ANH VO

Anh Vo is a Vietnamese dancer, writer, teacher, and activist. They create dances and produce texts about pornography and queer relations, about being and form, about identity and abstraction, about history and its colonial reality. They earned their degrees in Performance Studies from Brown University (BA) and New York University (MA). Currently based in Brooklyn, Anh is also developing a continual presence in Hanoi, Vietnam.

@anhqvo

KASHIA KANCEY

Kashia Kancey is a Miami-born performer and choreographer, who earned her BFA degree in Dance from New World School of the Arts. She has been commissioned by Peter London Global Dance Company, and has had work presented in The Carnival Studio Theater at the Adrienne Arsht Center, Movement Research at Judson Church, Dixon Place and CreateART Performance. Kashia has performed in spaces like Perez Art Museum Miami, South-Miami Dade Cultural Arts Center, Dance Place DC, the American Dance Festival, The Yard, and New York Live Arts. She has danced with Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre, Adele Myers and Dancers, and Abby Z and the New Utility. Kashia is currently working with David Dorfman Dance and is now based in Brooklyn, NY, and continues to pursue her career as a performer and choreographer.

www.kashiakancey.com

@kashiakancey

MAXI HAWKEYE CANION

Maxi Hawkeye Canion (they/them) is an Improviser, Durational Performance/Movement Artist, and Director based in Brooklyn, NY. Originally from El Paso, TX, they are interested in crafting visually transporting work through collaborative solo productions. Community and collaboration are integral to their process and support world-building as they conjure dreamscapes materialized by sculptural garment designs, immersive sound planes, textural motions, and interactive installations. Through trance-induced improvisational sessions, they surrender to streams of unconscious thought and communicate with their dormant beasts. They are interested in presenting their processes' "bare bones" and invoking dialogue around identity, reality, and intimacy. Their work has been presented at MOtiVE Studios, M.A.D.E in the Garden, Boffo Performance Festival Fire Island, FUERZAfest, Center of Performance Research, Otion Front Studio, JACK, Triskelion Arts, CreateART, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, and The HAVEN Residency. As a performer, they have been in process with a versatile and eclectic caliber of artists. These artists include Welcome to the Campfire, Young Boy Dancing Group, TRIBE, Holly Blakely, Jacolby Satterwhite, Sidra Bell, Shikeith, Sigrid Lauren, Monica Mirabile, J. Bouey, Ryan Ponder McNamara, UNA Productions, slowdanger, Fernando Melo, and Emilio Rojas. They have performed at Performance Space NY, CreamCake Berlin//HAU2, Boffo Performance Festival, UNTER, The Watermill Center, The Kennedy Center, The Lincoln Center, Performa Biennial, Judson Memorial Church, BAM Fisher Theater, 92nd Y Theater, ODC Theater, and Anonymous Gallery. They have also been in productions for PUMA, TELFAR//Olympics, and CALVIN KLEIN.

@maxystarr

N’YOMI ALLURE STEWART

N’yomi Allure Stewart also known as “Omi” was the first trans actress to graduate from the prestigious North Carolina School of the Arts with a B.F.A. in Acting. Recently, she appeared in the Public’s 60th anniversary season of Shakespeare in the Park alongside Danai Gurira in Richard III directed by Tony nominated Robert O’Hara. Omi is also a sister to her community through dance. An active member in the NYC’s ballroom scene, she is a part of the Iconic House of Juicy Couture, named one of the best houses in Kiki Ballroom history and was the first Kiki house to win HBOMax’s Legendary (Season 3). It was the black queer community that led N’yomi to her mission as a working artist and public figure: to represent black trans womanhood in a way that illuminates the full scope of humanity within transition. A recent participant of the New York Theater Workshop (NYTW) Artists Residency program, she was given the space to continue developing her freshest work which will propel her further towards the goal as a creative: being the maximum version of herself creating intentional inclusive work that will have an innovative impact. She just closed the Off-Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun in NYC at the Public Theater starring Tony award winner Tonya Pinkins where she was the first trans woman to play the role of “Beneatha” in the timeless American theatre classic.

@nyomistewart

BROOKE RUCKER

Brooke Rucker (she/her) is a Georgia Peach and Brooklyn-based artist, specializing in dance, curation, and arts administration. She earned her BFA in Dance at Florida State University, has apprenticed with Urban Bush Women, and performed as a company member with Charles Anderson’s dance theatre X and Louis Gaspard’s Gaspard & Dancers. Brooke is the dance captain and a creative manager for Johnnie Cruise Mercer’s TheREDprojectNYC Movement Ensemble and the Development/Visioning Partner Associate at Urban Bush Women. She curated The [Jersey] Function as part of her Curatorial Fellowship in Dance with SMUSH Gallery in 2022 which promoted interdependence and sustainability for communities through the spotlighting of BIPOC artists and businesses. Brooke is a former member of Dance/NYC’s Junior Committee and was a featured artist for Black Dance Stories Youth Professional Experience.

