Caito Foster Photography
CoMotion is a collaborative dance company, supported by Dance Initiative, that develops content-driven and place-based modern dance while exploring creative boundaries. Founded in 2013 by community dancers, CoMotion believes in the transformative power of movement to create narratives
drawn from contemporary questions.
Placing Stones
Spring.Summer.2021
UnEarthing
May 1, 2021
The Launchpad, Carbondale CO
A community focused creative workshop
aiming to bring us together while exploring the vulnerable beginnings of the creative process.
Join us as we move into the next phase of life after pandemic.
Instruction from CoMotion company members and special guest, Anderson Ranch Sculptor Zakriya Rabani
Sound of our Bodies
June 30, 2021
Wednesday Night Live
(outside) The Contemporary
Grief. Courage. Release.
Solo work in collaboration with Voices & TACAW.
Sound of our Names
Mountain Fair, 2021
Awe. Re-Attachment. Stun.
Solo and Ensemble Work in Collaboration with Carbondale Arts.
August 11, 2021
Wednesday Night Live
(outside) The Contemporary
Reflection. Gratitude. Knowledge.
Solo work in collaboration with Voices & TACAW.
Altars
August 21, 2021
The Thompson House
A Season Culminating,
Live, Outdoor,
Ensemble Performance,
Featuring New and Restaged Work with CoMotion and Community Performers.
Photo by Jeremiah Hutchens
Lick the Earth
Dance with us
Happy Hour Community Dance Class
This class, suported by Dance Initiative, is open to all levels and is taught by a rotation of teachers. Classes cover a range of styles including modern and ballet techniques, improvisation, afro-cuban and Gaga. The focus is on fun, accessible dance that inspires creativity and works towards learning a choreographed sequence. See you there!
$15
Photo by Jem Moore
Thursdays
615-730pm
The Launchpad
Meet the Company
Meagan Londy Shapiro
Seventh Year Company Member
A member of CoMotion since 2015, Meagan grew up dancing in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and spent her summers studying at Perry Mansfield and the American Dance Festival. She received her BA in Dance and Choreography from Middlebury College and danced with NYC-based company, The Architects, before moving back to the Rocky Mountains. Meagan is a Dance Initiative Advisory Board Member and the Director of Choreography for the Carbondale Arts Fashion Extravaganza. She is so grateful for the honor to work in collaboration with her fellow CoMotion members. Meagan lives in Carbondale with her husband and two daughters.
Photo by Sarah Overbeck
Dana Ellis
Founder, Ninth Year Company Member
Dana attended Mount Holyoke College in Western Massachusetts where she studied architecture, dance, physics and critical art theory. She performed with Five College Dance and focused on modern technique and site specific performance. Dana continued dancing and performing after graduation with Brazz Dance Theater, an Afro-Brazilian Modern Dance Company, under the artistic direction of Augusto Soledade. She earned a Master's of Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2008. Dana relocated to Carbondale in 2008 and began dancing and choreographing for local dancers in 2013. Dana is an Architect with Rowland+Broughton in Aspen, is a Dance Initiative board member, a Managing Member of CoMotion, and supporter of our local arts and farming organizations.
Emily Fifer
Seventh Year Company Member
Raised in the Roaring Fork Valley, Emily Fifer began dancing at the age of three. She has a Master of Fine Arts in Modern Dance from the University of Utah where she focused on contact improvisation and somatic modalities as a means to explore relationship and choreography. She is a certified movement analyst, a registered yoga teacher and loves Afro-Brazilian dance, Samba and Capoeira. Emily has danced professionally in Denver, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City and Missoula. Emily is a managing member of and in her seventh season with CoMotion Dance. She lives in Glenwood with her husband and two sons.
