IAE's Evolving Mission & Aesthetic

Improvisational Arts Ensembles, Inc. a non-profit corporation, was formed in 1978 by Richard Bull, Cynthia Jean Cohen Bull (aka Cynthia Novack), and Peentz Dubble, to "promote, assist, and produce the work of improvisational artists." Cancer claimed the lives of Cynthia in 1996 and Richard in 1998; the mission lives on and continues to expand in scope and possibility. IAE will continue to augment the exchange of ideas between existing ensembles working with structured improvisation, to teach the skills of structured improvisation to new artists, and to expand the audience for improvised work. Co-Artistic Directors Katie Bull, Kelly Donovan, and Meg Fry form a new creative structure - a core consortium. Bull is an inter-arts playwright/performer, Donovan and Fry are dancer/choreographers; all have bee influenced by the principles of structured choreographic improvisation developed by Richard Bull and the Richard Bull Dance Theatre. The new Artistic Team will expand the parameters of IAE's support to include a scope of work inclusive of set material derived from and performed with an improvisational "approach." The new IAE artists are unified by dedication to the process of collective creation, and an in-common aesthetic of spontaneity, alertness, presence, and authenticity. IAE seeks to nurture dance, theater, music and inter-arts works by artists who share the same dedication to process and aesthetic. (Bull, Donovan, Fry, Spring 2000).