@brookerucker

CAMILA ARROYO

Camila Arroyo is a Mexican choreographer, performer, and director. Her work has been shown in Triennale Milano, Museo Experimental el Eco, Museo de Arte Moderno, Museo Jumex, Center for Performance Research, MUAC UNAM, Vernacular Institute, Centro Cultural España; as well as in festivals such as Dance Camera West, In/Motion Dance Film Festival, Pool TanzFilm Festival, and the International Contemporary Dance Festival of the Biennale di Venezia.

Camila is interested in modes of creation which transform and deform the boundaries of dance and choreography, always seen from a Latin American feminist lens. Her practice is constantly asking, not only what can choreography be, but what can choreography do? Camila’s work seeks to expand notions of the choreographic by playing within the intersections of dance, film, performance, sculpture, critical theory, and other formats which she investigates as expanded fields of sensible, aesthetic, and political exploration. Always traversed by interdisciplinary collaboration and movement improvisation, Camila’s practice is committed to the choreopolitical potential of embodied experiments.

Camila’s film “Soldaderas”, earned her the Best New Director award at the Fashion Film Festival Milano. She has worked closely with The Mexican Cultural Institute of New York, and the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. Commercial credits as a dancer, choreographer, and movement director include Ela Minus, Billy Porter, Empress Of, Isaac Dunbar, Lola Kirke, OneRepublic, and Ximena Sariñana, among others. Film, editorial, and runway collaborations include Malin + Goetz, JNBY, and Sabrina Ol. Her work has been featured in Office Magazine, i-D Italy, La Tempestad, Elle México, Dance Magazine, Latina Magazine, DNA magazine, and Director’s Notes.

She holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, and an MA in performance studies from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she is currently a PhD candidate studying choreographic experiments in Mexico.

camila-arroyo.com

MEI-YIN NG

Born in the backwater port town of Klang, Malaysia, Mei-Yin Ng was poised from birth to create art using the human body and technology.

Since moving to NYC, Ng has studied primarily at the Merce Cunningham Studio, Trisha Brown Studio, and Movement Research. She has worked with the contemporary theatre group Remote Control Productions/ Michael Laub, touring in the 1996-97 production “Planet Lulu” in major festivals throughout Europe and Scandinavia. Dance Theatre Workshop presented her inaugural work “Graffito” (1997) at their Freshtracks series. Her full-evening performances were presented by the Joyce Soho (2000), Construction Company (2002, 2008), Tribeca Performance Arts Center (2007), PS122 (2001, 2004) and HERE (2014)

Focusing initially on modern movement as inner being, Ng’s work continues to evolve with the possibilities of contemporary technologies. Her extensive prop training in Chinese dance inspired her to meditate on the use of props, and later technology, as an extension of the human form. She founded MEI-BE WHATever in 2002 as a collective field for collaboration and experimentation of technology in just this vein. MEI-BE WHATever has performed at festivals, museums and theatres in US, Asia, Europe, North and South America.

Ng has received commissioned from the Merseyside Dance Initiative (Liverpool, UK), Corpi Urbani Festival ( Genoa, Italy), Cityactivators (NYC, US), Dance New Amsterdam (NYC, US) and American Music Center (NYC, US). Ng was a selected participant in the Multimedia Forum of the Monaco Dance Forum (2004), the 5th Pointe to Point Asia-Europe Dance Forum (2007), Pointe to Point follow up project (2009), an artist in residence of the Tribeca Performing Arts Center (NYC, 2007), Dance New Amsterdam (NYC, 2009), HERE Arts Center (NYC, 2012-14), LMCC process space (NYC, 2013), Rosas/PART summer space (Belgium 2012) and Bogliasco Study center (Italy, 2014). Ng dance film “ BOW” has won Jury Prize for Best Dance Film at the Dance for the Camera Festival 2012. She is a recipient of Arts Connection’s Janklow Award (2011) for excellent in teaching artistry, Malaysia National department of Cultural and Arts’s development grant (2013), Bogliasco Fellowship (2014), NYSCA Individual Artist Grant (2009), and two Fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts Choreography (2004) and Interdisciplinary work (2009).

www.meibewhatever.com

MARIE LLOYD PASPE

Marie Lloyd Paspe (she/her) is a Filipina-American dance and vocal performer, installation choreographer, movement director, educator, bruha culture bearer, and writer based in lenapehoking/Brooklyn, NY. Marie is a performer with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company since 2018, Bessie awarded for Outstanding Choreography for contributions to the BTJ/AZ production of "Deep Blue Sea", and is the 2022 Asian American Arts Alliance Jadin Wong Fellow.

Of Filipina descent of Batangas and Iloilo, Philippines, she was born in Singapore, grew up in Mississauga, Canada, migrated to Bellingham, MA in 2000, and received U.S. Citizenship in June 2019. She excavates Filipinx-American diasporic identity work within bakla queerist spaces of memory, fascia, and time, igniting kapwa (community) in collaborative processes and productions. Her work to re-root the small, brown body through performance exists within–yet juxtaposes–the eurocentric, the patrionormative, and the white-dominated space.

