As Dean of the Tisch School of the Arts, I am proud to have new media artist, photographer and filmmaker Cari Ann Shim Sham as the newest member of the faculty of the Department of Dance. Cari Ann leads the Dance and New Media unit of the Department with its thrust to incorporate filmmaking and post production with dance. Prior to her appointment as an Associate Arts Professor, Cari Ann was a long-time adjunct in the Department who does not only have a deep passion for both the visual and the performing arts but also demonstrates great care towards our students. Please help me to welcome Cari Ann to the Tisch school of the arts, we all look forward to working with her!
Allyson Green
Dean, Tisch School of the Arts
Groundbreaking choreographer, filmmaker, and video artist Cari Ann Shim Sham has joined the Department of Dance at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts as an Associate Arts Professor of Dance and New Media effective spring 2017. A pioneer in integrating visual imagery with dance and movement, Shim Sham’s appointment serves to reinforce and amplify Tisch Dance’s commitment to the exploration of multimedia innovation and technology in dance.
"Cari Ann is tearing down boundaries in the arts, creating interactive and immersive film, sound, and physical objects for dance works that transcend the limits of space, time, and the human body,” said Sean Curran, chair of the NYU Tisch Department of Dance. “I am pleased to welcome her to the Department of Dance at Tisch and incredibly excited for the role she will play in developing our students to be critical thinkers and fearless leaders who expand the language of dance and share its transformative power with world."
As an artist and filmmaker, Cari Ann Shim Sham has garnered a substantial reputation for her beautifully strong and stunningly surreal imagery. Her visual artistry opens up the viewer's body through emotional sensation, powerful visuals, provocative sound, brilliant color and engaging movement.
At Tisch in 2016, Shim Sham was the first video artist to fully redesign the video/sound/set build of Robert Rauschenberg’s “Shiner” for Trisha Brown’s Set & Reset/Reset. Shim Sham is excited to grow the Dance and New Media Program, which was founded in 2014 to train cross-train dancers in the art of dance filmmaking as well as other emerging technologies, including coding for interactive dance, virtual reality and 360 film, immersive installation design and video art for dance.
Shim Sham is a core team member and the filmmaker/photographer for the “Translucent Borders,” a working group of the NYU Global Institute for Advanced Study, that explores intercultural dialogue, practice and exchange, focusing on the role of dance and music at cultural borders. Translucent Borders is made up of leading choreographers, composers, and New York University faculty in dance, music, and performance studies. The project examines ways in which dancers and musicians can act as catalysts for mutual change between disparate cultural entities.
“It’s a dream come true for me to design and teach my own content in the very thing that I do, alongside creating art for NYU,” she said. “Not many people get to walk between worlds so fluidly and the students not only get to have me as their teacher, but they get to dance with my art, work with me creatively and see me as professional working in my field. The opportunities I’ve had as an artist at Tisch are astounding!”
Shim Sham comes to NYU from UCLA where she taught Dance for Camera for seven years and earned her BA and MFA. For the past two decades, her live work and video art has shown at headline and underground venues, including Jacob's Pillow, Abrons Art Center, Montclair University, Joyce Soho, Dixon Place, Human Resources LA, Bergamot Station, The Brewery, Highways, with supporting technical residencies from The Krannert Center, Clarice Smith Art Center, Danspace NYC, Dance Place DC and REDCAT.
Her film work has screened at Laemmle Sunset 7, Mann Chinese Theater, and the United Nations General Assembly, as well as at close to 200 festivals internationally including Cannes, garnering numerous awards including Best Director from the First Glance Film Festival & Best Short Doc from St. Louis & Oxford Film Festivals for her film “SAND”, Best Experimental Film from New Orleans Film Fest for “Two Seconds After Laughter” and won the World’s Largest Premiere from Record Breakers alongside the Vimeo Social Change Award for “One Day on Earth”, the first documentary film to be shot in every country of the world on the same day.
Moving into the virtual world, Shim Sham recently directed the first Virtual Reality Horror Opera, The Parksville Murders for Opera on Tap, funded in part by Opera America. In February, her video artistry premiered at the Skirball Center in LA for Lionel Popkin’s Inflatable Furniture, and her video/interactive system for Dance Like No One is Whalewatching, an interactive immersive inflatable installation with Emily Beattie, Eric Gunther and Mary Hale will premiere at the Imagine Festival in October 2017. She’s designing an interactive video art build for the 2018 Strayhorn Project Halfway to Dawn premiere and in early stages of a feature dance film, Twit with David Rousseve.
Shim Sham’s redesign of the Robert Rauschenberg’s “Shiner” for Trisha Brown’s Set & Reset/Reset will be part of the program for Tisch’s Second Avenue Dance Company’s Major Dance Concert, opening Wednesday, March 29 and running for five performances through Sunday, April 2, 2017. Curtain is 7:30 p.m. Admission is free with a suggested donation of $20 to benefit the Tisch Dance Scholarship Fund (any size donation is accepted). Performances will take place in the Jack Crystal Theater, 111 Second Avenue, 5th floor, New York City. For reservations and information, call 212.998.1982 (Mon.-Fri. between 1 and 5 p.m. only).