Aaron Mattocks is a Pennsylvania-born Sarah Lawrence College alumnus and two-time New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Award nominee for Outstanding Performer (2013, 2016). He is currently the Director of Programming at The Joyce Theater. Prior to his work at The Joyce, he was the executive director for Big Dance Theater, producing director for Pam Tanowitz Dance, company and general manager for the Mark Morris Dance Group (2002-2010) and producer for Faye Driscoll, Beth Gill, and Steven Reker. His work as a performer with Annie-B Parson in live performance, film and music from 2009 – 2017 included projects with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Wendy Whelan, Jonathan Demme, David Byrne, David Lang, and the Martha Graham Dance Company, among others. He toured extensively with Big Dance Theater and Phantom Limb Company, and created roles in premieres by Ursula Eagly, Doug Elkins, David Gordon, John Heginbotham, Jodi Melnick, Stephen Petronio, Steven Reker, Kathy Westwater, and Christopher Williams. He has appeared as a guest artist with Yoshiko Chuma, Faye Driscoll, John Kelly, Dean Moss, David Parker, Karen Sherman, and in the Bessie Award winning immersive production Then She Fell. He was a commissioned 2013-2014 Context Notes Writer for New York Live Arts, a guest editor for Movement Research’s Critical Correspondence, and has contributed arts writing to The Performance Club, Culturebot, Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Hartford Stage, and BAM.

Photo credit: James Clark

www.joyce.org

Adham Hafez is a choreographer, curator, theorist, and artist. His work encompasses postcolonial studies, the Anthropocene and performance, politics of choreography, Arab art history, knowledge production, and climate change. As an artist and a theorist his work has been presented internationally at world renowned venues including Hebbel Am Ufer, Cairo Opera House, MoMA PS1, Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Damascus Opera House, La Mama Theatre, among others. He publishes essays and texts in Arabic, English and French, and he is the founder of HaRaKa Platform, based out of New York, Berlin and Cairo, and dedicated to Middle East performance, media and dance. He is also the founder of Wizara, a new ecosystem built by artists for artists on the blockchain, enabling artists to experiment with digital tools in a Web3.0 world. Adham Hafez has received multiple awards for his work, including First Prize for Choreography, and Cultural Entrepreneur of the Year. He is a graduate of New York University, SciencePo Paris, Amsterdam University of the Arts, and Cairo Opera House.

Digital portrait by Stefano Fioravanti

www.adhamhafez.co

Adia Tamar Whitaker, Artistic Director of the 21-year old Brooklyn based dance theater ensemble Àṣẹ Dance Theatre Collective, has performed contemporary dance, vernacular movement, Afro-Haitian, and Haitian dance in the U.S. and abroad for 21 years. Whitaker received an MFA in Dance from Hollins University, a BA in Dance from San Francisco State University, and completed the U.S. Independent Studies Program at The Ailey School. She was also an Urban Bush Women Apprentice, a Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography @ FSU Creative Entry Point Choreographic Fellow, a Jerome Foundation grantee, and an Isadora Duncan Award recipient. In 2019, Whitaker received the highly competitive NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship Award in Choreography, and completed her first residency at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Also that year, her third evening length work Have K(NO!)w Fear; A Bluessical premiered at ODC Dance Theater in San Francisco. In 2021, Whitaker co-curated Dance Mission’s D.I.R.T (Dance In Revolting Times) virtual Dance Festival in San Francisco. Her choreography was featured in the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s first Dance Africa virtual main stage. Last year, Adia completed a second Office Hours residency at The Reach at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, became a Wallace Gerbode Foundation Special Awards in the Arts Grant recipient, and a curatorial artist for Albany Symphony Orchestra's Convergence Project.

Photo credit: Adia Tamar Whitaker

asedance.com

Alejandra Duque Cifuentes (she/her) is a nonprofit leader and advocate working to advance a more just, equitable, and inclusive arts and cultural ecology by developing measures that arts workers, businesses, and organizations can thrive. Her work is of particular significance to individual arts workers who have been historically under supported, including BIPOC, immigrant disabled, and low-income artists as well as small-budget art making organizations. She brings 15+ years of experience and expertise in strategy, general management, fund development, community organizing, arts education, professional development, and artistic production. Her professional and educational background encompasses business, creative, and civic realms, including a BA from Columbia University School of General Studies in theater directing and an early career as a theater artist, stage manager, and arts educator. She moves with ease and intelligence across sectors, issues, and among diverse stakeholders, from managing internal staff and teams to engaging community and philanthropic partners, artist constituencies, donors, and the general public. She is known for her ability to get results and draws on her deep community relationships to drive accountable collaborations based on trust and data. Through her work on cultural policy, Alejandra has earned appointments to Mayor-Elect Eric Adams’ Transition Committee on Parks, Arts & Culture and A Better Contract for New York’s Joint Task Force. As a result of her leadership during COVID-19 pandemic, she was named 2021 Crain New York's Business Notable in Nonprofits & Philanthropy. She sits on the boards of Nonprofit New York and New Yorkers for Culture and Arts, and is a member of the leadership council of Creatives Rebuild New York. 

In December of 2022, Alejandra transitioned out of her role of Executive Director at Dance/NYC setting in its place a significant structural shift for the organization aimed at creating a more democratic leadership structure for the organization’s future. As a summation of her work and commitment to the sector, she established ADC Consulting, a boutique arts consultancy firm, in order to equip mission-driven organizations to create long-term cultural impact through fundraising, grant making, advocacy, research and organizational change. After being a proud Queens resident for 17 years, she has set new roots in the pacific northwest in the greater Seattle area of Washington state. She identifies as a white, immigrant, latina woman, who believes healthy communities need a strong arts and culture sector and is committed to anti-racist practices that ensure artists can thrive in the United States.

Photo by Jennyroso Photography

www.consultingadc.com

Alexandra choreographed “Sense and Sensibility” (Sheen Center, Judson Gym, Folger Shakespeare Library, American Repertory Theatre, Portland Center Stage), (Helen Hayes Award, Lortel Nomination, IRNE Best Choreography), the Off Broadway musical, “The Mad Ones” (59E59), Bedlam’s “Peter Pan” (Duke Theatre), “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival), “As You Like It” (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Folger Shakespeare Library), “How to transcend a happy marriage” by Sarah Ruhl (Lincoln Center Theatre), and others. Upcoming: “Antonio’s Song” (CATF, Milwaukee Rep), “Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes)” (La MaMa/touring), and Directing “Make Thick My Blood,” a two-person adaptation of Macbeth opening Off-Broadway February 2022.

Her international performance career includes 7 years with the Bill. T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, projects with Martha Clarke, John Turturro, and others. Alexandra Beller/Dances formed in 2001 and she has created over 40 original Dance Theatre works, for her own and other companies. Her choreography has been presented at theatres throughout the US and in Korea, Hong Kong, Oslo, Cyprus, St. Petersburg, and Poland.

Alexandra holds a BFA/Dance, MFA/Dance and CMA (Certified Movement Analyst) in Laban Movement Analysis/Bartenieff Fundamentals. She is on faculty at Princeton University, Rutgers University, and The Laban/Bartenieff Institute for Movement Studies, and guest teaches nationally and internationally.

Photo credit: The GingerB3ardmen

http://www.alexandrabellerdances.org/

Alexandria Wailes (she/her) is an actor, director, dancer, choreographer, advisor, and director of artistic sign language. She has worked on stage, in front of the camera and behind the scenes on numerous Broadway, off Broadway and regional theatres, television and film. She is a co-founder of BHo5.org and a member of the Forest of Arden company.

Ms. Wailes has spent many years advocating for Deaf and disability rights within the performing arts. She currently serves on the Dance/NYC disability task force as well as on the board of The National Theatre of the Deaf.

She received the 2020 Obie Award for Sustained Excellence as an Artist & Advocate; a 2020 Lucille Lortel nomination for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play for For Colored Girls…; a Tony Honoree for Ensemble in the Deaf West revival of Big River along with numerous nominations and accolades.

A member of AEA, SAG-AFTRA & the SDC.

Phot credit: Jeremy Folmer

http://www.alexandriawailes.com/

Alice Sheppard trained with Kitty Lunn and made her debut with Infinity Dance Theater. After an apprenticeship with AXIS Dance Company, Alice became a core company member and toured nationally and taught in the company’s education and outreach programs. Since becoming an independent dance artist, Alice has danced in projects with Ballet Cymru/GDance, and Marc Brew Company in the United Kingdom. In the United States, she has worked with Marjani Forté, MBDance, Infinity Dance Theater, and Steve Paxton. Alice is the founder and artistic lead for Kinetic Light, a project-based ensemble working at the intersections of disability, dance, design, identity, and technology to create transformative art and advance the intersectional disability arts movement. A USA Artist, Creative Capital grantee, and Bessie Award winner, Alice creates movement that engages intersectional disability arts, culture, and history to challenge conventional understandings of disabled and dancing bodies.

Alice Sheppard is a New Yorker for Dance. 

https://kineticlight.org/

Alison Kopit (she/her) is a white, queer, and autistic cultural worker, performance artist, and academic based on unceded Lenni Lenape Land, colonially known as Philadelphia. She currently serves as one of Dance/NYC’s Disability. Dance. Artistry residents. She is interested in disability aesthetics, anti-oppressive approaches to cultural work, and time travel, often mapping her ideas onto the body through dance scores. She brings a commitment to Disability Justice to her work and collaborations. She has served as a research coordinator for Simi Linton’s Proclaiming Disability Arts project, scholar-in-residence to Full Radius Dance, art administrator and creative collaborator to Sky Cubacub of Rebirth Garments, and visiting assistant professor of Disability Studies at the University of Toledo. She recently earned her PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago in Disability Studies. Her dissertation, Sanctuary and Revolution: Reaching toward Disability Justice in Cultural Spaces, explores the ways that collective access and liberation, among all other principles of Disability Justice, have the potential to transform arts communities, social movements, and our own identities and relationships to our bodies--and the ways that artists are well-equipped to lead this transformation.

Photo credit: Aster Harrison

Amy was a professional ballet dancer for many years in Canada, Sweden, and the US, before returning to school to get her bachelor’s degree from NYU in theater history and dramatic literature. After graduating from NYU, she continued to work in the theater industry as an assistant producer and assistant theatrical agent, where she reviewed contracts and managed and negotiated licensing agreements for plays in the US and internationally.

Having been inspired to go to law school by her desire to help other artists, she studied copyright, trademark, media law while at University of Michigan School of Law, where she served as an editor on the Journal of Race and Law, and as president of the Entertainment, Media and Arts Students Association.

Amy’s relationship with VLA began as soon as she had the opportunity to volunteer her services as an attorney. Her primary practice has been general commercial litigation, including matters involving art law, media law, employment, intellectual property, constitutional law, real estate, insurance, contract disputes, torts, and as well as other disputes.

Amy is a trained mediator with extensive experience working with VLA in the MediateArts program and is on the panel of mediators assigned to resolve cases for the Southern District of New York.

Amy is a member of the Entertainment Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association and was selected to Super Lawyers Rising Stars 2014, 2016, 2017 and New York Metro Super Lawyers 2018 and 2021.

Photo credit: VLA

www.vlany.org

Amy Smith (she/her) is a dance and theater artist, educator, and facilitator. She works to dismantle oppressive structures and empower artists through financial well-being workshops, one-on-one work with artists giving financial advice and doing tax preparation, co-facilitating anti-racism sessions, and as a dance and theater educator. Amy co-founded, co-directed, and performed with Headlong, a dance theater non-profit that transformed into a community arts organization over 25 years. She left Headlong in 2019 to pursue her freelance work. She leads financial well-being workshops through Creative Capital, Assets for Artists, and in many other settings.

Photo credit: Kim Carson

www.amyelainesmith.com

ANA NERY FRAGOSO is the Acting Director of the Arnhold Graduate Dance Education Program at Hunter College, CUNY. AGDEP prepares candidates to teach Dance PreK - Grade 12 to students of diverse backgrounds, abilities, and interests. The curriculum is enriched by repertory classes with New York City-based choreographers, international performance opportunities, and internships at various venues.

Fragoso served as Director of Dance Programs for the NYCDOE Office of Arts and Special Projects from 2014-2021. She provided leadership and guidance for dance programs in public schools, designed professional learning opportunities for dance educators teaching K-12 dance in NYC public schools, and served as a liaison between the NYCDOE and external organizations offering dance and dance-related services to schools. She also directed the Arnhold New Dance Teacher Support Program, which provides first and second-year dance specialists with mentorship, funds, and instructional support.

