***the tinydance project created performance art from 2012-2022, thank you for visiting our archival site!***
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Photo by Marie Brown
Kelly Silliman, founder/director of the tinydance project, is a dance artist and educator living in Western Massachusetts. She grew up near Hartford, CT, where she studied ballet for ten years before discovering modern dance, after which she promptly began her first dance company. Kelly continued with intensive dance and theatre training throughout her time in CT. Kelly holds a BA in Theatre Arts from Stetson University, and during college she implemented and taught the modern dance program at the Academy of Dance in DeLand, FL. During that time she also participated in Drink to This!, a summer program for emerging artists in Hartford, as a founding member and eventually co-artistic director. In 1999 Kelly moved to Boston where she co-founded Royal Jelly, a performance collective of dancers, artists, and musicians. The wild west called, however, and in 2000 Kelly journeyed to Tuscon, AZ, where she performed and choreographed with NewARTiculations Dance Theatre and taught classes for children at a local studio. In 2004, the east coast beckoned once again, and Kelly found herself in Charlottesville, VA, where she danced with Prospect Dance Group, inFluxdance, and UpRooted Dance Theatre. In 2008 Kelly opened The Dance Barn, a studio in Stanardsville, VA that offered dance classes to children and adults in the rural areas surrounding Charlottesville. During the next few years Kelly also served as a board member and resident choreographer of Charlottesville Ballet, an emerging professional ballet company which eventually bought The Dance Barn (now known as Charlottsville Ballet Academy). In 2011 Kelly moved to Northampton, MA to pursue her MFA in Dance at Smith College, where she served as a teaching fellow, and graduated in 2013. Kelly continued her dance scholarship with research into the intersection of sustainability and the arts, and was appointed a Five College Associate in 2014. In 2016 she published a paper titled "Shifting Climates: Applying Principles of Sustainability to Dance-Making Endeavors," and as a scholar and educator she is interested in examining and questioning the hierarchies, myths, and assumptions of the dance/performance community, locally and globally.
Currently, Kelly directs and performs with the tinydance project, is the Program Director for the Northampton Center for the Arts, collaborates with Deborah Goffe/Scapegoat Garden and Cat Wagner, and teaches community dance classes. She is a homeschooling mother of four and can tie shoelaces in a bow with her toes. She looks forward to many years of dancing, choreographing, teaching, researching, and writing in the Connecticut River Valley!
Currently, Kelly directs and performs with the tinydance project, is the Program Director for the Northampton Center for the Arts, collaborates with Deborah Goffe/Scapegoat Garden and Cat Wagner, and teaches community dance classes. She is a homeschooling mother of four and can tie shoelaces in a bow with her toes. She looks forward to many years of dancing, choreographing, teaching, researching, and writing in the Connecticut River Valley!
Photo by Tom Silliman
Jayme Winell, 2014-2021 collaborator, started dancing at a young age in Brisbane, Australia. At ten years old Jayme started to take classes more seriously and for high school went to the San Francisco School of the Arts to study dance. It was there that Jayme began studying choreography, making her own work and teaching. At 17 she apprenticed with a company called Dance Ceres and performed at Stanford University, in two dance conventions and in public spaces in San Francisco. Jayme has taught modern dance, ballet and improvisation in Colorado, California, Maryland, Massachusetts and Chiapas, Mexico. Jayme graduated from Hampshire College in 2012 with a focus on dance, people's history and arts for community building. She has performed in theaters, halls, studios, classrooms, conferences and marches in the streets and once in a fountain. She is currently a collaborator with the tinydance project, a dance teacher and ArtPlay director at the Northampton Center for the Arts, and an ELL tutor with the Greenfield Public Schools. Jayme is a performer, songwriter, traveller, farmer-in-training, massage apprentice and writer. She hopes to be bilingual in Spanish someday, wants to learn the basics of sign language, and can swim under water while holding a mango on a stick above water.
