BEYOND
Choreography by
Laura Peterson
in collaboration with the artists.
Performed by Ching-I Chang, Meredith Fages, Emily Pope and Miho Ryu.
Music composed and performed by Christina Campanella
Emily Pope is a NY based dance artist, teacher, choreographer, and videographer. She received a Bessie for Outstanding Performer in 2020. She currently works with YoshikoChuma and The School of Hard Knocks, Douglas Dunn + Dancers, Tamar Rogoff Performance Projects, Hilary Easton, Megan Williams,Tiffany Mills Company (where she is rehearsal assistant), and Bodymouth Productions. She has, also, been an all around instructor for the YMCA since 2007. She is honored to be dancing for Laura Peterson for the very first time! She created HoverBound Productions in 2006, in order to create multimedia work in collaboration with local artists. She received three choreographic residencies at Chen Dance Center, and was nominated for The Yard’s Summer Residency in 2011. She also has one Off-Broadway credit for her choreography in “Teenage Dick,” which first previewed at The Public Theater in 2015.
Miho Ryu is a New York based dancer, choreographer, and teaching artist originally from Tokyo, Japan. She holds a BA in Drama from Waseda University and received the Best Dance Choreography Award at the Oniros Film Awards® in 2018. She has created and performed over 100 works, including live performances, films, music videos, and interactive installations, across Europe, Asia, and the United States. After two decades of professional work based in Japan, she returned to New York in 2024, the city where she first trained in contemporary dance from 1999 to 2004. Her recent work has been presented at WestFest Top Floor at the Martha Graham Studio Theater, Crossing Boundaries at Dixon Place, Recess at Chez Bushwick, At Capacity/AOCC by at BAX, Inter-grant Festival, Arts On Site, Peridance, Chain Theatre, and Asia Tri Jojga in Indonesia. She currently teaches Contemporary Dance classes at Peridance Center, Ballet Hispanico School, and Steps on Broadway. https://www.ryumiho.com
Meredith Fages has been making dances with Laura Peterson since 2010. She has also performed with Armitage Gone! Dance, Alexandra Beller, Monica Bill Barnes/Waterwell, Michele Brangwen, Wally Cardona, Doug Elkins, David Hallberg/Francesco Vezzoli, Deborah Hay, Heidi Latsky Dance, Mana Kawamura, Motley Dance, Jimena Paz, Becky Radway, Sarah Skaggs, Steeledance, Palissimo, Mitzi Adams, Verlezza Dance, Kim Whittam, Eidolon Ballet, Helen Heineman, Todd Rosenlieb Dance, and Virginia Ballet Theatre, featured in Ashton, Balanchine, Christensen, Tudor ballets. Described by Deborah Jowitt as a “remarkable dancer...adept in some society of the future, [a] primal, near-aquatic creature slipping around in a watery world...", she graduated from Columbia University with a Pre-Medical Concentration in English. Her writing appears in Dance Magazine, Dance Teacher, Well + Good, and ARTDESK.
Christina Campanella is a composer, performer, and sound artist. The “contemplative rhythm” of her sound installations (Boston Globe), her “moody, driving music,” “hymn-like songs” (NY Times), and “ethereal voice” (BUST) are the building blocks of her performance, installation and fixed media works. Her soundwalks, installations and music-theater have been presented throughout the U.S. and abroad. She regularly performs the operas of composer/visual artist Joe Diebes, and in 2026, will be in Sweden recording an album of her most recent composition for the Great Learning Orchestra (Stockholm). www.christinacampanella.com
Ching‑I Chang A migrating breeze, made in Taiwan, U.S.‑naturalized dance artist. She explores the voices of the peripheral and subaltern. Her interdisciplinary work has appeared at Yuz Museum, Queens Museum, MOCA, ICA at VCU, Harlem Stage, Danspace DraftWork, and Movement Research at Judson Church. She has worked with Susan Marshall and Gesel Mason, performed in Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More (NYC original cast; Shanghai performer & rehearsal director), and toured with ANIKAYA to Palestine, India, and across Africa. Ching-I holds an MFA from the U of Utah and certifications in Laban/Bartenieff, Yoga and Yoga Nidra. She facilities the Inter‑grant Festival. In 2025, she is an Individual Artist Finalist (NJ State Council on the Arts), a Create Change Fellow (The Laundromat Project), and a 2024-2025 AAPI resident artist at TOPAZ ARTS. Ching‑I loves bananas.
Laura Peterson, Artistic Director and Choreographer
Laura Peterson is a NYC based dance artist and the Founder and Artistic Director of Open Arts Studio and Laura Peterson Choreography, a non-profit arts organization located in Brooklyn. She creates works that challenge the limits of physicality and reframe performance spaces. Her designs have included large scale paintings, a set made completely from paper, 1,000 sq ft of living lawn, 16ft tall sculptures, and other giant structures.
Laura Peterson’s work has been performed in the US at venues including The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out, and internationally in Europe and Argentina. Laura Peterson performed her work, SOLO, as part of the Museum of Modern Art exhibition, Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done. She has been awarded residencies and commissions for the last ten years, including theHERE Arts Center Artist Residency Program (HARP). She was the recipient of a Bogliasco Fellowship and residency in Italy, and multiple residencies at Marble House Project, as well as Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, Subcircle Residency, Dance New Amsterdam and others. Her work has been commissioned by Dixon Place (NYC), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council for the Sitelines series at the River-to-River Festival, the Queens Museum of Art, and others. She created two works for Nick Cave’s Sound Suits with Balance Dance Company and the Boise Art Museum, as well as repertory for the Pennsylvania Ballet and the Hartford Ballet. Her work has been supported by grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, Brooklyn Arts Council, Greenwall Foundation (multi-year support), Trust for Mutual Understanding, Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation, Puffin Foundation, and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts
Peterson spent many years teaching classes and choreographing works for universities including Princeton University, Marymount Manhattan College, Rutgers University, Bowdoin College, NYU Tisch School, Long Island University, CUNY Lehman College, and other institutions. She is a current faculty member of The Joffrey Ballet School.
She holds an MFA from New York University Tisch School of the Arts and a BFA in modern dance from University of the Arts.