She was a member of the NYCDOE Dance Blueprint Writing Committee in 2004 and has worked as an NYCDOE dance facilitator co-designing professional development workshops for New York City Department of Education dance specialists. In 2017, she was a member of the New York State Dance Learning Standards writing team. From 2007-14, Ana was a faculty member at the Dance Education Laboratory (DEL) at the 92nd St Y.

Fragoso earned a B.A. Dance/Education from Hunter College and an M.F.A. in Dance/Choreography from Sarah Lawrence College.

She is currently a doctoral student at Ed.D. Dance Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Photo credit: Luis Mallo

www.hunter.cuny.edu/agdep

Ananya Chatterjea’s work brings together Contemporary Dance, social justice choreography, and healing justice. She is artistic director of Ananya Dance Theatre, a dance company of BIPOC femmes, and co-founder of the Shawngrām Institute for Performance and Social Justice. She is the creator of ADT’s movement signature vocabulary, Yorchhā, and the primary architect of the company’s justice- and community-oriented choreographic methodology, Shawngrām. She is a 2011 Guggenheim Choreography Fellow, 2016, Joyce Award recipient, 2018 UBW Choreographic Center Fellow, 2019 Dance/USA Artist Fellow, the 2021 A. P. Andersen Award and 2012 and 2021 McKnight Choreography Fellowships. Her recently premiered work Dastak: I Wish You Me (October 2021), created with the support of an NPN Creation Fund, NDP Production Award, and a MANCC Residency, will tour to five prestigious national locations in 2022-23. She is currently developing Nün Gherāo (surrounded by salt) with the support of a creative residency at Jacob’s Pillow (March 2022). Her second book, Heat and Alterity in Contemporary Dance: South-South Choreographies was published in 2020 (Palgrave McMillan). A co-edited anthology, Dancing Transnational Feminisms: Ananya Dance Theatre and the Art of Social Justice was published in 2022 (Univ. of Washington Press). She teaches Dance Studies courses such as Choreographing Social Justice, and Contemporary Practice at the University of Minnesota.

Photo credit: Laichee Yang

www.ananyadancetheatre.org

Andre Bouchard (of Kootenai/Ojibwe/Pend d’Oreille/Salish descent) is an activist, agent, director and producer who was born and raised on the Flathead Reservation in western Montana the son a CSKT enrolled father and a white mother. As a person with a background in both Native and non-native worlds Andre works to build bridges and reverse the invisibility that serves to marginalize Indigenous peoples. In 2010 he founded Walrus Arts Management and Consulting which was expanded in 2015 to serve as a home to the first Native run performing arts booking agency representing Indigenous performing artists which transformed into Indigenous Performance Productions, a non-profit corporation dedicated to replacing the stories about Native people with stories by Native people. He received a BFA in Dance and a BA in Anthropology from the University of Montana, a Masters in Arts Management from Carnegie Mellon University, is a APAP/USC Leadership Fellowship Program Alum, and serves on the Washington State Arts Commission and the Board of Directors for ArtsNW.

Photo credit: Loewyn Behold

http://www.indigenousperformance.org

Calling on urban plants as her guides, teachers, mentors and performers, andrea haenggi (she/they) has been developing a co-creative, artistic relationship with urban plants (aka weeds) since 2015, taking the form of dance pieces, “garden” installations, workshops, gatherings, lectures, and the co-founding of the art collective Environmental Performance Agency (EPA), whose goal is to shift thinking around the terms environment, performance, and agency. As a Swiss-born interdisciplinary artist, dancer, somatic educator and “activist of care” living on Lenapehoking/Brooklyn, she is in search of a new kind of rhizome practice theater, Ethnochoreobotanography, which simultaneously explores issues regarding decolonization, feminism, power, labor, care and the dissolution of human(-)nature dichotomy. She holds an MFA in Creative Practice from Transart Institute/Plymouth University UK, is a Swiss Canton Solothurn Dance Prize recipient and is currently on the Faculty at the New School of Performing Arts and at the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies. environmentalperformanceagency.com

Photo credit: andrea haenggi

weedychoreography.com

Anna Campbell joined the Howard Gilman Foundation in 2015. Previously, Anna was the Arts Program Officer at the Educational Foundation of America (EFA), where she developed and managed a portfolio of innovative creative placemaking projects in both urban and rural communities across the country. Prior to EFA, Anna was the Assistant Director at the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, where she oversaw programming grants for hundreds of cultural organizations across the city and was the Agency's point person for launching the Cultural Data Project in New York State. She also served as Director of Grantmaking Programs at The American Music Center, leading and creating new grant opportunities for music and dance artists to create and perform new work. Anna began her career at the Massachusetts Cultural Council supporting local grantmaking programs throughout that state. Prior to her work in philanthropy, Anna was a professional ballerina.

Photo credit: Joe Rayome

www.howardgilmanfoundation.org

Anna Gichan (she/her) is an east coast dancer and choreographer
who uses movement as a means for cultivating
relationships with the self, others, and the world around
her. She is interested in sensory gains and deprivations
which reflects her experiences as a deaf/hoh woman.

She recently presented her first full work at BAX supported by BAX & CDI (2021-23). She’s also the recipient of Dance.NYC Disabled Artist Residency with Gibney (winter of 2022), Moving Women Artists Resident at Gallim Dance (summer of 2021) and Artist Professional Learning Institute Residency (2020-21). Anna teaches dance with dFAB and with Young Audiences Arts for Learning. As a freelancer Anna currently performs with OMNIUM Circus, a circus focused on inclusion and access.

Photo credit: Gail Schulman

www.annagichan.com

"Dr. Anne Huang (she/her) is a seasoned arts executive, and a highly regarded, culturally specific capacity building consultant and resource equity advocate. In 2019. Anne was appointed the first BIPOC and immigrant artist to lead World Arts West. Under Anne's equity and inclusion focus, World Arts Arts’s board and staff are majority BIPOC for the first time since 1978, and reflect the diversity of its artist community. By centering the voices of cultural artists, Anne works to empower everyone to make and present revolutionary new artworks, and uplift underrepresented voices and stories. Anne is the former Executive Director of Oakland Asian Cultural Center, where she transformed OACC from a struggling arts organization into a leading cultural institution serving 50,000 people per year.

As a thought leader with deep knowledge of challenges and solutions for cultural artists in the 21st century, Anne is a sought-after speaker and consultant for conference panels, cultural convenings, and resource equity in philanthropy. Anne has served in leadership roles for National Dance Project’s Regional Dance Development Initiative, New York Foundation for the Arts’ Immigrant Artist Program, and the City of Oakland’s Mayoral Arts Task Force. Anne is the Board Chair of Dance/USA Board of Trustees.  

Photo credit: Shane Hairston

www.worldartswest.org

Annie-B Parson is a choreographer, and the artistic director of the OBIE and Bessie award winning Big Dance Theater. She co-founded Big Dance in 1991, and with her company has created over 20 large scale works for such venues as BAM, The Japan Society, The Old Vic/London, Sadlers Wells/London, The Walker, The National Theater in Paris, Japan Society and The Kitchen. Outside of her company, Parson has made choreography for rock shows, marching bands, movies, museums, objects, television, augmented reality, opera, ballet, theater, symphony orchestras, string quartets, and a chorus of 1,000 amateur singers. Some of the artist she has worked with include David Byrne, David Bowie, St. Vincent, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Esperanza Spalding, Suzan Lori Parks, Wendy Whelan, Anne Carson, Laurie Anderson, David Lang, Salt n Pepa, Jonathan Demme, Spike Lee, and she has two works in the repertory of the Martha Graham Dance Co. Her work with David Byrne has spanned many years and includes dance-making for his tours with Brian Eno and St. Vincent. Their most recent work, American Utopia, is on Broadway, and is a Spike Lee movie. Parson's upcoming book will be published by Verso press in Fall 2022. She is co-editing a book with Thomas de Frantz on the history of dance. Parson has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, Bessie Awards, The Jacobs Pillow Dance Award, a USA Artist Award, The Doris Duke Award, and an Olivier nomination. She was honored by PS122, and by Danspace.

Photo credit: Jeff Brown

http://www.bigdaancetheater.org

Ashley N. Cloud founded The Cloud Law Firm, PLLC to educate and empower creative business owners with the tools and resources to establish and build their empires. Ashley comes from a long bloodline of entrepreneurs. From a young age, Ashley knew she was destined to become an attorney. When she learned of the complexities between the interplay of law and business for creatives, Ashley knew she found her calling.

Ashley graduated from Howard University with her law degree and Master of Business Administration in 2016. While at Howard, Ashley educated the local and broader community on fashion law as Co-Chair of Fashion Law Week and Co-Founder and President of the Fashion Law Society.

After graduating from Howard, Ashley served as an Assistant Attorney General in the Washington, D.C. Office of Consumer Protection where she advised local and national businesses on their marketing and advertising practices to encourage compliance with the District’s laws. 

Ashley’s passion for supporting entrepreneurs led her to serve as an attorney for the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). Her diligence and commitment to small businesses inspired her to spearhead projects related to the Paycheck Protection Program. 

Ashley speaks on numerous topics including business formation and development, diversity in fashion, cultural appropriation, supply chain management, and resources for entrepreneurs. Ashley is licensed to practice law in the State of New York and the District of Columbia.

Photo courtesy of Ashley N. Cloud

www.thecloudlawfirm.com

Benedict Nguyễn is a dancer, writer, and curator based on occupied Lenapehopking and Wappinger lands (South Bronx, New York). Their criticism has appeared in Vanity Fair, Into, AAWW’s The Margins, and the Brooklyn Rail, among other outlets. Recent projects include their curatorial platform "soft bodies in hard places," their Public Art Practice, and The Nerve Studio, which they co-founded with Stephanie George in 2021. They publish the newsletter “first quarter moon slush” and when not online @xbennyboo, are working on a few novels lol. benedict-nguyen.com

Phtoo credit: Benedict Nguyễn

benedict-nguyen.com

Beverly Lopez is a Bronx native dancer, choreographer, and educator. She is the founding Artistic Director of REDi Dance Company, which comprises a professional adult dance-theater company as well as educational programming, notably the Dance Bridge Workshop for Bronx youth. Beverly earned a BFA in Multimedia Performing Arts at CUNY Lehman College. She continues to build her community with an urgency to form healing connections and supportive platforms for BIPOC artists. She worked as the Dance Education Associate at the AATT Academy at BAAD!, and as the Program Manager for Daniel Fetecua Production's youth program at iD Studio Theater. She currently works as a teaching artist at the DreamYard Project and Pentacle.

Beverly’s contemporary dance work fuses a variety of social dance forms, including House, Bachata, and Salsa. She most recently debuted her latest live work, “Mientras Tanto” and concept video, “Bloom”, with the ongoing support of the arts collective Dancing La Botanica: La Tierra Vive, produced by Pepatián Bronx. Beverly choreographed the play Electricidad, by Luis Alfaro, at Lehman College and A Grave is Given Supper, by Mike Soto, at New Ohio Theatre, both under the direction of Claudia Acosta. She has presented work at Dixon Place, Groundswell Series, Bronx Artists Now 2020/2021 APAP showcase, Triskelion Arts, Mark Morris Dance Center, Oberia Dempsey Theater, and BAAD! ASS Women Festival. Beverly performed for Desiree Godsell, Beatrice Capote, Sekou McMiller, Luis Salgado, and Leah Tubbs.

Photo credit: Eneida Silva

beverlylopez.com

Carl Paris holds a Ph.D. in Dance Studies with a focus in Cultural Studies (Temple University) and a Masters Degree in Dance Education (NYU). He has performed major roles with Olatunji African Dance, Eleo Pomare, Martha Graham, and Alvin Ailey dance companies. He taught and choreographed throughout Europe and in Spain and received Spain’s National Dance Award 1995 in recognition for his contribution to the art and pedagogy of dance. Dr. Paris has taught dance composition, history, and theory at California Institute of the Arts, NYU, Temple University, Long Island University, and as visiting Fellow at MIT. He has published several articles in leading dance and theater journals and participated on panels with Congress in Research in Dance, Society of Dance History Scholars, the American Dance Guild, and Collegium For Africana Diaspora Dance with a focus on Black performance/Black dance and the Black male within gender issues. Dr. Paris currently teaches courses in Africana Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Black Dance in America at Montclair State University.