Marie’s choreography and performance has been presented internationally in Germany, Israel, the Philippines, and China; and nationally in NYC, North Adams, MA, LA, Philly, Jersey City, and Minneapolis, among others. She has been artist-in-residence at TOPAZ Arts, a co-conspirator of treya lam’s residency at MASS MoCA as movement director, a Queens Council of the Arts grantee, and a recipient of the Creatives Rebuild New York grant as a performing artist and culture bearer.

Marie loves to cook and feed others and can be heard first before seen usually by her loud cackle.

www.marielloydpaspe.com

@mmmlloyd

CARA HAGAN

Cara Hagan is a mover, maker, writer, curator, champion of just communities, and a dreamer. She believes in the power of art to upend the laws of time and physics, a necessary occurrence in pursuit of liberation. In her work, no object or outcome is sacred; but the ritual to get there is. Hagan’s adventures take place as live performance, on screen, as installation, on the page, and in collaboration with others in a multitude of contexts.

In recent years, Hagan and her work have traveled to such gatherings as the Performática Festival in Cholula, Mexico, the Conference on Geopoetics in Edinburgh, Scotland, the Loikka Dance Film Festival in Helsinki, Finland, the Taos Poetry Festival in Taos, New Mexico, and to the Dance on Camera Festival in New York City. Extended residencies have taken place at Thirak India in Jaipur, India, Playa Summer Lake in the dynamic outback of Oregon, Roehampton University in London, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the University of North Carolina, School of the Arts.

Cara is grateful to have received financial support from various organizations and institutions to continue her work. Recent support has included the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron where she was named the inaugural Community Commissioning Residency Artist for the 2020/2021 season. Past support has come from the Dance Films Association, the Filmed in NC Fund, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Forsyth County Arts Council, the Appalachian State University Research Council, the Watauga County Arts Council, and Betty’s Daughter Arts.

Since becoming a parent and navigating a global pandemic, Hagan’s work takes place a bit closer to home these days. She is working on a new book titled, Ritual Activism. She had the pleasure of being one of the first artists to be in residence since the pandemic at Elsewhere Museum in Greensboro, NC in June and July of 2021 where her interdisciplinary project, Essential Parts: A Guide to Moving through Crisis and Unbridled Joy is installed until 2022.

Hagan is editor and contributor to the anthology Practicing Yoga as Resistance: Voices of Color in Search of Freedom, published in 2021 by Routledge. Hagan is author of the book Screendance from Film to Festival: Celebration and Curatorial practice, published in 2022 by McFarland. Cara Joined the faculty of The New School in 2022 and works as Associate Professor and Program Director for the MFA in Contemporary Theatre Performance.

@carahagan_art

SARAH BETH OPPENHEIM

I come from: 38 dance studios, 4 particular kitchens, and 2 synagogues from the Wild Wild West, skyscrapered NYC, trampoline sidewalks of Berlin, and begrudgingly beautiful sunsets over the Potomac. I like to use scraps, abandoned tools, and painters tape to cut and paste curious inquisitions into everything from pelvis-motored site-specific choreography to burritos. I believe in deepest plie to bend traditions, antiracist pedagogy to bend academia, and dance as an everything salve. As a teaching artist mom, I mine, swap, and alchemically mix choreographic research, antiracist pedagogy, and arts & crafts between stage, studio, classroom, and nursery.

Educational letters include BFA SUNY Purchase and MFA University of Maryland. Work/love finds me teaching/making/womanifesting as a Teaching Artist at Dance Place, Professorial Lecturer at American University, Education Coordinator at BlackLight Summit, and Artistic Director of Heart Stück Bernie.

My career highlights run the gamut from dancing in forsaken storage closets, to a Criterion film set, to performing for Baryshinikov with kale in my incisors, along with gigs at Tacheles, Dance Omi, Ponderosa Ongoing Research and Collaborative Happenings, The Kennedy Center, The Duke on 42nd St., Marfa, TX, on top of the Chelsea Hotel, Dance Place, American Dance Institute, the Hawaiian Room at the U.S. Botanic Garden, the Rothko Room at National Gallery of Art, The Grand Canyon, City Museum, Rhizome, and secret performances in Lincoln Center’s Koch Theater when I was done cleaning up at the end of the night.

My performance career spans work with renowned choreographers to emerging artists, including: Donald McKayle, Doug Varone, Ohad Naharin, Paul Taylor, Nicholas Leichter, Kevin Wynn, Mark Morris, Clint Lutes, alex/xan: the median movement, Janessa Clark/KILTERBOX, and Nora Petroliunas. I was a founding member and danced for ten years in Nelly van Bommel’s nøa dance in New York City.

My company Heart Stück Bernie makes site-specific and proscenium extravaganza works in museums, theaters, stairwells, back rooms, and other places I convince you to engage with dance.

