Lyric Opera 2024-2025 Issue 8 - The Listeners

35 | Lyric Opera of Chicago RAJA FEATHER KELLY ORIGINAL CHOREOGRAPHER Lyric debut The choreographer and director is artistic director of the feath3r theory (TF3T), a Brooklyn-based dance-theatre-media company he founded in 2009. In the 2022/23 Season, Kelly was named Quinn Martin Director at the University of California San Diego. Over the past decade he has created 15 evening-length works with feath3r theory, most recently UGLY (Black Queer Zoo) at The Bushwick Starr, and We May Never Dance Again at The Invisible Dog in Brooklyn. Kelly has performed with Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group, David Dorfman Dance, Kyle Abraham|Abraham.In.Motion, and zoe | juniper. He has also managed a number of dance companies: Race Dance, Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion, zoe | juniper, and Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group. Since 2016, Kelly has choreographed extensively for Off-Broadway theater in New York City, most notably for Signature Theatre, Soho Rep, New York Theatre Workshop and Playwrights Horizons. ZOE SCOFIELD REVIVAL CHOREOGRAPHER Lyric debut A 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, Scofield is a dance and visual artist currently based in Seattle. For nearly two decades, Scofield has worked with video and visual artist Juniper Shuey on various collaborations shown in art galleries, museums, and theaters. They have been commissioned and presented by national and international arts centers such as On the Boards, PICA, Trafo House of Art, Dance Theater Workshop, Bates Dance Festival, NYLA, Spoleto Festival, Jacob’s Pillow, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Body Festival (New Zealand), Yerba Buena Center, Columbia College Chicago, DiverseWorks, the Frye Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, New York Philharmonic, and many more. They have taught workshops and given lectures on dance, photography, collaboration, and installation throughout the U.S. and internationally. Scofield has taught at Velocity Dance Center, Mark Morris Dance Center, Gibney Dance Center, Walnut Hill School for the Arts, Boston Conservatory, Columbia College, University of Utah, and University of Colorado at Boulder, and has served as a guest panelist for Dance Critics Association, PICA’s Educating Dance Audiences, gloATL Tanz Farm, and Cornish College of the Arts. Scofield and Shuey are co-founders of Lo-Fi Annual Arts Festival. AUGUST TYE BALLET MISTRESS The American dancer, choreographer, and ballet mistress has worked on nearly 50 productions at Lyric since 1993/94. She remounted the choreography of Lyric’s Iphigénie en Tauride at San Francisco Opera and the Royal Ballet and Opera. She has presented a 20-year retrospective of her work at Chicago’s Vittum Theater and Ruth Page Dance Center, as well as in her hometown of Kalamazoo, Michigan. A graduate of Western Michigan University, Tye performed with the Kalamazoo Ballet, dancing leading roles in Sleeping Beauty , Cinderella , and The Nutcracker . In addition to Lyric and Joel Hall Dancers, she has performed in Chicago with Salt Creek Ballet, Second City Ballet, and Chicago Folks Operetta. Tye is Artistic Director at the Hyde Park School of Dance, which she founded in 1993. Four years later she founded Tyego Dance Project, which has performed at Steppenwolf, the Athenaeum, and throughout America in a revival of Spike Jones’s Nutcracker . JOHN METZNER WIGMASTER AND MAKEUP DESIGNER The versatile designer first joined the staff of Lyric for the 2022/23 Season. He has previously collaborated with Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Lookingglass Theatre, and Court Theatre. He served for nine years as Head of Wig and Makeup for Webster University’s Conservatory of Theatre Arts, and designed hair and makeup for more than 50 performances at The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. Other regional credits include work at The Muny, Great River Shakespeare Festival, and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, where he designed for The Pirates of Penzance , among many other productions. His advanced training includes wig styling at the Wig Room Training Academy and London School of Wig Making. John Metzner is supported by The Marlys A. Beider Wigmaster and Makeup Designer Endowed Chair.