Photo credit: Kerville Jack

Carmen Caceres is a dance artist, originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has performed and presented work at multiple prestigious venues in New York such as Dixon Place, Green Space Studio, Triskelion Arts Center, The Mark Morris Dance Center, Center for Performance Research, New York Live Arts, Judson Memorial Church, the Center at West Park, and Danspace Project. In 2012 she founded DanceAction, a creative platform to produce performing artworks in collaboration with musicians, dramaturges, designers, and visual artists. Her works have been awarded multiple grants, including the City Artist Corps Grant and most recently the LMCC Creative Engagement Grant. DA has participated in numerous local and international festivals and performance series including “Ticino in Danza” in Ticino, Switzerland, and “FIDCDMX” in Mexico City. Carmen also produces her new performance & improv-lab series Lo De Carmen in collaboration with Silvana Brizuela-Weigel. 

As a performer and collaborator, she worked with artists Lisa Parra, Elia Mrak, and Sarah Berges among others. Carmen received a BA in Dance and Education at SUNY Empire State College and studied at the former Merce Cunningham Studio in New York. In her native city, she graduated from the National School of Dance and from the National University of the Arts UNA. Carmen also works as a dance educator and program director for different art organizations in New York City.  

Photo credit: Marcos Vedoveto

https://www.carmencaceres.com/

Chris Walker is the director of the Division of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is a professor in the dance department and founding artistic director of the First Wave program in the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives. Walker creates contemporary dance, theater and performance artwork rooted in the visual and performance cultures of the African Diaspora. He works in the disciplines of dance, theater, film/video.

Photo credit: Sarah Maughan

artsdivision.wisc.edu

CLARINDA MAC LOW started out working in dance and molecular biology and now creates participatory events investigating social constructs and corporeal experience, and new institutional forms. She is also a design and technology professor and a former HIV/AIDS researcher and medical journalist. Mac Low is co-founder and Executive Director of Culture Push, an organization linking artistic practice, social justice, and civic engagement, and co-founder of Works on Water, supporting art working with waterways. Recent work includes: “Sunk Shore,” participatory tours of the future rooted in climate change data, in collaboration with dancer/historical marine ecologist Carolyn Hall; “The Year of Dance”, a self-ethnography of how unconventional kinship structures form in the NYC dance world; and “Free the Orphans,” investigating the spiritual and intellectual implications of intellectual property in a digital age. Residencies include Back Apartment Resident (CEC) (2019) Yaddo and Mount Tremper Arts (2012), MacDowell (2000, 2016). She received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant, 2007 and a 2010 Franklin Furnace grant. BA, double major in Dance and Molecular Biology, from Wesleyan University and MFA in Digital and Interdisciplinary Arts Practice from CCNY-CUNY. She has taught at NYU, CCNY-CUNY, Parsons School of Design, and elsewhere. Through the CRNY Artist Employment Program, she is an AIR at Genspace, a community biology laboratory in Brooklyn.

www.clarindamaclow.com

Corbett Joan OToole is a disability community elder. She’s influenced generations of disabled artists, scholars, and activists through her writing, artwork, and public speaking.

Her first public dance, a joyful impromptu romp at a farmers market with her then three-year-old disabled daughter, is recorded in the film Mothers and Daughters. 

She had the privilege to be part of Berkeley, California disability communities for pivotal moments in disability history including: 1977 occupation of the San Francisco federal building also known as the 504 Sit In; creation of the first Center for Independent Living; Director of the first national Center on Disabled Women and Girls; founding of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund; and the development of disability cultures in performance arts.

Along with Cheryl Marie Wade, she midwifed the Axis Dance Company from an idea by Patty Overland to a professional company led by Judith Smith. She had a short but highly enjoyable time dancing with Axis in their first few years.

She documents much of this disability history in her groundbreaking book Fading Scars: My Queer Disability History which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards. 

She is featured as a disability history expert in the film Crip Camp which was nominated for an Oscar and was the opening film and audience favorite for the Sundance Film Festival. 

Her archives of disability history are at the San Francisco Public Library Archives. An extensive oral history is at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Photo credit: Corbett OToole

www.CorbettOToole.com

Craig Peterson is currently the Vice President for Visual and Performing Arts at Henry Street Settlement and the Executive Artistic Director of the Abrons Arts Center, a home for contemporary interdisciplinary arts in Manhattan’s vibrant Lower East Side neighborhood. A core program of Henry Street Settlement, Abrons advocates for diverse artistic communities through educational programs, residencies, exhibitions and presentations. Previously he was the Director of Programs at NYC’s Gibney Dance (2014 – 2016); Director of the annual Philly Fringe Festival and Director of the FringeArts residency programs in Philadelphia (2009- 2013); and served in a variety of roles (including four years as Co-Artistic Director) at NYC’s Dance Theater Workshop (1994 – 2004.) He is a graduate of the Executive Leadership Program of Columbia University’s School of Business and he received a BA in Dance and Theater from Bard College.

Photo credit: Victor Gigante

www.abronsartscenter.org

James “Cricket” Colter has had over 30 years experience in the street dance. His dance style has its base in Hip-hop, House, and Breaking. He’s one of the founders of the “House Head Session” one of the longest running house dance practice sessions in NYC. 

Cricket’s performing and teaching have taken him to every major city in the USA, Asia, and Europe, as a founding member of Rennie Harris Puremovement (founded in 1991) and as a dance ambassador for the US State Department during the Obama administration. 

Cricket has taken part in multiple global and US (domestic) street dance events over the last 20years, and choreographed at the Apollo Theater. He’s performed as a featured dancer in the film “Step Up 2”, and for performing artist, Boys II Men, KRS-1, Will Smith, Fall Out Boy, and Chris Brown. 

Photo credit: Noriaki Maeda

Daniel Park is a queer, bi-racial, theatre and performance artist based in Philadelphia and the Training and Consulting Manager with the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives. He specializes in designing and facilitating participatory group processes, and supporting organizations and individuals to radically transform their work to be in better alignment with their values. Daniel comes to his work as a facilitator, trainer, and consultant with years of experience organizing for racial and labor justice in the cultural sector, and as a co-founder of Obvious Agency, a worker-owned cooperative that creates interactive live performances blurring the lines between audience and performer, theater and game. He has provided his services to organizations including the PA Governor's Commission on Asian American Affairs, ArtPlace America, and Creatives Rebuild New York.

Photo credit: Plate3 Photography

https://usworker.coop/ https://www.obvious-agency.com/

Darian M. Parker, PhD is a guest professor of West African dance at The Juilliard School. He is also a guest professor of West African dance at The New School, and is a faculty member at Cumbe: Center for African and Diaspora Dance. His work has received support from the Jerome Foundation, Harlem Stage, and New Haven Arts Council. He has had the privilege of studying with Nzingha Camara, Aly Tatchol Camara, Mouminatou Camara, Marie Basse-Wiles, Esther-Grant Walker, Sandella Malloy, Ismael Kouyate, Youssouf Koumbassa, Ibrahim Doumbia, and many others. Darian’s commitment to teaching extends beyond dance. He is the Founder & CEO of Parker Academics (www.parkeracademics.com), which has provided over 70,000 hours of test prep/tutoring to over 1000 students since its inception. He is also an adjunct professor at NYU, where teaches anthropology. He is active in the Yale Alumni Association, conducting dozens of interviews yearly for prospective Yale admits. He is the author of Sartre and No Child Left Behind (2015), and “The Haze”, which appears in Pedagogies in the Flesh (2018). Fulfilling a lifelong dream of becoming a theoretical physicist, he returned to school in 2021 to pursue a double major in physics and math at Columbia University’s School of General Studies. Darian graduated from Yale University in 2013 with a PhD, M. Phil, and MA in Anthropology and African American Studies, and from UCLA’s College of Honors in 2001 with degrees in anthropology and literature.

Photo credit: Daichi Yamamoto

David Thomson is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice borders on choreographic situations and installations centered around questions of identity, unconscious narratives, and the expression of presence and absence as performative states.

He has been supported or presented by The Kitchen, Movement Research at Judson Church, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, BRIC Arts, Performance Space NY, The Invisible Dog, Mt Tremper Arts, The Yard and Danspace Project, among other institutions.

He has been awarded residencies and fellowships, including a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Artist Award (2022), Robert Rauschenberg Residency (2018), Yaddo (2016), MacDowell (2014), a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Choreography (2013), and the US Artists Ford Fellowship (2012). He is currently a Mabou Mines Associate Artist and Danspace Artist Research Fellow.

Thomson has worked across the fields of music, dance, film, theater, and performance with Bebe Miller, Trisha Brown, Ralph Lemon, Tracie Morris, Marina Abramović, Meg Stuart, Yvonne Rainer, Deborah Hay, Sekou Sundiata, Maria Hassabi, Yanira Castro, and Okwui Okpokwasili, among others.

He has worked as an Arts Administrator and/or Database Consultant for several organizations including New York Foundation for the Arts, Merce Cunningham Foundation, Dieu Donné Papermill, National Performance Network, Movement Research, and developed the Archive database for the Trisha Brown Company.

In 2017, he and Kate Watson-Wallace initiated The Sustainability Project, which serves as a platform for expanding the discourse surrounding financial, artistic, and personal empowerment within the arts community. Thomson received an Interdisciplinary B.A. from State University of New York at Purchase.

Photo credit: Mark Poucher

www.davidhamiltonthomson.com

devynn emory is a choreographer/dance artist (devynnemory/beastproductions), dual licensed bodyworker (sage), Spirit channeler and registered nurse- previously practicing in the fields of acute/critical care, hospice, COVID and currently gender affirming surgery and integrative health. emory's performance company devynnemory/beastproductions finds the intersection of these fields, walking the edges of thresholds- drawing from their multiple in-between states of being, holding space for liminal bodies bridging multiple planes of transition, finding reciprocity practice as a constant decolonial practice. they are currently working on a trilogy centering medical mannequins holding the wisdom of end of life experiences. (deadbird + can anybody help me hold this body 2021, Cindy Sessions: Grandmother Cindy + Cindy Sessions LOVE, LOSS, LAND 2022, boiling-rain tbd). emory is a research group fellow at danspace 2020-2023, a recipient of the Onassis Eureka award, and 2022 Art Matters Artist2Artist awardee, a 2023 FCA award recipient and a 2023 USA Fellowship awardee. born on Lenape Land, emory is a reconnecting descendent of mixed Lenape/Blackfoot/settler ancestry.

devynnemory.com + deadbird.land

www.devynnemory.com

Diane Fraher (Osage/Cherokee) writes and directs narrative feature films about contemporary Native Americans. In her words, her films explore the struggle of Native Americans to identify with traditional values within the context of modern society. Her current feature film, THE HEART STAYS, is the first feature film in which a Native American woman is in the lead role.  An enrolled member of Osage Nation with documented Cherokee heritage as well, Diane is one of the artists who migrated to New York City and formed the New York Movement in Contemporary Native Arts, the only such Native American arts movement in the United States, outside of Santa Fe, NM.   Diane Fraher has received fellowships and individual artist grant awards for her filmmaking including a NYFA 2013 Fellow in Screenwriting, and most recently she received a Made in NY Women’s Film Fund Grant for fiction feature (2019). She is frequently called upon by the philanthropic establishment and others to serve in an advisory capacity for efforts to catalyze new philanthropic investment in contemporary Native American arts, in particular the Native Arts and Cultures Fund, and newly formed Mosaic Fund.  Diane Fraher founded American Indian Artists Inc. (AMERINDA), which is the only Native multidisciplinary arts organization of its kind in the United States.  Located in New York, Amerinda has supported the emergence and/or the revitalization of over one thousand individual Native American artists.  

Photo credit: Jerry Rotundi

www.amerinda.org

Elena Sundick has spent the past 15 years immersed in the classical dance world and is most recently a graduate of The Ailey School. Elena has trained at the School at Steps, Ellison Ballet, Berest Dance Center, American Ballet Theater, and Peridance Capezio Center. This spring, she will graduate with a degree in Dance and Cognitive Studies from the CUNY BA for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies program at Hunter College. Elena is a Mellon Public Humanities Fellow researching mental health in the dance community and is dedicated to advocating for accessible resources throughout the industry. Elena has guest lectured on dancer mental health at the University of South Florida as part of their Performing Arts Medicine Collective

Currently, Elena teaches youth ballet classes at Berest Dance Center and is an intern at the ABT JKO School. As a teacher, Elena approaches her work with a keen awareness of positive language surrounding body types and technical abilities. She prides herself on creating safe, collaborative environments for her students to be vulnerable and tap into their emotions. Elena believes in the importance of fostering a healthy relationship to dance through investigating the impacts of dance environments in the mind and body.

