AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

http://www.pasdasl.com

Mona Jean Cedar was born in a small rural town in upstate New York; today, her visions are global. Her love for dance and facility with languages began in New York, but blossomed with her move to cosmopolitan Los Angeles.
After receiving an AA in Dance and an AS in American Sign Language (ASL) Interpreting from El Camino College, she blended dance and sign language into a new communicative art genre for her Bachelor's degree in Deaf Studies from California State University at Northridge where she choreographed with ASL, Japanese Sign Language, and Russian Sign Language. As a product of her times, Mona Jean brought her sign and dance into rock and roll to perform as a “psycho-sign-go-go-dancer” with punk rock bands at SXSW, the Whiskey, and Las Vegas, and did scat signing to a jazz “bop-estra”. She has been both a competitor, performing her originally composed sign-poems on a National Poetry Slam team in Seattle, and an interpreter, interpreting the National Poetry Slam Finals starting with Chicago in 2003 and every year after in a different city. Ms. Cedar received a scholarship for the Juilliard’s seminar on Interpreting for Broadway. She presently interprets for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Hollywood Bowl. Some of her most creative work has been in the form of rituals performed at Burning Man. Mona Jean has taught ballet, tap dance, modern dance, jazz dance, and sign language to children and adults, both disabled and those temporarily not disabled. Professionally, she has danced in Europe and Japan, as well as dancing with the Collage Dance Theater and the Rudy Perez Ensemble in Los Angeles, California. Mona Jean presented her multi-lingual-signed choreography at the international Deaf Way conference at Gallaudet University in Washington, D C. Now, with her new husband, AMP Member Jeff Boynton, Mona Jean is experimenting with circuit bending-electronica music with sensors attached to her hands and body which create impulses that control these invented instruments while adding visuals of the text as graphics. Mona Jean Cedar’s life is committed to the fulfillment of a dream to choreograph in every signed language in the world.