As an inaugural Artist in Residence at Dance Place from 2018-2020, I programmed and facilitated community events for students and choreographers, created new works exploring hyper magical realism, politics, and systemic deconstruction experiments, and I established a research practice of land, music, and movement acknowledgements.

sarahbethoppenheim.com

X Sennyuen

(they/themme, fae/faer, ze/hir) is a TRANSdisciplinary artist who offers a conceptual and post-technique approach to movement-based performance. Their work, though often abstracted, pulls from their lived experiences. x's affinity towards working primarily with movement stems from their newfound awareness that they perform in order to process their emotions; a performative processing. x has shared short films, installations, and dance works in Budapest, HU; Detroit, MI; Ithaca, NY; and NYC (including Dixon Place, Judson Church, Satellite Art Club, Honey’s Bar, and Starr Bar). Selected accomplishments include: City Artist Corps grant (2021), LiftOff Residency at New Dance Alliance (2021); Fellowship with The Performance Project @ University Settlement (2021-2022); Disability. Dance. Artistry. Dance. Residency Program (Dance/NYC, Gibney, 2021-2022), Disability. Dance. Artistry. Dance and Social Justice Fellowship Program (Dance/NYC, 2020), Black Sound Artist Grant from Voice of the Valley (2020); Needing It Residency with BAX (Brooklyn Arts Exchange, 2019). Currently, x is a Guest Choreographer with the Student Company and an Assistant Teaching Artist in the School at Mark Morris Dance Center. They are also a performer and Associate Director (Untitled Girl Narrative) with Katharine Pettit Creative (KPC). x is excited to share that among their collaborative projects, they are a co-creator and performer in Territory: The Island Remembers, an upcoming ensemble performance and installation led by zavé martohardjono (Gibney, April 2022).

@tittyglow

Vincent Chong

(莊志明) is a Queer mixed-race Chinese-American artist and educator working in Chinese calligraphy, seal carving, painting, drawing, and performance. They have been described by frequent collaborator Wo Chan as a multidisciplinary prop queen. Vincent’s practice is a restorative act to recenter QTAPI folx in art and cultivate community centered creativity. They paint portraits of members of the QTAPI community and organize QTBIPOC centered workshops. Vincent is a student of calligrapher Wu Wen-Sheng (吳文勝). They have shown work at Bodeguita 718, The Museum of Chinese in America, Site Brooklyn, and PAAM. In May 2022 Vincent will have their first solo show at Skånes Konstförening Gallery in Malmö, Sweden curated by Grace Chang. Residencies include the WOW Project Storefront Residency and Book Artist Residency at The Center for Book Arts and Fire Island Artist Residency. Performances include MoMA PS1, Abrons Art Center, Movement Research at Judson Church, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Center for Book Arts.

@crystalmonkeycalligraphy

Kimiko Tanabe

Is a Japanese-American artist hosted on Lenape land currently known as Brooklyn, NY. She explores the mediums of performance art, dance, writing, origami and paper, and is in a committed partnership with her .38 Muji pen. She was a competitive gymnast for ten years, making art on the side, until finding herself in the contemporary dance field and transitioning art to the center. She is forever fascinated with Japanese folklore and as a lover of literature she finds herself making important life decisions under the eyes and influence of fiction. For Kimiko, art is intimate and inexact.

www.kimikotanabe.com

Belinda Adam

Born in Indonesia of Chinese/Indonesian descent and now based in NYC, Belinda Adam (she/they) is a queer immigrant performing artist, energy worker, and erotic healer. As a multidisciplinary artist, their work draws from a queer immigrant woman perspective aiming to manifest the unconditioned truths in bodies towards collective healing and liberation. They are a 2020 Artist of Exceptional Merit from The Asian American Arts Alliance and 2017 BAC Grant Recipient. Upon moving to NYC in 2015, Adam worked with BitterSuite UK at BAM and Designated Movement Company, featured in NYTimes. They have appeared in commercials of VICE-iD, THINX, MILK Makeup, Refinery29 and performed for Women’s March and TEDx. Adam was also a dance artist of a femme identifying contemporary dance theater company, MICHIYAYA DANCE. In the span of their career as a multidimensional performing artist, choreographer and director, they have taught, performed, and showcased their work at venues and institutions like Yale University, Brooklyn Museum, Andy Warhol Museum, The Theater at 14th St Y, NYU Jack Crystal Theater, Baruch Performing Arts Center and Gibney Dance Center among others. Adam is currently researching and teaching radical pleasure embodiment workshops, where they intersect movement, breathwork, storytelling, kink, magic, and tantric principles as a healing practice and offering.

@adambelinda

Asia Stewart

Is a Brooklyn-based performance artist whose conceptual work centers the body as a living archive. After receiving degrees in the social sciences from Cambridge and Harvard University, she has sought ways to embody abstract sociological theories and transform the language specific to studies of race, gender, sexuality, and diaspora into materials that can be felt and worn on the body. As a National YoungArts Winner in Musical Theatre and a former National Arts Policy Roundtable Fellow with Americans for the Arts, Stewart uses her past experiences on stage to inject her work with a heightened sense of theatricality. In 2020, Stewart concluded her first independent performance series, Graft, which attempts to capture the violence that constructions of whiteness and femininity wrought on Black bodies. Works from that series have been showcased at NYC venues such as the Mercury Store, Untitled Space, and NARS Foundation; and will be presented in group shows at A.I.R. Gallery, Parsons’ Kellen Gallery, and Goodyear Arts in early 2022. Stewart began a new performance series on intergenerational trauma and sexual violence this fall as an artist-in-residence at the NARS Foundation. Other residencies include Chateau Orquevaux (upcoming, 2022) and Marble House Project (upcoming, 2022).