Elena is a freelance writer for Dance Spirit and recently had an article published entitled “Dance Is Therapy—But Dancers Need Better Mental Health Care” which can be read here: dancespirit.com/dancer-mental-health-care

Photo credit: James Jin

Ellie Kusner is a teacher, writer, Bessie Award-winning performer, and a passionate advocate for dancer health and wellbeing. She began performing as a student of The Boston Ballet School. Realizing that a career in pointe shoes was not her destiny, Ellie went on to earn her BA from Barnard College before embarking on a freelance dance career working with various choreographers in venues ranging from warehouse rooftops to The Metropolitan Opera. Ellie holds an MSc in Dance Science from Trinity Laban, London, UK. She enjoys exploring and implementing evidence-based teaching practices to enhance the learning, health, and performance of dancers. Ellie has taught at many places, including Hofstra University, American Ballet Theater’s JKO School, Boston Ballet, Barnard College, Slippery Rock University, Gallim, and Trinity Laban. Currently, she is on faculty at The Juilliard School where she teaches pilates and leads wellness seminars with dancers, and Beginner Ballet to adults in the Extension Division. Additionally, she teaches pilates to dancers and non-dancers in the Wellness Center at the Mark Morris Dance Center. Ellie is the chair of the Dance Educators’ Committee of the International Association of Dance Medicine and Science and is the co-host of DanceWell Podcast, a resource dedicated to exploring 360 degrees of health and wellness for dancers. She sporadically contributes articles to Dance, Dance Teacher and Pointe Magazines.

Photo credit: Alexander Sargent

www.elliekusner.com

“I can see his soul through his hands,” one man exclaimed in a post-performance conversation. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, and raised in New York City, Frank Malloy IV; musician, composer, and DJ is a human being of an indomitable nature with a Southern soul and New York flavor.

Frank was handed his first drum at the age of two and began to study classical music at the age of five when he attended the Special Music School at Merkin Concert Hall. After years of classical music study, Malloy began his journey as a professional musician upon attending Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in 2005. He has since then, worked with the likes of Erykah Badu, Robert Glasper, Lion Babe, OSHUN, Jidenna as well as brands such as Danna Karan’s Urban Zen, Everyday Ppl, The Big Quiet, and Abrimah Erwiah and Rosario Dawson’s Studio 189.

The biggest ingredient in Frank Malloy’s work is SPIRIT. Malloy uses his gifts and life experiences to create blended works that not only entertain people but capture the essence of what it is like to be ‘African in America.’

Malloy is currently the Musical Director of performing company, Harambee Dance Co., founded by his mother and father, solo recording artist, and live percussionist to several emerging and established DJs including Everyday Ppl’s DJ Moma, and WizKid’s lead sound man, DJ Tunez. He continues to acknowledge his responsibility to carry the ‘African in America’ culture forward by creating his own modern doundoun drum set, playing various West African percussive instruments on his B. Cool Afro mixes of popular songs, and answering the call to create new traditions for the many generations to come.

Malloy has also used his stage career to catapult into other realms of entertainment. He can be seen in 20th Century Foxlight feature film “Black Nativity” and the Golden Globe-nominated Starz Network original mini-series “Flesh and Bone.”

https://culture-iv.myshopify.com/

Hallie Chametzky is a dance artist, writer, and the Archiving Specialist at Dance/USA. She served previously as a Fellow in the Music Division of the Library of Congress where she processed, rehoused, and documented the thousands of items in the Sophie Maslow Papers, and as an Archives/Audience Engagement Intern at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival where she gained expertise in access-focused archives.

Her choreographic work has been presented in NYC by University Settlement, Undiscovered Countries, The Craft, 7Midnights Physical Research, and Green Space. Hallie is a University Settlement Performance Project Fellow. She currently performs with Yehuda Hyman/Mystical Feet Company and The Final Veil, a new movement opera. Hallie has previously performed with Snap Soup Dance Company, a Merce Cunningham MinEvent at the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City, and works by Liz Lerman, Helen Simoneau, Karen de Luna, Autumn Proctor Waddell, and Eric Rivera. She holds a BFA in Dance and Choreography from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Her poems have appeared in Mouse Magazine, Gigantic Sequins, and Indolent Books, and her writings on dance in The Brooklyn Rail, In Dance, Contact Quarterly, and Dance Magazine, among others

Photo credit: Zephyr Sheedy

www.halliechametzky.com

Hope Mohr is an artist and attorney working at the intersection of the arts and social change. She co-directs HMD's The Bridge Project, which creates and presents equity-driven live art that centers artists as agents of change. Over the past two years, HMD has transitioned to a model of distributed leadership. Mohr's new book, "Shifting Cultural Power: Case Studies and Questions in Performance," is out now from the National Center for Choreography. Mohr's law practice focuses on supporting cultural workers and arts and nonprofit organizations. movementlaw.org

Photo credit: Courtesy of the artist

www.bridgeproject.art

Hussein Smko is a dancer, choreographer and filmmaker. He has been dancing for 16 years and choreographing dance pieces that have been in major festivals as well as written about and published in the New York Times, Dance Magazine, Dance Enthusiast, Wall Street Journal, and Kurdistan 24.

Photo credit: Dariel Sneed

Imogen Smith is the Director of Archiving and Preservation at Dance/USA. With more than a decade of experience as a specialist in archiving dance, Imogen is a passionate believer that preserving artistic legacies strengthens and supports the art form. At Dance/USA, she works to provide archiving services, resources, and education for the dance field, and helps to lead a national network of dance archivists and allies. Previously, as Project Manager and Acting Executive Director of Dance Heritage Coalition (DHC) she spent five years working with dance companies and independent artists around the country to assess, organize, and digitize their collections, and leading projects to process historical dance archives and create new online dance history and archiving resources.

Imogen has also worked on oral history projects and video archives in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and on visual arts collections at the Brooklyn Museum and the Morgan Library & Museum. She holds a Master’s in Library and Information Science from Simmons College and a BA in English from Bryn Mawr College.

Based in New York City, Imogen is the author of two books on film history, and writes for a variety of cinema and culture publications. She has taught film history at the School of Visual Arts and Maine Media Workshops, and is a regular speaker at film festivals and on the Criterion Channel.

Photo credit: Imogen Smith

www.danceusa.org

Janet Rollé was appointed CEO and Executive Director at American Ballet Theatre effective January 3, 2022. She joined ABT after serving over five years as General Manager at Parkwood Entertainment, the media and management company founded by entertainer and entrepreneur, Beyoncé. During her tenure at Parkwood, Rollé led all business operations for the company which houses departments in music, film, video, live performances and concert production, artist management, business development, marketing, digital, creative, philanthropy, and publicity. Her role included oversight of strategic partnerships, legal and business affairs, marketing, finance, human resources, archive, and information technology for all Parkwood businesses and artists. She was Associate Producer of Beyoncé’s history-making performance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival (2018) and of the subsequent Emmy® Award-winning film distributed by Netflix, Homecoming (2019). She was an Executive Producer of the Emmy®-winning film Black Is King.

Rollé previously served as Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at CNN Worldwide, overseeing the promotion of all CNN brands and programming. Rollé was the first Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of BET Networks and has also served in senior positions at AOL, MTV Networks, and HBO. She serves on the board of directors of BuzzFeed, Inc. and Hallmark Cards, Inc.

Rollé received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance from the State University of New York at Purchase and an MBA from Columbia University Graduate School of Business. She was conferred an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from The University of the West Indies.

Photo credit: Larry Busacca

www.abt.org

Jason is an award-winning casting director whose work is currently represented internationally, covering every facet of the industry: theatre, film, television, commercials, live events, dance companies, company consultation, and more. He is the founder and creative director of the Casting Collaborative, as well as the founder of the Caucus for Independent Casting.

Photo credit: George Baier, IV

www.thecastingcollab.com

Jeremy McQueen is an Emmy® Award-nominated choreographer dedicated to story-telling rooted in experience and social engagement. His work aims to create spaces of comfort, solace, and connection through reflection—a sharing of observations of what is going on around him. Born and raised in San Diego, California, McQueen is the founding artistic director & choreographer of The Black Iris Project, a ballet collaborative and education vehicle which creates new, relevant classical and contemporary ballet works that celebrate diversity and Black history. Based in New York City, the project hosts a team of predominantly artists of color delivering cross-discipline and wholly original works. Championing individuality, the collaborative harnesses the Black community's inherent creative spirit to encourage and inspire youth of color to pursue art, movement and music as an expressive outlet and a means for collective healing. Since its inception in 2016, The Black Iris Project has been committed to telling Black narratives through ballet, using art as a mirror to reflect the times. McQueen, a 2020 Soros Justice Fellow, is a graduate of The Ailey School/ Fordham University, B.F.A. in dance program and has performed in Broadway's Wicked and The Color Purple, the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, and numerous Metropolitan Opera productions.

Photo courtesy Jeremy McQueen

www.blackirisproject.org

Jill Sigman is an interdisciplinary artist and agent of change whose work exists at the intersection of dance, visual art, and social practice. In 1998, Sigman founded jill sigman/ thinkdance to think about pressing social issues through the body, and in 2016 she founded “Body Politic”, a program of workshops and performance laboratories to ask salient political questions. Through performance, installations, workshops, and interactive community-based projects jill sigman/thinkdance addresses climate change, waste equity, environmental racism, and immigration, seeking to move toward healing our relationships with with each other and the natural world.

Sigman was the first Community Action Artist in Residence at GIBNEY, a Choreographic Fellow at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, a Movement Research Artist in Residence, a Rauschenberg Residency recipient, a “Green Choreographer” at The Dance Exchange, and an Artist in Residence at the Guapamacátaro Interdisciplinary Residency in Art and Ecology (Mexico). She has been a faculty member at NYU Tisch Open Arts, a Distinguished Guest Artist at the University of San Francisco Performing Arts & Social Justice program, and a Creative Campus Fellow at Wesleyan University. Sigman is currently working on a 4-channel video dance installation about Renewable Rikers, and since the pandemic she has been organizing Motion Practice, a series of community events for moving and witnessing.

Photo credit: Vanessa Albury

www.thinkdance.org

Kamal Sinclair, is making the world more beautiful as the Executive Director of the Guild of Future Architects and artist at Sinclair Futures. She served as an External Advisor to the MacArthur Foundation's Journalism & Media Program, Onassis Foundation, New Museum’s NEW INC, ONX Studio, Civic Signals, For Freedoms, a member of Sharon Chang’s Family Office (Dream Office of Imaginary Friends) and as an advisory board member of MIT’s Center for Advanced Virtuality, Starfish Incubator, and Eyebeam. 

Previously, Sinclair was the Director of Sundance Institute’s New Frontier Labs Program for seven years, which supports artists working at the convergence of film, art, media and technology. During that period, she consulted for the Ford Foundation's JustFilms program on a research project aimed at furthering equality in emerging media, which resulted in “Making a New Reality.” 

Sinclair got her start in emerging media as an artist and producer on Question Bridge: Black Males. At Question Bridge, where she and her collaborators launched a project with an interactive website and curriculum; published a book; exhibited in over sixty museums/festivals. 

