Heralded by the Globe and Mail as a choreographer who creates "highly ironic works that address issues of freedom, control, sexuality, and identity" and whose "maverick feminist critiques...have a madness about them that is probably just right for our times," Rachel Thorne Germond has presented her work in New York City at such venues as the Joyce Soho, Movement Research at Judson Church, WAX, Chashama, The Merce Cunningham Studio, Dixon Place, amongst others and in Chicago since 2000, primarily at Links Hall, but also in performances with the Girlie Q Variety Hour, the Chicago Kings, and in festivals such as the Feast of Fools, Full Circle Festival, the Spareroom, the Around the Coyote Festival, Looptopia!, and Estrogen Festival. Ms. Germond is a graduate of Cornell University (1986) where she began dancing while obtaining degrees in Fine Arts and Comparative Literature. She achieved an MFA in dance and choreography (2000) at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana where she was a Fellow. Her training includes intensive study of Klein/Mahler technique with Barbara Mahler and with such notable teachers as Mary Anthony, Anna Sokolow, Pedro Alejandro, Tere OÕConnor, and Nancy Topf.. In 2003, 2005, and 2006 she was the recipient of the city of Chicago's CAAP grant, and she was an artist-in- residence through C.A.P.E. at Roberto Clemente High School from 2004-2007. In 2004 she formed her Chicago-based pick up company, RTG Dance. To create her work, Germond draws on a knowledge of contemporary and historical artistic, biographical, and literary sources ranging from Gertrude Stein to Elvis Presley. Intrigued by a wide range of random and disparate inputs from modern life, Germond employs multiple strategies of investigation in her choreography, creating ambiguous juxtapositions and new, unfamiliar languages. As a choreographer I grapple with the nature of movement as metaphor or analogy. I strive to convey on- stage a world that is not dissimilar to everyday life, but the dances I make do address aspects of fantasy, imagination, and memory within the context of contemporary life. I have been consistently interested in archetypes and paradoxes Germond's work rides the line between abstraction and expressionism. She creates enigmatic dances that are amalgams of collaged snippets movement and ideas. This work is highly theatrical- laden with rich referential imagery of the culture-at-large while maintaining a relationship with the audience that is both personal and intimate.