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Sheldon Smith
lab artist, 2003

While the financial support made the work possible, what impacted me most was the constant affirmation that what I was doing was of significant value.

Sheldon B. Smith, Co-Artistic Director of Smith/Wymore Disappearing Acts, was a vital member of Chicago's experimental performance community for over fifteen years. Currently based in Berkeley, California, Sheldon considers himself as much a choreographer as he is a composer, video artist, and performer. His dances have been seen throughout the Midwest, Alaska, Colorado, and California, as well as in Philadelphia and NewYork City. He has taught dance technique, Music for Dance and Dance History at various institutions in Colorado and California and has taught a workshop on the use of multimedia software for live theater applications.

Smith/Wymore Disappearing Acts is a Berkeley, California based dance-theater company founded in 2001. They were nominated for Sexiest show at the 2005 Dublin Fringe Festival and were nominated for two 2006 Isadora Duncan awards (San Francisco Dance Awards) for Best Choreography and Best Design. In 2006 their work was seen in San Francisco, Minneapolis, Zurich, and in several small towns in County Donegal Ireland, as part of the Eargail Arts Festival.

Sheldon B. Smith’s CDF grant partially funded research, development and performances of an evening-length dance/theater work called Dryland. Developed collaboratively with his wife Lisa Wymore, Dryland was first conceived during a long drive across the American West. Exploring the body’s poetic response to place, movement and video material was gathered through a series of improvisations in the deserts, canyons and abandoned structures of Nevada, Arizona, and Utah. The multimedia work became a tender, intimate, humorous and haunting meditation on the thirst for love, water and territory. The work has been performed in Chicago, Colorado and New Mexico.