Photo credit: Sheena Matheiken

https://futurearchitects.com/

Karen Finley is an artist, performer, and author. She is an interdisciplinary artist working in sound, music, poetics, film and video, installation, public and social practice art. Born in Chicago she received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her raw and transgressive performances have brought debate and controversy. Finley was the named plaintiff for the Supreme Court case Finley v. NEA that challenged the decency provision in government grants to artists through the National Endowment for the Arts. Her performances and visual art have been presented internationally such as in The Barbican in London, Lincoln Center, New York City, the Bobino in Paris, amongst others. Finley is interested in freedom of expression concerns, social justice, visual culture, art education, metaphysics and lectures, and gives workshops widely. Her most recent work is a collaborative participatory walk Invocation: Retracing Seneca Village with Kimiyo Bremer. And a new performance COVID Anxiety Vortex Opera Kaleidoscope Kitty Disco. She is the author of nine books, including her latest, Grabbing Pussy ( OR Books 2018) and the 25th anniversary edition of Shock Treatment by City Lights. A recipient of many awards and grants, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, she is an arts professor in Art and Public Policy at New York University. Follow her on Instagram @the_yam_mam

Photo credit: Dona Ann McAdams

Kellee Edusei became the Executive Director of Dance/USA in 2021. She joined Dance/USA in the fall of 2008 as the organization’s Office Manager and Board Liaison and was promoted to Director of Member Services in the spring of 2009, maintaining her work as Board Liaison until 2019. To date, Edusei designed and implemented the Membership Fellowship giving an early career arts administrator an opportunity to hone their skills; the “Special Membership Package,” a recruitment campaign that surpassed goal and engaged the entire Dance/USA Board and team in the process; and a new revenue stream by maximizing Dance/USA’s monthly Bulletin. She was part of the initial program design of Dance/USA’s Dance Business Bootcamp, a program for dance artists working with budgets of $200,000 and below. Edusei currently serves on the Advisory Council for Women of Color in the Arts and is an alumna of artEquity’s 2020 BIPOC Leadership Circle, of American Express’ 2014 Leadership Academy and the 2021 New Strategies Forum at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business and Acumen Accelerator Program.

Photo credit: Maria Ponce

www.danceusa.org

Kimberly Olsen is the Executive Director of the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable, a grassroots service organization working to improve and advance the state of arts education across the five boroughs. As leader of the organization, Kim works with a large network of NYC-based cultural organizations and arts educators to provide professional development, share resources, create community-led learning spaces, and advocate for arts education in schools and communities. Kim has been on staff with the Roundtable since September 2017, first serving as Face to Face Conference Manager for the 25th Anniversary Conference then Managing Director before becoming the organization’s first Executive Director.

Kim has had a prolific career as a teaching artist working with students Pre-K to adult in over fifty schools across the tri-state area with a focus on working in District 75 with students with disabilities. She currently teaches at the City College of New York and in District 75 schools with ArtsConnection. Kim has worked previously with New York City Center, Queens Theatre, and McCarter Theatre Center.

She holds a Masters of Science in Educational Theatre from the City College of New York and a Bachelor’s degree in Childhood & Special Education from the State University of New York Geneseo where she also received her NY State Teaching Certification. www.kimberlyolsen.net

Photo courtesy Kimberly Olsen

https://www.nycaieroundtable.org

McDowell began working as an actor and dancer when he was seven, and by his late twenties moved into various aspects of performing arts management and production. Today, he works to deepen relationships with artists and presenting institutions, seeking opportunities for international cultural exchange and maximum community impact.

McDowell is the Founder, and served as CEO for KMP Artists for 13 years in the United States and is responsible for the company’s expansion into Asia Pacific. He has produced over 1,200 performances in North America and toured major companies between 17 countries in the Americas, Asia and the Middle East.

Additionally, McDowell served as a faculty member of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy (Los Angeles campus), where McDowell also attended (at theirNew York City campus) prior to undergraduate studies at Fordham University and Empire State College.

Today, Kristopher is a sought-after speaker for conferences and festivals around the globe. He has been working as a program advisor for various digital and hybrid retreats and conference programming and development for the industry including but not limited to the first Dance/USA digital conference (June 2020); the Western Arts+Arts Midwest joint arts market and conference (Oct 2020); and for Arts Presenters in North Carolina (June 2020).

Photo credit: Den Sweeney

https://www.artistsconnectivity.com/rhizome-arts

Kyle Dacuyan writes poetry, makes performance, and serves as Executive Director of The Poetry Project at St. Mark's. Writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Lambda Literary, The Offing, and Social Text, among other places. Performance work has been presented at Ars Nova, FringeArts Philadelphia, PARTICIPANT, and elsewhere. He is a 2021 NEA Fellow in Writing and author of INCITEMENTS (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2022). As an artist and administrator, he is dedicated to work at the infrastructural intersections of language, embodiment, and community.

Photo credit: Amelia Golden

www.kyledacuyan.com

Choreographer, designer, and artist-engineer: Laurel is a transdisciplinary artist making work which imagines new kinds of experience, reinterprets traditional stories, and questions cultural assumptions. Her performing arts career began in music before serendipity brought her to dance, where she found a discipline combining her lifelong loves of athleticism and art. Featuring synthesistic mythology and partnering, her work includes both traditional choreography and novel ways of extending and creating art through technology and design; in the creation of worlds and products experienced, installed, embodied, or virtual. Whether beginning in the studio or with code, her art is grounded in and enriched by liminality, the in-between, and arises from her experience as a queer and genderqueer disabled woman and understanding of disability and access as aesthetic forces.

Laurel began her dance career with Full Radius Dance in 2004 and is part of the disabled artists’ collective Kinetic Light, where in addition to choreographic collaboration and performance in such award-winning works as DESCENT she contributes production design and leads both access and technical research and innovation, including projects such as Audimance and Access ALLways, a holistic approach to equitable accessibility in the arts informed by user experience and hospitality. Co-founder and CTO of CyCore Systems, she brings two decades of expertise in UI/X and product architecture to both technological and artistic work to create impactful experiences, and is also the founder and director of Rose Tree Productions, an Atlanta-based nonprofit.

Photo credit: Robert Kim

Lauren Cox (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Jazz Dance at University of Massachusetts Amherst.  Her dance training is the sum of her travels ranging from Rhythmic Gymnastics to Jazz and Haitian Cultural Dances, Hip-Hop, African American Social Dances, Samba, Modern, Contemporary, Improvisation, and poetry.  She holds a B.A. in Sociology from San Francisco State University. 

Lauren’s research and embodied curriculum focuses on history, responsibility, and connection to rhythm, freedom, and spirit as a practice of Jazz.  She curates experiences in classes and events that call for participation and empathy in community.  She is a co-creator and lead choreographer for Kaimera Productions’ SPACES, working with community leaders in Harlem, New York; Saint-Denis, France; Oakland, California; and on the Island of Mozambique. Lauren has collaborated with dancers in India, Hong Kong, Trinidad, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Spain, France, Canada and across the United States. Performance credits include Off-Broadway, Opera, television (with Saturday Night Live) and live shows (with Alicia Keyes, Pharrell, Coldplay, Gwen Stefani, LLCoolJ) and feature commercials (NYU, Samsung, Apple). Lauren’s Tedx Talk and choreography credits can be found on her website.

Photo credit: Madisyn Sloane

laurencox.org

Lavesh began teaching Bhangra at Natya Academy in North Carolina, USA in 2006. For 10 years, he taught over 300 students and started the independent (non-collegiate) Bhangra movement in NC. He established over 20 teams, competing and performing across North America.

In Nov. 2014, Lavesh and his team launched the Learn Bhangra App for iOS and Android devices. In ~8 years, the App achieved over 100K downloads and 40K registered users. In 2015-16, Lavesh worked with the Jus Punjabi network to create a “Learn Bhangra with Lavesh” TV show that broadcasted for over 6 months. Also in 2016, Lavesh was invited to perform and teach Bhangra at the 2016 Rio Olympics along with members from the India cultural delegation. In 2017, Lavesh began teaching Bhangra at the world-renowned Broadway Dance Center in New York City.

Due to his vast competitive and teaching experience, Lavesh also judges dance competitions around the world. He has judged 30+ Bhangra and Bollywood competitions! Additionally, Lavesh frequently conducts international Bhangra workshops. He has taught workshops in 25+ countries.

Lavesh's Bhangra background derives from the PAU College of Agriculture school of thought under the guidance of Ustaad Janak Raj Ji. Lavesh's coach, Dr. Gurinderbir "Pearl" Chahal, helped him understand folk elements and transformed Lavesh's approach towards Bhangra and how the teachings of discipline, confidence, and respect incorporate into everyday life.

Photo credit: Lavesh Pritmani

www.learnbhangra.com

Lehuanani DeFranco is a mixed Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) protector for Indigenous rights and a Brooklyn-based dancer. She organizes with Uprooted & Rising to end higher education’s support for Big Food and white supremacy in the food system. She is currently campaigning for the University of California to divest from the Thirty-Meter Telescope in order to protect Mauna Kea from desecration. Lehuanani is the Interim Coordinator for Roadwork Center, an organization formed in 1978 to build multi-racial coalitions through women’s culture by focusing on the intersection of arts and BIPOC- and LGBTQIA-led social justice movements. She is also the Development Director for The Heartbeat Music Project, a tuition-free music program that supports Diné K-12 youth through the intergenerational transfer of culture, language, and music on Navajo Nation. Lehuanani is a performer with Te Ao Mana, a performance group expanding the presence of Polynesian culture worldwide through creative projects, dance classes, workshops, and community gathering. She is a student of Hālau ʻŌhiʻa Hawaiʻi Stewardship Training Program under the direction of Kekuhi Kealiʻikanakaole. While learning her ancestral language, ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, Lehuanani explores how the study of language lends itself to the creation of movement scores in her own performance work. Her work investigates how our brains and bodies recognize and form coalitions with others through this intersection of movement and language.

Photo credit: John Mazlish

Lucy Sexton is a Brooklyn-born choreographer, producer, administrator, and performing artist who works in the fields of dance, performance, film, and public advocacy. She is the Executive Director of the cultural advocacy coalition New Yorkers for Culture & Arts. Prior to that, she served as Executive Director of the NY Dance and Performance Awards, The Bessies, where she worked for ten years with Heather Robles to build The Bessies into an independent organization. From 2013-16 she served as a Consulting Associate Artistic Director of the planned performing arts center at the World Trade Center. As a dance artist she works with Anne Iobst creating and performing the dance performance duo DANCENOISE which was founded in 1983, had a retrospective exhibit and performance at the Whitney Museum in 2015, and premiered a new piece at NY Live Arts in 2018. She has also directed and dramaturged plays by Spalding Gray, Tom Murrin, Nora Burns, and Heather Litteer; and produced documentaries by Charles Atlas for the BBC and Arte. Sexton is currently developing and directing Eszter Balint's anti musical "I Hate Memory."

Photo credit: AK47 Division

https://www.ny4ca.org

New York/Trinidad based MAKEDA THOMAS is a dancer, choreographer, artistic director, writer and curator. Marked by radical interdisciplinarity, her recent work was presented at NYC’s El Barrio Artspace, Winnipeg’s Gas Station Arts Center, the Delaware Museum of Art, Turchin Center for the Arts, the Centre for Creative & Festival Arts, and in the context of Carnival. She has presented intermedia performances in relation to her scholarship internationally, including at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York Live Arts, HARLEM Stage/Aaron Davis Hall, Teatro Africa, the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, CCA7, and Mexico’s Teatro de la Ciudad, with awards from Creative Capital, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, and 651 ARTS, among others. Thomas’ work is published in “Curating Live Arts: Critical Perspectives, Essays, and Conversations on Theory and Practice”, “My Voice, My Practice: Black Dance”, and Small Axe: A Caribbean Platform for Criticism. Thomas founded the Trinidad-based Dance & Performance Institute in 2010 and is a Founding Board Member of the Collegium for African Diasporic Dance.

Photo credit: Whitney Browne

www.makedathomas.org

Maria Bauman is a two-time Bessie Award winning multi-disciplinary artist and community organizer from Jacksonville, FL. She is also a sought after public speaker and facilitator on race equity and community-building as and with arts. Her company MBDance's community engagement and performance-rituals particularly center Black Queer people without tragedizing or tokenizing us. Bauman is also co-founder in 2014, with Sarita Covington and Nathan Trice, of ACRE (Artists Co-creating Real Equity), a grassroots organizing body of artists dismantling racism in our own practices and institutionally fields.

In 2021, Bauman was a BRIClab Fellow, granted a Petronio Residency Center award and a Red Tail Arts Fellow. She was a 2020 Columbia College Dance Center Practitioner-in-Residence, 2019 Gibney Dance in Process residency award winner, 2018-20 UBW Choreographic Center Fellow, 2017-19 Artist in Residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange and was the 2017 Community Action Artist in Residence at Gibney. She's been recognized by Dance NYC's Dance Advancement Fund, Brooklyn Arts Council and Jerome Foundation. While formal accolades are affirming, some of the best approval Bauman has gotten for her dance work was from a group of Black and Brown queer teenagers at camp in Connecticut who, upon seeing her dance exclaimed "Oooo, she bad!”

