molly educational expertise goes beyond the studio walls. Her work includes teaching arts integration programs that engages students’ academic learning through movement and choreography. As part of Zephyr Dance, she has had the privilege of partnering with Pulaski International School of Chicago in Bucktown and Roger’s Park Elementary. Molly is also a teaching artist with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago where she continues fulfilling the gap between arts education and academia in schools throughout the Chicagoland area.
Photo by Fernando Rodriguez