Mereminne Dancers
Mereminne Dancers is a contemporary modern troupe whose dances have been described as "deep, moving and elegant," expressing community and celebration along with a sense of fun. The company was officially named in 2000 and has since appeared at many New York City venues including the International Dance Festival-NYC 2002, Theatre of the Riverside Church, the 92nd Street Y, and The Remember Project at St. Mark's Church. In 2005 the troupe traveled to Swarthmore, PA to develop the work Birdsong Sketches in a summer residency at the Swarthmore Project and visited North Carolina to perform the new work at Salem College. Most recently, Mereminne Dancers took part in the ReVision Series NYC and the 2011 Philadelphia Fringe Festival performing the structured improvisation We the People. Mereminne is pronounced "MEH-ray-MIH-nay" and is an ancient word for mermaid.
Company Artists
We would like to thank the following beautiful artists who have danced with us as company members or guest artists, at one time or another, since the year 2000: Michaela Bosshard, Marina Cashdan, Ali Cook, Jessica Delia, Julia Y. Edwards, Carrie Ellmore-Tallitsch, Deborah Goodman, Loren Groenendaal, Susan Haines, Robert Halley, Nicola Iervasi, Stacey Kaplan, Rebekah J. Kennedy, Natacha LeJeune, Val Lukianovets, Darcy Lyons, Sheiline McGraw, Elizabeth Mikautadze, Djamila Moore, Naoko Morita, Tomoko Muneto, Kumiko Nasu, Viviana Nava, Brenda Nieto, Makiko Oka, Deniz Oktay, Rosario Ordonez, Bradley Parquette, Virginia Pedicord, Lisa Pelletier, Amy Piantaggini, Margarita Roa, Nicole Rocci, Sadira Aryan Smith, Claudia Spahr, Katherine Kiefer Stark, Barbara Tait, Angela Wiele, and Madoka Yamamori. Thanks also to the many wonderful dancers who performed with us before that time, and to costume designers Uki Kittaka and Angela Wiele.
Choreographer
As a child Lacy was drawn to many avenues of artistic expression, including creative writing, music, and drama. She took her first formal dance class during her final year at Swarthmore College, after which she moved to Philadelphia and began writing songs and recording her first album Lovefeast (read more about Lacy's music at lacyjames.com). Dance was becoming a bigger and bigger part of her life as she continued to develop her technique in classes with the Philadelphia Dance Company (Philadanco). She also began to choreograph and to compose music for some of her dances. For one of the tracks from the Lovefeast album, "Song of Songs," Lacy created a dreamlike Middle Eastern-influenced dance/music video, choreographed by Ronen Koresh, which premiered on the "Independent Images" program of WHYY/Philadelphia. Particularly inspired by the artistry of Martha Graham, in 1992 she moved to New York City to study in depth at Graham's studio. In 1998 Lacy was chosen to represent the Martha Graham School in the EFSD benefit concert, performing her solo choreography gravity flight for which she also composed the sound score. She went on to dance with Isadora's Dance Legacy, Coyote Dancers, in the Martha Graham Dance Company's first reconstruction of Panorama, in Maureen Fleming's Mandala project, and in the lead role of Nocturnae, a dance film selected for public screening by several international film festivals.
Her own work has been presented in New York, Philadelphia, North Carolina and Germany. Lacy holds an MFA in choreography from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she served as a teaching assistant in the Dance department teaching contemporary dance technique and Dance Appreciation and assisting with undergraduate choreography. During this time she also studied with composer Mark Engebretson at UNC-Greensboro's School of Music, exploring new artistic processes in electronic composition for her choreography. She has recently returned to Philadelphia to record a new album, Circles of Swallows, set for release in early 2013, and has been working with dancers in both Philadelphia and New York City.