Key areas: Concert dance & choreography; undoing racism in the arts & beyond; intentional dialogue facilitation; entering, building & exiting community methodology

Photo credit: Felicita "Felli" Maynard

www.mbdance.net

My name is Marianna Koytsan. I've been in NY for more than 12 years pursuing my dance career. My current performance venues include City Center, Barnard College and PeriDance Capezio Center, LaGuardia Performing Art Center, The Davenport Theatre, Little Island, Y92. I teach at PMT dance studio. My expertise is house, improvisation, contemporary, floor work.

Photo credit: Swan

Matt Feinstein is passionate about worker cooperatives and democratic workplaces as a foundational component of transformational social justice organizing. Matt is the Co-op Clinic Program Manager with the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives. He specializes in advising and training on democratic governance, decision-making processes, co-op academies and strategic planning.  He is based in Central Massachusetts and was a worker owner of Future Focus Media Co-op and was the co-director of a democratic workplace nonprofit, Worcester Roots. He is able to work with groups in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French.

Photo credit: Matt Feinstein

usworker.coop

As a choreographer, Maxine has presented work at various institutions, including The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, and Harlem School for the Arts with Haiti Cultural Exchange for their annual Selebrasyon Festival. Maxine is also a member of Dance Caribbean COLLECTIVE, through which she has presented choreography in their annual New Traditions Showcase from 2015-2017. In 2014, she choreographed BallyBeg Production's third play and Equity-approved showcase, "The Taste of It", and was a 2015 nominee for Outstanding Choreography/Movement in The New York Innovative Theater Awards for her work in the production. In 2017, Maxine served as an Afro-Cuban/Haitian Folklore consultant for Camille Brown in her work for the Broadway musical “Once On This Island”. Maxine was also the choreographer for Opera Orlando’s presentations of George Bizet’s “Carmen” (April 2021) and “The Secret River” (December 2021). Both productions made their premieres at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.

In 2019, Maxine founded MV Dance Project, a dance company that aims to be of service to others through public performances and dance education programming. In June 2019, the company performed its first evening-length production “Strength in Spirit” at Brooklyn Studios for Dance.

Photo credit: Shocphoto Imagery LLC

https://www.maxinemontilus.com/

Maya Simone Z. is a NYC-based interdisciplinary artist, educator, choreographer, and art administrator from the South. Their work centers queer, Black diasporic emotional and spiritual connections as told by their ancestral lineages, Afro-futurist imaginings, and dreams of this and other worlds.

Maya Simone was recently a collective member of SLMDances and has also worked with Jasmine Hearn and Rogue Dancers. They are currently a More Art Fellow and an Art & Survival Fellow with Double Edge Theatre and BDAC. They have developed and collaborated in works presented at Green Space, Corkscrew Theater Festival, Theater Mitu and more. 

Maya Simone has also completed residencies with MODArts Dance Collective, the Hambidge Center, Mudhouse Art, and GALLIM. They currently work as a team member of PURPOSE Productions and serve on the Dance/NYC Junior Committee as Secretary. They enjoy supporting artists, such as André Zachary, Edisa Weeks and others as an arts administrator and emerging producer. In this and all they do, Maya Simone engages art-making holistically, with pleasure and purpose. They are a constant dreamer. Follow their journey at www.mayasimonez.com

Photo credit: Whitney Browne

www.mayasimonez.com

mayfield brooks improvises while black and is based in Lenapehoking, the homeland of the Lenape people also known as Brooklyn, New York. brooks is a movement-based performance artist, vocalist, urban farmer, writer, and wanderer. They are on the faculty at Movement Research NYC and the 2021 recipient of the biennial Merce Cunningham Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. brooks’ dance film, Whale Fall was recently nominated for a Bessie/New York Dance and Performance Award. brooks was also granted a 2022-23 Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University. brooks is an international teacher and performer whose entire body of work arises from their life/art/movement practice, Improvising While Black.

Photo credit: Brett Douglas Davis

www.improvisingwhileblack.com

Megan Metcalf is an art and dance historian at work on a book about the role of visual art institutions in continuing dance legacies. She brings a practitioner’s perspective to scholarly research, combining work in museum and personal archives with the study of movement practices. Her writing has been published by Dance Chronicle, Open Space (SFMOMA), New York’s Danspace Project, and others. She received a PhD in art history from UCLA in 2018 and has held teaching positions at UCLA, Otis College of Art and Design, and ArtCenter College of Design. In 2021-2023, Megan is a History of Art and Visual Culture Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Photo credit: Michael Cataldi

As a Black DeafDisabled visual/performing artist and arts educator with over 26 combined years of challenging what it means to be an artist, Mia Morris knows firsthand how crucial equitable access to the arts is. They use their combined knowledge of the arts and disability justice to help eradicate ableism in the arts industry.

Their journey began dancing with the Rockville Civic Ballet in Maryland for nearly 20 years before constant ableism and racism in the dance world at large led to their departure from the stage. Following a hiatus to pursue other passions, they began taking/adapting dance classes at local studios whenever possible. They became a founding member of Comebacks, a company built of former and practicing artists rising from the ashes of discrimination, fusing both therapeutic conversational processing and collaborative choreography.

They have participated in spaces such as Full Radius Dance and Dance Exchange’s Organizing Artists for Change in recent years. Their quest to find a dance space that shared their passion for disability justice led them to the nonprofit Dance for All Bodies, where they are honored to lead as Executive Director.

A firm believer that self-care is a form of community care and community care is a form of self-care, she spends much of her time finding or creating spaces for herself and others to express themselves as their authentic selves. Mia strives to hold space for all to be seen and valued on and off the dance floor.

Photo credit: Anne Bookmin

www.DanceForAllBodies.org

The tireless founder of Ladies of Hip-Hop, Michele Byrd-McPhee has been working for over two decades to re-contextualize Hip-Hop spaces and conversations regarding sex, gender and race. Under her direction, LOHH cultivates dance environments that honor and acknowledge the roots of Hip-Hop and the many creative pioneers who have shaped them. This is especially important given the ways in which Black dance has been co-opted, appropriated without acknowledgement to its community & cultural origins.

Michele is entering the 18th-year of self-producing Ladies of Hip-Hop's annual festival. It is now in (3) cities across the globe and growing. LOHH Los Angeles, LOHH Toronto and the week-long festival in New York City. LOHH LA and LOHH TO are both done in partnership with other female organizers.

Michele earned her BS from Temple University & an MS in Nonprofit Arts Management from Drexel University. Michele also worked many years in TV and arts production, working as a production coordinator at Brooklyn Academy of Music and then as a Senior Music Coordinator at Late Night with Seth Meyers. Michele currently is teaching Marketing for the Arts and Arts Advocacy at Texas Tech University. She also serves as a Bessie Award Committee Member along with her ongoing commitment as Executive Director for Ladies of Hip-Hop and artistic director of LDC (LOHH Dance Collective).

Photo credit: @ladybyrdphotogrpahy

www.ladiesofhiphopfestival.com

Michelle Bae is program officer at the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund. She develops and manages a wide range of programmatic, administrative, and communications duties to support ongoing and new programs, grants, and other foundation activities. Her current programs at the Fund include Access to the Arts, which increases cultural access for New Yorkers, and Arts in Health, which supports organizations utilizing the arts to address health issues that impact New York communities. In response to the increasing need for mental health resources, Michelle was part of a small team that planned and implemented the Fund’s first Request for Proposals in its 14-year history.

Prior to joining the Illumination Fund, Michelle worked at the Nathan Cummings Foundation in the Ecological Innovation and Contemplative Practice Programs and the Asian/American Center at Queens College. She is a former StartingBloc Fellow. Michelle received her B.A. in History from Creighton University and is originally from Hawaii.

Photo credit: Hechler Photographers

https://thelmtif.org

Mike Esperanza is an acclaimed artist from New York City who has established a national presence in the graphic design and dance communities. As a designer, his works has been recognized in publications such as Print, Communication Arts and Graphis. As dance maker and choreographer, Mike has presented on prestigious stages including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Sergerstrom Center for the Arts, McCalllum Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Salvatore Capezio Theater at Peridance, The Royal Conservatory in Cordoba, Spain, and the Australian Circus Festival. The Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Company, Dark Circles Contemporary Dance, and other universities around the United States have commissioned Mike’s work. Mike’s talent garnered the 2005 “Dance: Creation for Performance” grant presented by Dance/USA and the Irvine Foundation, the 2010 “Innerstate” tour presented by ODC Theater, the 2010 paid engagement award at the Palm Desert Choreography Under the Stars Festival, the 2014 Reverb Dance Festival commission award and the 2014 and 2021 CUNY Dance Initiative.

Mike is currently the full-time artist-in-resident at University of Central Oklahoma. He is also presenting a new work entitled “Hybrid Agencies”, an installation that investigates how state-of-the-art machine learning and Al technologies can represent the human body and movement at the Boston Museum of Science, in the spring.

Photo credit: Mike Esperanza

www.baredanceco.org or www.espbymike.com

Mike is responsible for maintaining a high-level view of Parsons Dance’s technological and procedural resources to create a workplace environment that is efficient, clean, inclusive, and accessible. His skills in database design and user experience help him develop procedures that track and summarize Parsons program activities, building a detailed holistic view of the company’s current projects and past history. A University of Virginia graduate, Mike combines his technical prowess with a spirit of volunteerism that has led to his involvement with organizations promoting food and housing security, police accountability, LGBTQ elder care, gun control, neighborhood beautification, and youth theater development.

Photo courtesy of Parsons Dance

www.parsonsdance.org

Moira is the Executive Director of the MAP Fund. Moira strives to bring the dual lenses of justice and care to cultivating the field of contemporary live performance, on behalf of the many extraordinary individuals who dwell there, including artists, producers, supporters and audience members. She is especially interested in cross-organizational collaborations and coalition building within the arts sector and with non-arts, justice-driven sister entities. Moira is the former chair of the board of Movement Research, and has written for a variety of publications on the complex interplay of art, power and money. She is a graduate of New York University Tisch School of the Arts.

Photo credit: Simon Sherber-Brennan

www.mapfund.org

Muna Tseng works in the intersection of dance, visual arts, incorporating biography, legacy and archives. Born in Hong Kong, an immigrant to Canada, Muna self-exiled to New York in 1978. She began her career as an acclaimed principal modern dancer with Jean Erdman and Joseph Campbell’s Theatre of the Open Eye. She then founded Muna Tseng Dance Projects Inc. in 1984. In over 30 works, Muna has integrated dance, Qigong, and contemporary cross-disciplinary performance practices. In 1999 she and her collaborator Ping Chong received a “Bessies” Award for “SlutForArt”: the first of her “Family Portraits” about her brother, the late photographer Tseng Kwong Chi. Afterwards she has created “Stella” (mother) 2010, and “It’s All True (Grandfather) 2015. Muna served on the "Bessies" selection committee from 2014 - 2020. Since 1990, she has been the Creative Director for her brother’s photography Archive. She was acknowledged with a Vanguard Award from Visual AIDS, and a Liberty Award from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council for this caretaking work. Her own archival work of oral history projects, videos, and papers are being prepared for deposit with the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Her latest work premiered in March 2022 at SCHUNCK Museum in Holland: “Epochal Songs 2022”, a new solo version Muna performed, re-imagined from her 1982 dance collaboration with the artist Keith Haring.

Photo credit: Steve Sigoloff

www.munatseng.org / www.tsengkwongchi.com

Reverend Nafisa Sharriff is the Founder & CEO of Entering the Holy of Holies, An Institute of Learning and Healing, Inc.  She is an ordained Interfaith Minister, Meditation Master and a Consummate Instructor and Choreographer of traditional West African folklore from the Old Malian Empire.

Her Spiritual Journey led her to the temples of ancient Kemet (Egypt), a six-week intense course of study in a Gurukula (school of the Guru) in an ashram in Ganeshpuri, India and to the One Spirit Interfaith Seminary in New York City, where she was ordained as an Interfaith Minister in 2007.

Integrating the unique blend of her spiritual and cultural experiences, Reverend Nafisa Sharriff founded Entering the Holy of Holies, An Institute of Learning and Healing, Inc. to teach people how to meditate, dance, heal and care for their Spirit, Mind and Body as they Recreate Their Life in Love!