Photo by Sarah Overbeck
Photo by Sarah Overbeck
Megan Janssen
Fourth Year Company Member
Megan Janssen has been dancing since she was a toddler and has moved through ballet, pointe, modern, latin, and contemporary genres. In San Francisco, she danced with an Afro-Cuban Modern Dance Company, and in Oregon she danced with a hip hop company and taught Barre classes. She has taught dance in the Roaring Fork Valley, joined CoMotion Dance Company in 2018 and assumed the role of Executive Director of Dance Initiative in 2020. Megan is grateful to be in such a talented group of dancers.
Jen Campbell
Fourth Year Company Member
Jen Campbell has been a dancer her entire life, just not always on a stage. She grew up dancing along the front range, received a BA in Dance from CU, and has performed extensively in and around the Washington D.C. area. In 2018, Jen joined CoMotion, which has breathed such joy into her life. When Jen isn’t dancing, she is teaching Pilates at Studio 360 or yoga at True Nature or Kula, or out hiking and loving the mountains. She’s also busy raising her son Lucas, 12, and keeping tabs on her older kids Caelan, 22 and Taylor, 24. Jen is a CoMotion Managing Member.
Photo by Sarah Overbeck
Lilly Bright
First Year Company Member
Lilly Bright is a writer, performer, dance artist and teacher who recently relocated to the Roaring Fork Valley after 18 years in Los Angeles. Her decade-long filmmaking career includes the production and distribution of award-winning films and documentaries. She currently teaches her work, Bright Moves, a sensory-based creative dance class rooted in GAGA, the movement language of Ohad Naharin, and The Feldenkrais Method, in Carbondale and the surrounding area. Her most recent theatrical productions include her acclaimed solo show, American Standard: A Story of Enough (2017-2020) and SOULSKIN Dance’s Hero (2018), which she scripted and created alongside artistic director, Adriana Thompson. Lilly is a mother of two plus a dog. She believes dance is an act of giving; she is thrilled to join Co-Motion and for the opportunity to create and dance with the incredible community of artists of all kinds.
Alyson Boell-Marchand
First Year Company Member
Alyson Boell-Marchand really loves investigating movement and creating dance and performance works. She has been on hiatus for the last 10 years as she has been raising 2 kids and running a Pilates business. Alyson received her BFA in The CalArts Dance and Choreography school and then created many full length and festival works in Los Angeles. She is so grateful to have found this amazing community of thoughtful, creative and willing dance artists in her new home in The Roaring Fork Valley and to have the opportunity to once again collaborate artistically with her husband Alexander.
Former Company Members
Deborah Colley
Founder
Deborah Colley is a Carbondale-based dance artist, educator, community organizer, and public land advocate. Trained in classical ballet, modern dance and composition, Deborah took a hiatus from dance to earn a B.A. in Environmental Science and dedicated her early twenties teaching Environmental Education. In 2011, Deborah returned to the arts, working as an arts administrator with Carbondale Arts and helping establish and manage Dance Initiative, The Launchpad, and CoMotion. She has served as the director of choreography for the Carbondale Arts GITNB Fashion Extravanganza from 2012 to 2018 along with other project such as the her outdoor dance film, Letter To Congress: A WILD Sanity. Deborah is currently on a 2 year sabbatical in South America.
--
Aja McAdams
Founder
Aja has loved to dance her whole life. Starting at age seven she studied and performed modern and jazz for many years with Audrey Darrel and Kathy Roe, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She attended the University of California at Santa Cruz where she was introduced to African, Hip Hop and Contemporary modern dance. Since college she has studied African and Afro-Haitian dance with such master teachers as Broadway dancer Rujeko Dumbutshena from Zimbabwe, Elise Smith Gent from the US and Fara Tolno from Guinea. Aja returned to modern dance and collaboratively founded CoMotion in 2013 and has been dancing with the group on and off since then. She is delighted to be collaborating with such a lovely and talented group of dancers and to be sharing her passion for movement with the community.
“Art is an effort to create, beside the real world, a more humane world.”
Andre Maurois
