Michael Zerang was born in Chicago, Illinois and is a first generation American of Assyrian decent. He has been a professional musician, composer, and producer since 1976, focusing extensively on improvised music, free jazz, contemporary composition, puppet theater, experimental theater, and international musical forms. He has collaborated extensively with contemporary theater, dance, and other multidisciplinary forms and has received three Joseph Jefferson Awards for Original Music Composition in Theater, in 1996, 1998, and 2000. He has over sixty titles in his discography and has toured nationally and internationally since 1981 with and ever-widening pool of collaborators. He was the artistic director of the Link's Hall Performance Series from 1985-1989 where he produced over 300 concerts of jazz, traditional ethnic folk music, electronic music, and other forms of forward thinking music. He continued to produce concerts at Cafe Urbus Orbis from 1994-1996, and at his own space, The Candlestick Maker in Chicago's Albany Park neighborhood, from 2001 - 2005. He has taught as a guest artist at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in performance technique, sound design, and sound/music as it relates to puppetry; rhythmic analysis for dancers at The Dance Center of Columbia College, Northwestern University, and MoMing Dance and Arts Center; courses in Composer - Choreographer Collaborations at Northwestern University; music to children at The Jane Adams Hull House. He has held workshops in improvisational music and percussion technique and teaches private lessons in rhythmic analysis, music composition, and percussion technique. www.michaelzerang.com

Pate Conaway is a graduate of Chicago's Second City Training Center and received his MFA from Columbia College, Chicago. His work explores the connection between visual art and performance. After learning to knit, Pate spent five weeks at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago knitting a pair of mittens large enough for him to sleep in. His work explores the fusion of sculpture, installation, and interactive performance. For Tragic III, Pate worked with the dancers to create shrink-wrap costumes that are a combination of knitting, crochet, and knot work. Some of Pate's work can be seen at www.margingallery.org/pate.html

Lehcar Dnomreg has been collaborating with Artistic Director Rachel Thorne Germond since she began making work in 1990. He received his BFA from Cornell University's College of Architecture, Art and Planning in 1986 and moved to New York City shortly thereafter. He works in a variety of mediums. To find out more about this mysterious artist, try reading backwards. ;) .

Insook Choi is an interdisciplinary composer, researcher and interactive media artist. She currently lives in New York City where she is directing the creation of a new Emerging Media program for the City University of New York. Born in Seoul, Korea, she has been teaching and conducting research in various institutes including UIUC, UC Berkeley, School of Art Institute of Chicago, and NYU-Polytechnic University, Brooklyn. Her music has been performed and broadcast in Europe, Asia and the United States. She has created numerous interdisciplinary projects across music performance, cognitive science and engineering. Her compositions include instrumental, electro-acoustic and computer music, video, and interactive performances involving various technology. She is frequently invited as a presenter at international festivals and conference venues, and her research publications can be found across the disciplines of art, science, and engineering. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insook_Choi