Photo credit: Nathaniel B. Daniels

www.ethoh.org

nia love lives on unseated Lenape Nation land known as New York. In honor of her maternal grandmothers and their historical participation in black feminism and domesticity that radically move away from patriarchy, love’s decision to lowercase her name is meant to draw more attention to her work than who she is, as an effort to rename her family’s legacy. Her career spans forty-five years, beginning in 1978 as an international apprentice with Ballet Nacional de Cuba. Received a BFA ( Howard University) and an MFA ( Florida State University). In 1996 toured with Japanese Butoh master Min Tanaka and received the honorary Fulbright Fellowship in 2002-03. Two Bessie Awards; 2017 Dance Performance Award Outstanding Performance (Skeleton Architecture), and Outstanding Music Composition/Sound Design. love, a recipient of the 2019 Gibney Presents Residency and Gibney|DiP, 2020-21Urban Bush Women’s Choreographic Center Initiative Fellowship, 2020 MAP Fund, 2020-21 Artist in Residence at Bryn Mawr College, 2021-22 MANCC (Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography) Residency, the Movement Research Rosin Fund Residency. love is the 2022 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts awardee (FCA). Currently serves as Co-Advisor for Brooklyn Arts Exchange Artist-In-Residence and Advisor for New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks. love presently serves as an Assistant professor adjunct at Queens College.

Photo credit: Orion Gordon

www.nia-love.com

Nicky Paraiso is an actor, curator, singer, musician, writer, solo performance artist.  He has been a fixture of the NY downtown performance scene for the last four decades. He is Director of Programming for The Club at La MaMa, and Curator for the annual La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival, celebrating its 16th season from May 12-23, 2021. He has worked as a performer with vanguard artists Jeff Weiss & Richard C. Martinez, Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble, Yoshiko Chuma & The School of Hard Knocks, Anne Bogart, Laurie Carlos, Jessica Hagedorn, Robbie McCauley, among many others. Nicky is the recipient of a 1987 Bessie Award for Performance, a 2012 BAX (Brooklyn Arts Exchange) Arts & Artists in Progress Arts Management Award, a 2018-2019 TCG (Theatre Communications Group) Fox Fellowship for Resident Actors/Round 12, and the 2019 (NY Innovative Theatre) Ellen Stewart Award for Stewardship. Nicky's most recent full-length performance, now my hand is ready for my heart: intimate histories, directed/designed by John Jesurun, was presented at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre in March-April 2019.

Photo credit: Jackie Rudin

https://www.lamama.org/

Nina Berman is an arts industry worker and ceramicist based in New York City, currently working as Associate Director, Communications and Content at Fractured Atlas. She holds an MA in English from Loyola University Chicago. At Fractured Atlas, she shares tips and strategies for navigating the art world, interviews artists, and writes about creating a more equitable arts ecosystem. Before joining Fractured Atlas, she covered the book publishing industry for an audience of publishers at NetGalley. When she's not writing, she's making ceramics at Centerpoint Ceramics in Brooklyn.

Key Areas of Expertise: Marketing, Communications

Photo credit: Davis Fowlkes

https://www.fracturedatlas.org/

Teaching: Hunter College, Sarah Lawrence College, Princeton University, The Juilliard School, Barnard College, Gibney Dance Center, Steps NYC, Peridance, The Performing Arts Project and Joffrey Ballet School. Guest teaching: Joyce Theater’s Ballet Festival, The Metropolitan Opera, Brooklyn Ballet, Cedar Lake Dance Company, Gibney Dance, Random Dance, Rambert and New Adventures Companies.
Associate choreographer for The Phantom of The Opera National tour. Assistant choreographer for Casse-Noisette at the Paris Opera Ballet and creative associate for the Joyce Theater’s The Tenant.

Performance: The Garsington Opera's Death in Venice, ROH's The Metamorphosis, The Little Dancer, The Shape She Makes and Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, The Car Man and Edward Scissorhands and The Dybbuk (Great Lakes Theater Festival). Broadway: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Contact, Swan Lake, The Red Shoes and The Phantom of the Opera. Off-Broadway: Belle Epoque, Bloomergirl and A Dybbuk. National Ballet of Canada, Feld Ballets/NY, Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal and The Altogether Different Series. Television appearances include the Fame TV series, the Academy Awards and TONY telecasts.

Pre-production with Susan Stroman for NYCB and Pacific Northwest Ballet. Rehearsal director for Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company and assistant rehearsal director for The Cedar Lake Dance Company.

Masters degree from Hunter College's Arnold Graduate Dance Education Program and a Bachelor of Arts from Empire State College

Photo credit: Jeffrey Brezovar

Ogemdi Ude is a Nigerian-American dance artist, educator, and doula based in Brooklyn, New York. Her performance work focuses on Black femme legacies and futures, grief, and memory. She aims to incite critical engagement with embodied Black history as a way to imagine Black futurity. Her work has been presented at Recess Art, Abrons Arts Center, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Danspace Project, Gibney, Center for Performance Research, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Streb Lab for Action Mechanics, Lewis Center for the Arts, La Mama Courthouse, and for BAM's DanceAfrica festival. As an educator, she serves as Head of Movement for Theater at Professional Performing Arts School. In collaboration with Rochelle Jamila Wilbun she facilitates AfroPeach, a series of free dance workshops for Black postpartum people in Brooklyn. She has been a 2021 danceWEB Scholar, 2021 Laundromat Project Create Change Artist-in-Residence, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Creative Engagement Grantee, and a 2019-2020 Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU Resident Fellow. In January 2022 she appeared on the cover of Dance Magazine for their annual “25 to Watch” issue. Her upcoming work includes commissions for Abrons Arts Center, Danspace Project, and Gibney. She graduated Magna Cum Laude with a degree in English, Dance, and Theater from Princeton University. 

Photo credit: Sophie Schwartz

www.ogemdiude.com

Onye Ozuzu is a performing artist, choreographer, administrator, educator and researcher currently serving as the Dean of the College of the Arts at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. She was Dean of the School of Fine and Performing Arts at Columbia College Chicago. Her administrative work has sought to balance visionary and deliberate progress in the arenas of curricular, artistic, and systemic equity, cultural relativity, collaboration and inter-disciplinarity. In that work she has frequently collaborated with the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. Onye has been presenting Dance works since 1997. Based in the U.S., her work has been seen at venues such as Seattle Festival of Improvisational Dance, Kaay Fecc Festival Des Tous les Danses(Dakar, Senegal), La Festival del Caribe (Santiago, Cuba), Lisner Auditorium (Washington DC), McKenna Museum of African American Art (New Orleans, LA), danceGATHERING Lagos. Recent work includes Touch My Beloved’s Thought, a collaboration with composer, Greg Ward, Project Tool. She facilitates work in a group improvisational score, The Technology of the Circle. She is currently developing a next project, Space Carcasses with collaborators Ben Lamar Gay, Native Maqari, Simon Rouby, Joshua Akubo, and Michel Mestas. Space Carcasses is funded by the National Performance Network and the National Dance Project. She continues to serve the field of dance as a thought leader, speaker and curator.

Photo credit: Philip Dembinski

ozuzudances.com

Orlando Zane Hunter Jr. is an international artist who creates from a Black womanist framework. Hunter is a founder of the collective Brother(hood) Dance! and a 2015/16 Dancing While Black Fellow. As a certified Ohio Master Urban Farmer and Mental Health First Aider Hunter's work tackles issues resulting from a white supremacist system. Graduated with a BFA in Dance from Univ. of Minnesota where he acquired movement vocabularies such as Afro-Brazilian, West-African Guinea, and Yorchha, a mix of yoga, a martial art form called Chhau, and Oddissi. He has performed works by Donald Byrd, Bill T. Jones, Carl Flink, Louis Falco, Colleen Thomas, Uri Sands, Stephen Petronio and Nora Chipaumire. As the first male body he joined Ananya Dance Theater in 2013 and toured with them to Trinidad & Tobago and Zimbabwe with his latest appearence in her 2019 choreographic work Sutrajāl. His solo “Mutiny” was selected to represent the University of Minnesota at the 2011 ACDFA gala in Madison, Wisconsin. In 2014 he co-choreographed “Redbone: A Biomythography” that debuted at the Nuyorican Café, Wild Project Theater, Duke University: Women’s center, and Flight deck theater in Oakland, CA. Orlando studied GLBT activism and history in Amsterdam and Berlin and is currently in pursuit of his MFA in Dance focused on Agriculture and Technology.

Photo credit: Caroline Yang

https://www.bhooddance.com

Paloma McGregor (Founder, Angela’s Pulse) is a Caribbean-born, New York-based choreographer who makes Black work with Black folks for Black space. A former newspaper reporter, she combines a choreographer’s craft, journalist’s urgency and anti-racist organizer’s framework to activate creative communities and shepherd collaborative visioning.
McGregor is currently developing A’we deh ya, a multi-year, interdisciplinary performance project that activates a choreographic call-and-response between the US mainland and her homeland, St. Croix, a current US colony at the frontlines of climate emergency. A'we is the latest iteration of her project Building a Better Fishtrap, rooted in her father’s vanishing fishing tradition and three animating questions: What do you take with you? Leave behind? Return to reclaim?
Working at the growing edge of her field, McGregor received a 2020 Soros Arts Fellowship and was an inaugural recipient of several major awards: Mosaic Network & Fund (2020); Dance/USA’s Fellowship to Artists (2019); UBW’s CCI Fellowship (2018); Surdna Foundation’s Artists Engaging in Social Change (2015). In 2017, she won a “Bessie” Award for performance with skeleton architecture.
In addition to her art-making, McGregor has spent more than a decade investing in the leadership of other Black dance artists through Dancing While Black (DWB), which she founded in 2012 as a platform for community-building, intergenerational exchange and visibility among Black dance artists.

Photo credit: Melisa Cardona

http://angelaspulse.org/

Patricia has provided career counseling to performing artists and entertainment professionals for over 20 years. Patch started her professional life performing with The Boston Ballet and decades later pursued training in educational psychology and career counseling at California State University, Northridge - with a focus on the career development and management needs of arts professionals. Through the services of The Career Center arts professionals learn how to pursue both their career and life satisfaction by identifying their creative interests and strengths and tying them to the ever-changing world of work.

Photo credit: Jim Manley

https://actorsfund.org/

Paul Dennis is the Chair of Dance at Hunter College, NYC. A former member of José Limón Dance Company, his career includes performances with Works/Laura Glenn Dance, Jacob's Pillow Men’s Dancers: The Ted Shawn Legacy, Janis Brenner and Dancers, Scapegoat Garden, a 1995 White House performance and Florence’s “White Nights Festival” at Palazzo Vecchio Salone De Cinquecento. His creative activities include an internationally touring solo concert featuring repertory by Reggie Wilson, Deborah Goffe, José Limón, Eve Gentry, Pearl Primus and Daniel Nagrin. He has been in residence with Dance International and adjudicator for Certamen International de Choreografia, in Burgos, Spain; guest artist/faculty at International Dance Association in Ravenna, CivitanovaDanza, Italy. Paul is the régisseur of masterpieces of Ted Shawn, José Limón, Pearl Primus, Ted Hershey and Doris Humphrey for numerous companies including Scuola di Ballo Accademia Teatro alla Scala, The Limón Company and The Rome Opera Ballet. His current research blends studies in Laban/Barenieff Movement Analysis (L/BMA) and dance, with research in neuroscience to examine the effects of L/BMA-based dance on the physical, emotional, sensory and cognitive experienceof individuals with Huntington’s Disease (HD).

Photo credit: Charles Flachs

https://paulanthonydennis.com/

Paula Sánchez-Kucukozer is a Mexican-born educator and educational consultant based in New York City. She holds a Master’s degree in Foreign Language Education from NYU, an Advanced Certificate in Educational Leadership, and has taught Spanish in a variety of educational settings for 17 years. Both a Mexican folk musician and a dancer, Paula is a founding member of Son Pecadores, a collective dedicated to promoting the musical tradition of son jarocho in the east coast. Paula has been the lead organizer of the annual “NY Son Jarocho Festival” for the past seven years as well as dozens of dance and music workshops and special events featuring visiting artists from Mexico. She is an alumni of NALAC' s Leadership Institute and CCCADI's Innovative Cultural Advocacy Fellowship. As an educator, she specializes in designing curriculum around cultural artifacts and practices. As an artist she is an instrumentalist on the marimbol and a dancer in the son jarocho tradition, and is exploring other percussive dances styles such as flamenco and tap. Paula is actively involved in different community events and organizations.

