MemoryContento’s career in the performing arts spans over thirty years.She has been active in the performance, choreography,direction, production, and administration ofa wide range of endeavors in the world of dance and acting. Memory’s dance career began in Boston where shestudied with Sonja Von Beers, Prima Ballerina for the National Ballet of Holland. After further study in London she went on to perform under the direction of Consuelo Baraka, a principal dancer for the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, becoming the Assistant Artistic Director for Ms. Baraka’s dance company, Expansions, Inc. After Consuelo's death she formed her own company, Halcyon, Inc. where she continued to perform Consuelo's work while choreographing her own. She became a member of the Board of Directors for the Boston Repertory Theatre Company where she choreographed Harry Neilson’s “The Point".Memory taught dance throughout Boston including a dance and performance workshop for the inmates of the Framingham Women's Correctional Facility.She managed the Boston and Cambridge branches of the Joy of Movement Dance Center, New England’s largest dance school.Memory continued to broaden her dance interests by developing skills in Afro Haitian and Classical Indian dance forms. She developed this interest by founding and performing with two dance companies that touredthroughout the East Coast including venues such as Carnegie Hall's Weil Recital Hall and the Miami Convention Center. She also kept busy in the commercial world by choreographing for Fuji Camera and working in documentary television with ABC’s WCVB T.V.. Memory began her segue' into acting by performing as a member of the Outlaw Style Dance and Theatre Company which performed at the Charlestown Working Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts. During this time she appeared in her first independent film. Memory moved to the New York area in the mid nineties and started her involvement in the New York Arts world by choreographing and performing in an original tonal poem, “The Celestina” for her second appearance at Carnegie Hall’s Weil Recital Hall.Memory studied acting in New York with Patsey Rodenberg, Polina Klimovitskaya, Jeffrey Stocker, Ellen Parks, Marci Phillips and Stephen De Angelis. She immediately went to work performing in productions on stage and in film.Her credits included lead rolesas Missyin “The Sanctuary” performed at the Blue Heron Theatre, As Johanna Fantova in Einstein’s Secret Letters at the Walker Space, as Sally Marr in the “Last Days Of Lenny Bruce” at the Pantheon Theatre.A special stage performance included a reading of “Counting The Ways” under the direction of Jeffrey Stocker and Edward Albee at the Berine West Theatre.In addition to her stage credits Memory has performed in films with Harvey Keitel ( “A Crime”, directed by Manuel Pradel) and most recently with Patrick Wilson and Amy Smart in “Life inFlight” (directed by Tracy Hecht). Memory has also worked behind the scenes to direct and produce.She directed a reading of“Family Reunion” in Spanish with the Teatro IATI and directed and produced an audio CD “The Relationship Advantage”. Memory is a member of the National Arts Club where she has performed a number of staged readings under the direction of Jeffrey Stocker.She is also a member of: Actors' Equity Association, the Screen Actors Guild, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, New York Women In Film and Television, and the New York Chapter ofthe National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Memory has served as the Secretary of the American Readers Theatre for just over one year.In addition to serving as an Officer, she is a regular reader for ART.She has appeared in: “Charlotte’s Web”, playing Charlotte, “Dracula” playing Miss Wells, “Christmas, 1933” as the Mother, “A Christmas Carol, as Marley, the ghostand most recently in “Animal Farm” as Clover, a Sheep, and Narrator.