@asiastewart

Hisyam Qumhiyeh

"Hisyam Qumhiyeh (She/They) is a Palestinian-Malaysian trans-femme artist currently based in New York City. A majority of their upbringing was spent in Kuwait, with little access to any activities outside of education. Her introduction to the artistic world came through the internet, where they spent countless hours watching concert dance performances, street cyphers, and voguing clips from the ballroom scene.

Hisyam’s industry career began in 2018, after booking an open call in NYC for the FX Show “Pose.” They ended up signing with Bloc Talent Agency as a commercial dancer and trained rigorously in a variety of dance styles, specifically contemporary, jazz, modern dance & house. Since then, they have worked on multiple campaigns with Coach, Samsung, Target, Amazon Audible, Facebook, as well as being featured in the “Physical” dance visual for Dua Lipa. They have also been featured as an upcoming artist with Paper Magazine, Schön Magazine and the 2020 NYC Pride Guide Editorial. 

As a movement artist, Hisyam has had the opportunity to workshop with Dance Lab NY for the musicals “A Walk On The Moon” & “Bliss”, under Broadway Choreographer Josh Prince. She has also assisted in providing choreography for The Brooklynettes, as well as choreographing music videos for local NYC artists Pompom Squad & Danny Blu"

@hisyam_tq

Symara Johnson

Symara Johnson, a Portland Oregon native, currently residing in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, has immersed herself in interdisciplinary and choreographic studies globally. Her work varies due to the different influences she’s embraced throughout her life. She is a recipient of the Dai Ailian Foundation Scholarship based in Trinidad and Tobago. The scholarship led her to Beijing, China where she spent two years gaining an associate in modern choreography at the renowned Beijing Dance Academy. Symara is a graduate of SUNY Purchase’s Conservatory of Dance program. She was a resident artist for Bearnstow, Gibney 6.2 Work Up, and currently is a CPR 2022 AIR. She has had film works commissioned by Berlin based choreographer, Christoph Winkler. Johnson has presented work at the Bates Dance Festival, Smush Gallery, The Craft, BAAD, CreateArtXGallim, WIM Salon, Mount Vernon Community Theatre, ACMA, The Forum Art Space, Moving Art Exchange, Chez Bushwhick, The Beijing Dance Academy Theatre and venues throughout NYC and Germany. She has danced works most notably by & for Kevin Wynn, Alexandra Beller, Rena butler, Jasmine Hearn, Hannah Garner, Nattie Trogdon+Hollis Bartlett, Slowdanger, Marion Spencer, Joanna Kotze, Netta Yerushalmy and more.

@symarasaraij

MORGAN AMIRAH BURNS

Morgan Amirah Burns is a performer and filmmaker. At just 21 years old, she received her BFA in dance from New York University Tisch School of the Arts Department of Dance. To date, Morgan has created several hybrid works for stage and film within her body of creation Pit222Palace. Morgan currently resides in Brooklyn, NYC and has a personal vision of imploring the use of movement to explore reciprocity as a means of feeding the earth and soul. There are no limits to her creative pursuits as she is eager to better her worlds within and without.

NIA CALLOWAY

Nia Calloway is a multi-disciplinary artist and astrologer who traverses the worlds of theatre, poetry, music, dance, and the healing arts. Through the combination of written word, sound experimentation, and explorative movement, she aims to create spaces of healing and introspection for her audience. Driven by the desire to relate the natural world, supernatural phenomena, the cosmos, and time to our bodies, Nia’s art serves to heal and reorient our collective stories around female bodies, BIPOC bodies, and especially Black femme bodies.

Along with acting in off-broadway theatre, (Behind the Sheet (Betty) with Ensemble Studio Theatre & How To Save The World In Ninety Minutes (Aaliyah) with Cherry Lane Theatre), Nia has performed her original poetry and music regularly at Symphonics Live (NYC) and has featured her work at Bowery Poetry Club, Berlin Spoken Word, Genre Urban Arts, ECHT, & The Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe (NYC). In the fall of 2019, she studied at ROAR Berlin, exploring radical journeys in body, dance, and performance. In January 2020, she performed her original one-woman show entitled HOMEBODY: A Ritual Party, as an artist in residence at Judson Memorial Church, part of Judson Arts Wednesdays centering around ancestral healing, the body, and mental health. In early 2021, Nia founded BodySpell Collective, an emerging resource and community that serves to empower QBIPOC individuals to release body shame, and reorient their relationship to their bodies by way of movement, magic, and community. On behalf of BodySpell Collective, Nia is thrilled and honored to be an artist in residence at GALLIM’s Moving Women Residency.

