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Monica Campagna is founder and artistic director of Los Angeles based TRIP Dance Theatre, which she formed in 1996. Along side her husband, musician/composer Charlie Campagna, she has been choreographing and producing work for TRIP for over 10 year and has been choreographing and performing professionally for nearly 18 years. In addition to her roles as choreographer and dancer, Monica also enjoys graphic, web and costume design, teaches modern dance, facilitates improvisational workshops and enjoys sharing her knowledge of arts administration with others.
Monica received her early training in dance at the prestigious Baltimore School for the Arts, graduating in 1988. She went on to receive a BFA (Summa Cum Laude) from Temple University and worked for five seasons with the collaborative modern dance company Group Motion as a choreographer and performer in Philadelphia, while performing her own work as an independent artist throughout the east coast. It was during this time that Monica met and trained with several of her mentors, former Mary Wigman company member Hellmut Gottschild, Group Motion director Manfred Fischbeck and Butoh master Masaki Iwana.
After many fantastic experiences, which included having her work "Carry Me" (co-choreographed with Myra Bazell) filmed by PBS and performed at another time by the Pennsylvania Ballet, dancing on raked stages in Buenes Aires, Argentina, improvising on the streets of Berlin, performing a butoh based work in an abandoned penitentiary in Philadelphia, and offering many concerts in theatres throughout Germany, France and the East Coast of the U.S. - Monica left her Philly base and relocated to her new home, Los Angeles, in 1995.
The first productions of Monica's works took place during her highschool years at venues such as Baltimore's Artscape Festival and the Baltimore Museum of Art - with a full concert of work presented at the First & Franklin Church - lights and marley floor on loan from her generous alma mater!
Since then, Monica's work has been produced at numerous venues including: New York's Joyce Soho Theatre, the Ford Amphitheater, Skirball Cultural Center, The Philadelphia Women's Theater Festival, Philadelphia Dance Alliance, L.A.C.E. Theater, LA's Dance Kaleidoscope Festival, The Philadelphia Fringe Festival, the Painted Bride Arts Center in Philadelphia, DC DancePlace, Teatro Cervantes in Argentina, Tacheles Theatre in Berlin and the International Tanz Festival in Germany, among many others.
Her choreography has been filmed and presented repeatedly in Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Nationally on PBS television. She is honored to be a six time participant in the Los Angeles Holiday Celebration, and three time participant of the National broadcast of this annual show.
Monica is the recipient of a 2006 Dancemaker Fellowship from the Irvine Foundation, a 2004 Durfee ARC Award, a 1994 Choreography Fellowship from Pennsylvania Council of the Arts and 2006 &1997 Horton Awards for costume design, among others. In 2004 she was awarded an APPEX (Asia Pacific Performance Exchange) Fellowship, through which she traveled to Bali, Indonesia to work with artists from Southeast Asia and the United States in a collaborative setting for six weeks. In January, 2007, she was one of three artist/administrators selected to represent the United States with a CAM (Choreographer Arts Management) Fellowship, through the US State Department and UCLA's Center for Intercultural Performance. As part of this amazing program, she taught arts management and choreography workshops to 18 dancers and teachers at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh.
For the past 8 years, Monica has enjoyed opening the experience of dance to people from all backgrounds and ages as co-founder and facilitator of TRIP Dance Theatre's weekly Sacred Spaces improvisational dance workshops. In addition to creating new works for her company, Monica is Dean of Dance for the Academy of Creative Education (ACE), summer dance program at Oakwood School in Los Angeles. In addition, Monica teaches modern dance to 9th and 10th graders at Oakwood School and mentors students as part of Oakwood's Community Youth Partnership program.
> MONICA'S RESUME |
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trip dance theatre