Photo by Phoebe Silliman
Nicole Caporusso Kutcher, 2014-2018 collaborator, graduated from Hamilton College in 2002 with a major in Dance and East Asian Studies (ask her to speak a little Mandarin for you and she may oblige). Four days after graduation, she was summoned to Brooklyn as a last-minute stand in for another dancer and performed the part of a slightly sinister, dagger-wielding, Virgin Mary. She improvised the whole thing. Nicole moved to NYC, was a member of the HT Chen and Dancers company and performed with choreographers Vanessa Paige and Mariana Bekerman. She then took an extended hiatus (10yrs!) from dance. During that time, she moved to the Pioneer Valley, became a Mama to two awesome children, and opened Renew Pilates Studio, which she co-owns. Nicole is both a creative and administrative collaborator with the tinydance project. She can speak Mandarin.
Photo by David Kutcher
Marie Brown, 2014-2017 collaborator, has work that spans the many art forms involved in making theatre, film, movement, and music performance. Her work is largely generative and collaborative; communicating across multiple disciplines, seeking to illuminate, challenge, ponder, and reimagine the experience of being alive. Her works include HomeInStead, an ongoing collaboration with sculptor and husband Craig McNeil, In Search of Eden, a multi-disciplinary performance exhibition made in collaboration with Boston-based artist group TRIIIBE, original period-style songs composed for The Plimoth Player’s production of As You Like It, The Nomadic Dream Project recreated and performed with originators Alison Heryer, Sonja Rainey and Emma Lawrence in The Prague Quadrennial, and The Psyche Project (now re:Psyche), co-conceived and directed with playwright Jenny Connell, performer Tom Truss and the psyche ensemble. Marie received her Master of Fine Arts in Directing Theatre from the University of Texas at Austin, and her Bachelor of Art in Music and Theatre from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA. Marie currently co-owns and manages TreeCycle Arborists/Artists, a local tree service that works toward sustainability through low impact practices and recycling removed wood to serve the community, the environment and the arts. Marie Brown now lives in Northampton with her husband & daughters, and she has never lost a game of limbo. www.mariesbrown.com
Photo by Cher Lemire
Liv Fauver, 2013-2014 collaborator, began her dance career training at City Center Ballet in Lebanon, NH. She has since graduated from the Smith College dance program where she served as artistic director of Celebrations Dance Company and co-facilitator of Smith Arts for the Earth. She currently dances in a residency with Delfos Contemporanea Dance Company at La Escuela Profesional de Danza de Mazatlán in Mazatlán, Mexico under the direction of Omar Carrum, Claudia Lavista and Victor Manuel Ruiz. She has performed the works of Zoila Fernández and Guillermo Carrillo, co-directors of La Danza Ballet de Mazatlán, Robert Battle, Monica Bill Barnes, Andrea Miller, Adam Burruch, Sidra Bell, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Paul Matteson, Melissa Edwards, Mat Elder, and for Kelly Silliman in her graduate work and as a tinydance collaborator.
Photo by Tom Silliman
Hailing from New York City, Charnice O. Charmant, 2013-2014 collaborator, studied Dance at Smith College. In the early days of her dance journey, Charnice explored dance with the National Dance Institute and the Pauline Brathwaite Dance Ensemble at her church. From the age of 13, Charnice was given many opportunities to teach dance to kids in and out of her community, with the hope that she could spread the confidence and strong character that dance continues to cultivate in herself. At 16, Charnice had the opportunity to intern with the Creative Outlet Dance Theater of Brooklyn, as the assistant to the artistic director. At the tender age of 20, Charnice continues to live through dance and choreography. As the assistant artistic director to the Celebrations Dance Company, Charnice choreographs and coaches her peers in all aspects of dance. Throughout her college years, Charnice has had the opportunity to choreograph her major work on the integration-turned-segregation of black bodies, "BLACK; her's, her's and mine", and has also studied under established dance artists such as Chris Aiken, Rodger Blum, Melissa Edwards, Karisma Jay, Candice Salyers, and Kelly Silliman.
Photo by Cory Ellen Gatrall
Maureen Shea, 2013 collaborator
Photo by Cory Ellen Gatrall
Crystal Nilsson, 2013 collaborator
