CASTING: CANIPAROLI / BREINER / OISHI PREMIERES

Susan Roemer is a Bay Area-based costume designer specializing in creative collaboration for dance and film under her own label S-Curve Apparel & Design. Prior to her career in costume design, Roemer was a professional dancer across the country, most notably with Smuin Ballet in San Francisco for nine years. Since 2012, Roemer has designed and constructed costumes for San Francisco Ballet, Smuin Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, Amy Seiwert’s Imagery, Ballet West, Ballet Memphis, AXIS Dance Company, Tulsa Ballet, Kansas City Ballet, BalletMet, Ballet Austin, Eugene Ballet, Singapore Dance Theatre, and Red Panel Creative, among others. Roemer was awarded an Isadora Duncan Award for Visual Design of Amy Seiwert’s Wandering in 2017. Her experience as a performer has informed her design perspective, blending fashion with the unique demands of dressing artists for stage.

Jim French, lighting supervisor for San Francisco Ballet, designs lighting for performing arts and live events. At SF Ballet, he has created lighting for world premieres by Christopher Wheeldon, Myles Thatcher, Arthur Pita, Trey McIntyre, Yuri Possokhov, and Benjamin Millepied, among others. After working with the Martha Graham Dance Company and Twyla Tharp Dance, French spent nine years as resident designer for Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet. Locally, he has worked with Alonzo King Lines Ballet, Bandaloop, ODC Dance, Post:Ballet, SF Danceworks, Amy Seiwert’s Imagery, and Sacramento Ballet. Other credits include Ballett Basel, Carte Blanche, Royal Ballet of Flanders, Ballet West, National Ballet of Finland, and collaborations with choreographers Jessica Lang, Crystal Pite, Pascal Rioult, and Val Caniparoli. He has been house lighting designer at SF Jazz, and volunteers for Dancers Responding to AIDS and Bike East Bay.

Since 2007 Ben has composed for more than 50 organizations, ranging from avant-garde museum installations to corporate keynotes. Additionally, Ben has released 5 albums and toured extensively with his rock band Battlehooch. With a background in classical piano and percussion, his compositions are grounded in melody and rhythm. He aims to create specific and unique moods by exploring the familiarity that can appear within strange juxtapositions.

Jürgen Franz Kirner lives and works as a freelance stage and costume designer in Berlin. He studied Visual Communication design and stage design in Kassel, Hamburg and Berlin and worked as assistant to Florian Etti, Heinz Hauser and Robert Wilson. Since 2001 he has been active in drama, music theatre and dance with numerous artistic works. His works have taken him to the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus, the Bavarian State Opera Munich, the Halle Opera House, Musiktheater in Revier and the Bayreuth Festival with Wagner's "Liebesverbot", Oper Graz, to Tel Aviv with "Entführung aus dem Serail", Amsterdam as well as Montpellier and Rome.

In a joint collaboration with choreographer Bridget Breiner at the Ballett im Revier, "Russ" received the German theatre prize Faust in 2013 and "Charlotte Salomon" in 2015. This was followed by an invitation to the Les Grands Ballets des Canadiens in Montréal with "L ́oiseau de Feu". Since 2019 with new tasks at the Staatsballett Karlsruhe with "Maria Stuart" in 2022.

Jim French, lighting supervisor for San Francisco Ballet, designs lighting for performing arts and live events. At SF Ballet, he has created lighting for world premieres by Christopher Wheeldon, Myles Thatcher, Arthur Pita, Trey McIntyre, Yuri Possokhov, and Benjamin Millepied, among others. After working with the Martha Graham Dance Company and Twyla Tharp Dance, French spent nine years as resident designer for Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet. Locally, he has worked with Alonzo King Lines Ballet, Bandaloop, ODC Dance, Post:Ballet, SF Danceworks, Amy Seiwert’s Imagery, and Sacramento Ballet. Other credits include Ballett Basel, Carte Blanche, Royal Ballet of Flanders, Ballet West, National Ballet of Finland, and collaborations with choreographers Jessica Lang, Crystal Pite, Pascal Rioult, and Val Caniparoli. He has been house lighting designer at SF Jazz, and volunteers for Dancers Responding to AIDS and Bike East Bay.

Lynne Charles is a former Principal Dancer with John Neumeier, the Hamburg Ballet, Bejart Ballet Lausanne, and a Principal Permanent Guest Artist with the English National Ballet. She is a Professor of Classical Ballet and a Freelance Guest teacher with major international ballet companies such as the English National Ballet and the Royal Danish Ballet. In addition, she created 4Pointe, a method for teaching pointe that is both accessible and healthy. Lynne has closely worked with Bridget Breiner for many years in the European scene, and work together as faculty with her being Ballet Mistress of Badisches Staatstheater Karlsuhe in Germany.