JADE CHARON

Jade Charon is an interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, filmmaker, and international dance educator, hailing from Milwaukee, Wisconsin living in Brooklyn. Charon received an MFA in Dance from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a BA in Dance and Theater from Columbia College Chicago. Charon was awarded the 2020 Hicks Choreographer Fellowship from the School of Jacob's Pillow where she received mentorship from Dianne McIntyre and Risa Steinberg.In 2018, Charon was selected as the Chuck Davis Emerging Choreographer Fellow from BAM(Brooklyn Academy of Music) . She is an Assistant Professor of Dance and Technology at Medgar Evers College. As a filmmaker, her films have been accepted in festivals and conferences such as: Montreal Independent Film Festival, Mke Film Festival, Toronto International Women’s Film Festival, American Dance Festival Movie By Movers, and The Outland Dance Project Dance Film Festival. She awarded the jury select Cream City Award from Mke film festival and the semi-finalist for Best Experimental Film for Montreal Independent Film Festival.

JESSICA CHEN

Jessica Chen is choreographer and Artistic Director of J CHEN PROJECT, a 501c3 non-profit modern dance company based in NYC. She holds a B.A. in Global Studies from the University of California Santa Barbara and continued her dance training at The Ailey School.

In 2013, she made a miraculous journey back to the stage after suffering a horrific car accident, which rendered her in a coma for 13 days after eight hours of brain surgery. Movement is her vehicle to tell stories, heal wounds, and better understand our human existence.

JCP returns to the stage in 2021 with a season at Arts on Site to amplify AAPI choreographers, performance dates: August 20, 21, 27, 28. Stay tuned for announcements: http://www.jchenproject.com/

Upcoming projects: Jessica will be featured in a commission by Andrea Miller of GALLIM as part of Lincoln Center’s Restart Stages, a sound, sculpture and performance installation You Are Here. She has also been commissioned by the Museum of Chinese in America to create a dance work for their reopening exhibition “Responses: Asian American Voices of Resistance During the Pandemic.”

Past work: Her work has been supported by LMCC, DanceNYC, Taiwan Ministry of Culture, Gibney Dance Center, and Jerome Foundation. Jessica’s professional theater credits include choreographing INTERSTATE, a musical about inclusivity and trans community, Fiddler on the Roof at Timberlake Playhouse, The Portal at Minetta Lane Theater (Off-Broadway). Other choreography credits include Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, TEDx Semester at Sea, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, World Expo - USA Pavilion in Shanghai, China, and International Human Rights Arts Festival.

Jessica is a proud member of SDC.

LINDY FINES

Lindy Fines is the choreographer and artistic director of NYC-based, GREYZONE, a multimedia dance project that she co-founded with creative director Justin Fines. Melding deconstructed ballet and modern dance vocabularies, visual arts, and time-based media, GREYZONE’s works for film and stage uncover non-narrative theatricality and highlight the ritual of performance.

GREYZONE was awarded 2020 Project Support from the Harkness Foundation for Dance and a 2020/2021 Project Grant from New Music USA. In 2019 Lindy was a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Choreography from The New York Foundation for the Arts. GREYZONE was also supported by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant in 2016 and again in 2020 through their COVID-19 Fund.

GREYZONE collaborations include ASSEMBLY with composer Sivan Jacobovitz (premiering in 2021), dance film PENUMBRA with fashion designer House of 950 and composer Steve Hauschildt, DRIFT with visual artist Maia Ruth Lee (Performance Mix Festival at Abrons Arts Center), dance film QUEENS DUETS with sound/film by Justin Fines, and VEHICLE with illustrator Mike Perry. GREYZONE has been awarded residencies at The Croft (MI), Socrates Sculpture Park, and New Dance Alliance, and has performed in NYC at City Center Studios (APAP), Movement Research at the Judson Church, and Brooklyn Ballet’s First Look.

GREYZONE’s short films have screened at festivals nationally and internationally, including at the 92nd Street Y (NYC) and the Nevada Museum of Art. Lindy graduated with a BFA in Dance from the University of Oklahoma, after which she moved to NYC and trained on scholarship at the Merce Cunningham Dance Studio.

HANNAH GARNER

Hannah Garner was recently named ‘25 to Watch’ by Dance Magazine (2020), is a NYC based dancer/choreographer. She graduated summa cum laude from SUNY Purchase with a BFA in Performance and Composition and a minor in Arts Management. Since then, Hannah has worked with Doug Varone, Raja Feather Kelly, Sue Bernhard, and Megan Williams, at The Joyce Theater, New York City Center, Park Avenue Armory, and New York Live Arts. Her work as 2nd Best Dance Company “tackles topics like death and queer identity through rigorous, inventive movement and wit” (Dance Magazine). Through her work she seeks beauty in failure, explores limits of the body, and finds solace in the humor of being human. 2nd Best has been commissioned by GroundWorks DanceTheater (2021, OH), SMUSH Gallery (2021, NJ), Gibney’s dance-mobile series (2019), Kizuna Dance (2019), GALLIM x CreateArt (2018), A-Y/Dancers (2018), Frankie Cosmos (2017), Half Waif (2018, 2020) and SUNY Purchase (2018) where she was also taught (2016-2019). 2nd Best was Resident Artist of Triskelion Arts (2019) in addition to hosting a weekly technique class (2019-2020). Hannah's choreography has been presented at Brooklyn Bridge Park, The Wild Project, The Ace Hotel, Mark Morris Dance Center, Dixon Place, New York International Fringe Festival, The Wassaic Project, among others. Hannah is a new faculty member at Gibney and currently teaches NYC, Connecticut, and on Zoom. 2nd Best works in person in NYC and lives online at 2ndbestdance.com.

ANNA GICHAN

Born deaf, raised hearing Anna Gichan is a dancer addicted to handstands with a BFA from Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts and a year of studying at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. She moved to NYC working as a freelancer performing in conventional and unconventional spaces- The Foundry (2021), You + Me Gallery (2021), Cooper Hewitt Museum(2019), Roulette Theater(2019), Loews Jersey Theater(2019), Yi Gallery(2018) Judson Memorial Church (2018), etc while exploring the dichotomy of two sensory realtities- sound and silence. She completed two yoga trainings, fell in love, picked up rock climbing and motorcycle riding and created and co-created City, Baby, Clear, Words to Someone Else, Visual Poem, #FreeBelarus.

Amidst this swirl of activity Anna was introduced to the Disability Arts scene in NYC through an internship at Gibney Dance (2019), awarded the BAX disabled artists space grant (2019 + 2020) and encouraged to share her lip drawings mimicking the experience of lip reading which she showed at Flux Factory (2019), SMUSH Gallery (2020) and Pinky Thinker Press (2021).

In March of 2020, when quarantine started, she received news that her hearing in her left ear plummeted and she would need to replace her 12 year old aids with new ears. Adjusting to the new aids while living in a masked world (preventing the ability to lip read) and losing dance jobs highlighted the invisibility of Anna’s disability plus exacerbated the severity of her relationship with depression. These experiences have further strengthened Anna’s mission of sharing the lowercase d deaf experience in a hearing world to help ensure another child like her does not suffer the sense of isolation that Anna experienced.

ELLIE KUSNER

Ellie Kusner is a teacher, writer, and advocate for dancer health and wellbeing. She is on the faculty of The Juilliard School and teaches dance and pilates independently throughout NYC, including at the Mark Morris Wellness Center. Ellie holds a BA in Dance from Barnard College and an MSc in Dance Science from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London, UK. Ellie is the chair of the IADMS Dance Educators’ Committee and is the co-host of DanceWell Podcast, a resource dedicated to exploring 360 degrees of health and wellness for dancers. She frequently contributes articles to Dance, Dance Teacher and Pointe Magazines.

www.elliekusner.com
www.dancewellpodcast.com

KAT MUSTATEA

Kat Mustatea is a playwright and technologist whose tech-native storytelling stretches theater into the digital age. She has written plays of transformation and hybridity in which people turn into lizards, a woman has a sexual relationship with a swan, and a one-eyed cyclops tries to fit into Manhattan society by getting a second eye surgically implanted in his head. Her TED talk examines AI systems as a form of puppetry, and she speaks and writes frequently about the intersection of cutting edge technology and art. Her most recent language-based digital performance, VOIDOPOLIS, won the 2020 Arts and Letters “Unclassifiable” Prize for Literature, was a finalist for the Chautauqua Janus Prize, and received a literary grant from the Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation. It is an official selection at the New Images Festival Paris, and was exhibited internationally (2020 Ars Electronica + The Grid: Exposure Festival, ELO-Electronic Literature Organization, Norway, etc).

HEIDI BOISVERT (PHD)

Heidi Boisvert is an interdisciplinary artist, experience designer, creative technologist, and academic researcher who interrogates the neurobiological and socio-cultural effects of media and technology. Simply put, she studies the role of the body, the senses, and emotion in human perception and social change. Boisvert is currently mapping the world's first media genome, while taking great care with its far-reaching ethical implications. She founded futurePerfect lab, a creative agency and think-tank that works with social justice organizations to design playful emerging media campaigns to transform the public imagination. She also co-founded XTH, a company creating novel modes of expression through biotechnology and the human body. Presently, she is working with David Byrne on Theater of the Mind, a new immersive theater piece. Boisvert is the Director of Emerging Media Technology at CUNY, where she teaches advanced classes in game design, virtual and augmented reality. She is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Norman Lear Center, a research affiliate in the Open Documentary Lab at MIT and a member of NEW INC’s Creative Science track.

NICOLE PEARCE

Nicole Pearce is a multidisciplinary artist living in Queens, NY who expresses herself by painting with light and pigment. Her professional experiences over the past twenty years often described as “magical,” “striking,” and “an aesthetic pleasure,” have been seen across the United States, Germany, Italy, England, Russia, Cuba, Japan, Korea, and New Zealand. The New York Times has stated: “The glow of Nicole Pearce’s lighting on center stage creates a feeling of magic, as if the dancers are circling an unseen grail”. Her work during the 2019-2020 & 2020-2021 seasons included: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Arena Stage, Atlanta Ballet, Aszure and Artists, Brian Brooks Moving Company, Dance Heginbotham, Dance Theater of Harlem, Hartford Stage, Hubbard Street Dance, The Juilliard School, Minnesota Opera, Pittsburgh Public Theater, and Poznan Ballet in Poland. She uses the medium of light to paint intuitive responses to stories, themes, music, and objects. By approaching each work as a site-specific installation, Nicole draws from her interests of single sourced light that pushes the boundaries of space and time, color that contextualizes disparate elements into a cohesive narrative, and beams of white light that slice through color to direct focus. When the pandemic hit, she became quiet and looked inward through meditation and journaling to reinvent herself. These actions, coupled with volunteering weekly with food banks throughout the Queens community, have caused her to focus on projects that improve her local community. Today she has tasked herself with using her art to center healing and hope. This journey has begun with Tiny Paintings for Big Hearts.

ANNIE RIGNEY

Annie Rigney is a New York based dancer, choreographer, Gaga teacher, and Ilan lev therapist. She graduated suma cum laude from the Dance Conservatory at SUNY Purchase. Annie has danced with the Batsheva Ensemble, performing works by Ohad Naharin and Sharon Eyal. She danced with Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak Dance Company for 2 seasons, touring in Israel and internationally with their works Oyster, Rushes, and Bombyx Mori. She has freelanced with LeeSaar the Company, Zoe Schofield, and Gallim Dance. In 2015, Annie joined the cast of Sleep No More, Punchdrunk's acclaimed immersive theater show in NYC, and performed with the company until early 2019.

Annie is a certified Gaga teacher and teaches regularly in New York City at Gibney Dance Center, Mark Morris Dance Center, University of the Arts and SUNY Purchase and most recently on Zoom! Her work was recently featured as a part of the 92nd Street Y's, Future Dance Festival. and has been performed at UArts School of Dance, Batsheva Studios in Tel Aviv as part of Bathseva Ensemble Creates, at Arts on Site, at Greenspace DanceNow(NYC), in the Dance Theater Lab at SUNY Purchase, Manhattan Movement and Arts Center, the Berkeley Repertory Theater, and Reverb Dance Festival. Annie played a supporting role in Boaz Yakin's film Aviva, choreographed by Bobbi Jene Smith. 

She has been a practicing Ilan Lev Therapist since 2011 and operates a private practice in the Ilan Lev Method, treating dancers and other artists for injury and functional limitations. 

Her choreographic interest and movement research lies in the intersection between extreme physicality and healing; In the conflict between the need for art to challenge and destroy and the simultaneous healing and uniting power of movement. With this in mind, she’s been developing her own movement language for dancers that aims to teach dancers to unlock their physical potential while giving them tools for efficiency of effort and self-treatment for injury. 

JOY-MARIE THOMPSON

Joy-Marie Thompson is a dancer, choreographer, and certified ANIMAL FLOW© instructor from Osage Land-otherwise known as Pittsburgh, PA area. After receiving her BFA from SUNY Purchase’s Conservatory of Dance in 2018, she professionally performed work by Shamel Pitts, STAYCEE PEARL dance project & Soy Sos, Thuy Wykcoff, and Sidra Bell. Before COVID-19, she was a resident at The McKittrick Hotel in Sleep No More (NYC) performing choreography by Maxine Doyle. In 2017, she collaborated with dance photographer, Rachel Neville, for the project Interpretations. In 2018, she founded the popular Instagram account “issadancelook”. As a choreographer and collaborator, she has presented work at: August Wilson Center, American Dance Guild, the Women in Dance Conference, Festival PRISMA, Derida Stage, PearlArts Studios, and many film festivals including Dance Film Association’s #mydancefilm at Lincoln Center. She is currently based in New York where she is seeking her master's in Dance Movement Therapy at Sarah Lawrence College.

MAYA SIMONE Z.

Maya Simone Z. is a NYC-based interdisciplinary artist, dancer, choreographer, art administrator and educator from the South. Their work centers queer, Black diasporic emotional and spiritual connections as told by our ancestral lineages, physical and energetic bodies, and dreams of this and other worlds. Studies in anthropology, film and dance inform their approach to creating work by unearthing how brain-body-spirit connections influence the lives of Black and queer people of color.

Maya Simone has most recently danced with Sydnie L. Mosley Dances as a member of the collective since 2019. They have collaborated and performed in dance projects and experimental theater works presented at Queensboro Dance Festival, Corkscrew Theater Festival, and Theater Mitu. They have presented solo work at Green Space’s Fertile Ground Showcase. They are a Hambidge Fellow after completing a residency there in spring 2021.

They also work as an organizer with PURPOSE Productions, serve on the Dance/NYC Junior Committee and are an art administrator for artists including André Zachary of Renegade Performance Group as Company Administrator. They are earning yoga certification and are also an experienced barre fitness instructor.

In these and all things, Maya engages art-making holistically, with pleasure and purpose. They are a constant dreamer. Follow their journey at mayasimonez.com