Photo credit: Luis M. Garza

www.sonpecadores.com

Randi Berry, Executive Director IndieSpace/Indie Theater Fund
Randi is an indie theater maker with an arts advocacy and commercial real estate background. She is the co-founder of Wreckio Ensemble Theater Company, The Indie Theater Fund and IndieSpace. Randi has worked on over $11B in commercial real estate transactions and has created programs resulting in thousands of artists receiving funding, free real estate consulting services, rehearsal space and opportunities for professional growth. Select awards include: NYIT Indie Theater Champion, The Ellen Stewart Award, Indie Theater Person of the Year, member of the Indie Theater Hall of Fame and a Citation for Service by the New York City Council.

Key Expertise - alternative funding models and real estate structures/partnerships, coalition building.

Photo credit: Benjamin Spradley

www.indietheaterfund.org

As the Associate Director of Advocacy and Policy at the Asian American Federation, Ravi leads advocacy efforts across the Federation, leading mobilizations in city and state hearings, representing AAF in coalitions, organizations emergency mobilizations, and coordinating advocacy during budget and legislative seasons. During his time at the Federation, AAF and its member organizations have garnered significant local and national attention for direct service work during the pandemic and our response to recent waves of anti-Asian hate and violence. Before joining the Asian American Federation, Ravi worked in policy research and nonprofit communications. Ravi has earned Masters degrees in Social Work from Columbia University and in Public Policy from the University of Minnesota.

Photo credit: NY Headshots

www.aafederation.org

Rebecca Fitton is from many places. She cultivates community through movement, food, and conversation. Her work in the dance field as an artist-scholar, administrator, and advocate centers arts and culture policy, Asian American communities, and disability justice. Her practice takes shape in studios, classrooms, basements, warehouses, bars, grocery stores, rooftops, gardens, sidewalks, and streets. She has been an artist-in-residence at Center (MI), The Croft (MI), a LEIMAY Subsidized Fellow at CAVE (NY), a 2019 EMERGENYC participant (NY), and received a 2020 New Work Grant from Queens Council on the Arts (NY).

Fitton currently works as an independent artist manager for Will Rawls, in addition to providing development support for Adrienne Westwood and 2nd Best Dance Company. She is also an artistic collaborator of Westwood’s as a performer and writer. She served on Dance/NYC’s Junior Committee from 2018-2020 and was part of Dance/USA’s Institute of Leadership Training 2021 cohort. She is a member of Dance Artists’ National Collective, The Bridge Collective, and National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum - Texas. Fitton holds a BFA in Dance from Florida State University and is currently pursuing an MA in Performance as Public Practice at the University of Texas at Austin.

Photo credit: June Cheung

www.rebeccafittonprojects.com

Reyna is a born and bred NYC Dancer, Creative Director, and Choreographer. She has danced her entire life and grew up in the "classical" world. In her teenage years she immersed herself in street dance and club culture. She truly believes a well rounded dancer should fuse the two.

Reyna has trained heavily in House, Voguing, Hip-Hop, Authentic Jazz, Tap, and multiple Modern and "classical" Techniques to name a few.

As a free agent, Reyna has worked with Janet Jackson, Lizzo, J Balvin and Louie Vega. She was a principal dancer in the film "In the Heights", as well as appeared in her own campaigns for Adidas, Aldo, Amazon Audible and Smirnoff.

Reyna is the Program Coordinator for Ladies of Hip Hop, and the Administrative Assistant for Melanie George, LaTasha Barnes and Michele Byrd-McPhee. She also has appeared in performances with LOHH: Ladies Dance Collective, The Black Dancing Bodies Project, and LaTasha Barnes' Jazz Continuum.

Photo credit: Reyna Núñez

Risa Shoup (Interim Executive Director, Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York; they/them/theirs) has over a decade in senior leadership with NYC cultural and community development nonprofits. They have worked with cross sector partners and funders to inform strategic policy for the equitable growth of accessible and inclusive cultural services in NYC, in support of the self-determination of NYC's cultural workers, and to co-create subsidized workspace in the creative and cultural sector. Prior to A.R.T./NY, Risa served as a Senior Consultant at Karp Strategies where their practice was grounded in participatory planning, market-informed analysis, stakeholder engagement and furthering resource access for the development of more inclusive, accessible and equitable cities. Most recently, Risa served on the transition committees for both Mayor Eric Adams and Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine. Risa chairs the board of the Invisible Dog Art Center, is the Treasurer of the Board for Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts New York, and is a Trustee of the American LGBTQ+ Museum.

Photo credit: Simon Courchel

www.art-newyork.org

River Whittle (They/Them/Theirs) is a Caddo, Lenape, and Irish-American interdisciplinary artist and youth mentor. River currently lives in occupied Tiwa territory in Albuquerque, New Mexico and is versed in photography, printmaking, and experimental video, and is learning jewelry (silver, copper and beadwork) and pottery. River’s work focuses on the fluid and giving relationship between ancestors and future, beyond binary colonial structures.

https://miarw96.wixsite.com/sipuindigenousmentor

Ronald K. Alexander is an independent arts consultant, dance educator, and choreographer. He has performed with companies such as the National Ballet of Canada, the Iranian National Ballet, the Frankfurt and Hamburg Ballet Companies, and the Metropolitan Opera Ballet in New York City. He has choreographed for numerous schools, colleges and dance companies including the Hamburg Ballet, Clark Center for the Performing Arts, The Ailey School, the Harlem School of the Arts, Boys and Girls Harbor Conservatory, the Alpha- Omega Theatrical Dance Company, and the Nanette Bearden Dance Company.

From 1994-2002, Ronald K. was a certified dance instructor with the NY Department of Education. He has held administrative and artistic positions in the following public, private and not-for-profit venues: Chairman of the Dance Department of the Harlem School of the Arts, New York (1987-92) under Betty Allen; Principal of the High School for Contemporary Arts, Bronx, NY (2003-05); and School Administrator at the Dance Theatre of Harlem,New York (2005-07) under Arthur Mitchell. He has studied the American Ballet Theatre School Training Curriculum (Primary to Level Five) under Franco DeVita and Raymond Lukens, the Vaganova Ballet Training Method (Primary to Level Three) under John White, and the New York City Ballet Workout.

Mr. Alexander has an MFA in Dance from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and a certificate in School Supervision and Administration from the City College of New York. He has served as the Academic Principal of the Nutmeg Conservatory for the Arts (2008-2011) as well as a faculty member. His choreography credits include A Chorus Line (2009) and Titanic (2011) at New England’s Warner Theatre. Mr. Alexander was the subject of Five Teachers, Five Venues, a 2011 article in Dance Teacher Magazine. He is currently the Director of Education at the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Youth Arts Academy in Brooklyn, NY and teaches ballet.

Born in Tokyo, Sachiyo Ito is a performer, choreographer, and educator. She has brought together East and West through her delicate and powerful performances of classical, traditional, and contemporary Japanese dance for the last 50 years.

In 2008, she received the Japanese Foreign Minister’s Award in recognition of her work to bridge peoples of the USA and Japan, and in 2011 received a proclamation from the Mayor of New York City commemorating 30 years of founding and services to the City of her NPO, Sachiyo Ito and Company.

She has performed since her American debut in 1972 and taught at major colleges such as the Juilliard School, New York University, and others throughout the United States. She holds a M.A. and Ph.D. in Dance from New York University. She was awarded the name Sachiyo Fujima from Fujima School of Japanese classical dance in Tokyo. She has choreographed for theater productions including Yeats’ Trio, Three Irish Noh Plays in Ireland, and New York, And the Soul Shall Dance, Monkey Music at the La Mama Theatre, and Off-Broadway productions of Shogun Macbeth, and Dojoji: The Man Inside the Bell. She was the Kabuki Consultant for the Off-Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures.

Extensive performance credits include American Dance Festival, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library, Japan Society, Asia Society, New York City Center, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Kennedy Center for Performing Arts and National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC, a South American tour sponsored by the Japan Foundation, the Bonn International Dance Workshop, Congreso Mundial in Spain/UNESCO, the Dublin Theatre Festival, numerous appearances on television including NYC Channels 1, 4, 11, 13, and at universities throughout the United States. In 2021, Salon Series on the Japanese performing arts she has presented for 24 years reached a milestone of 70th performance.

Photo credit: Kathryn Sturgeon

dancejapan.com

Sahasra's knowledge in bharatanatyam started at 9 from guru Ramya Ramnarayan, and she currently trains in kathak under Prashant Shah. With her main training in these two styles, she also trains in odissi, kuchipudi, and kalaripayattu when the opportunity arises.

From a young age, Sahasra knew she wanted to be a dancer and an arts administrator.. Sahasra consequently began Navatman, Inc and joined forces with Sridhar Shanmugam to co-found the organization as it currently stands. She is currently CEO of Navatman and has created well over 50 choreographies, directed a full feature film featuring Indian arts choreography, and original music on the Mahabharata, is co-curator of the global Indian arts festival Drive East, and has worked with the NEA in evaluating grants.

Sahasra is the recipient of various awards, including the New Jersey State Council of the Arts Folk Arts Apprenticeship, and has been called by reporters as a "young trailblazer...on the crest of the wave leading us towards a new understanding of South Asian arts in the United States."

Photo credit: Radha Ganesan

www.navatman.org

Sarah Calderon was the Managing Director of ArtPlace America from 2015 to 2020. In this role, Sarah led strategy, finance and operations, management, and grantmaking strategies for higher education. Previously, she was the Executive Director of Casita Maria Center for Arts & Education (Bronx, NY) from 2008 to 2015. During her tenure at Casita, she oversaw the opening of a new, 90,000-square-foot facility for the Center's arts and education programming and developed partnerships with organizations ranging from Lincoln Center to the NYC Housing Authority. Before joining Casita, she founded and ran Stickball Printmedia Arts in East Harlem, a printmaking and digital arts organization for youth. Prior to that, Sarah was with the NYC Department of Education creating the Annual Arts in Schools Report – a data collection, analysis, and reporting effort for arts education in NYC's public schools. She also consulted at MPR Associates, managing education research and evaluation projects from design through publication. She has worked as a teaching artist in Chicago, Oakland, and New York City. Sarah holds a BFA in printmaking and a BA in psychology from the University of Michigan; and an M.Ed. in arts education from Harvard University.

Photo credit: Sarah Calderon

www.creativesrebuildny.org

Sarah Cecilia Bukowski is a dancer, writer, and community activist. She identifies as a nondisabled queer cisgender woman of mixed heritage. Sarah discovered her love for dance at the age of three and hasn't stopped dancing since. Her sixteen-year professional performing career stretches from New York City to the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, moving between classical and contemporary ballet, modern dance, performance art, film, and multidisciplinary collaborations. Writing follows Sarah as a parallel passion throughout her life, and she writes about issues of cultural equity and social justice both as a freelancer and as Writer in Residence for Amy Seiwert's Imagery, a contemporary ballet company based in San Francisco. As a community activist, Sarah is a member of Dance Artists' National Collective and the American Guild of Musical Artists, where she advocates for dancers' rights as workers. She is passionate about engaging communities in conversation and crafting transformative change through arts activism. Sarah is also currently a part-time student at Columbia University School of General Studies. Outside of school and work, she can be found reading, writing, dancing, swimming, or tending to her jungle of houseplants.

sbukowski@dance.nyc

Sarah Chien creates improvised dance works with collaborators from dance, music, circus and theatre. Based in Brooklyn, Sarah has performed her own and collaborative projects throughout New York City, the United States, as well as in Greece, Slovakia, Spain and Italy. In New York, her work has been shown at Joe’s Pub, University Settlement, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, Triskelion Arts, The Kraine, Arts on Site, The Brick, Eden’s Expressway and Chez Bushwick.

Her performance projects include ∞therside collective, an international improvisation collective of which she is a founding member; ¡Spontaneous Combustion!, an all-improvised performance party series on her homemade rooftop dance floor, and Songs Stuck in My Body, her touring dance-theater solo show. She recently self-published a book called How to Build a Dance Floor available on her website.

A queer, multiracial, third-generation New Yorker, Sarah was raised in Illinois but returned “home” to the NYC in 2006. She was a company member for Andre Zachery/Renegade Performance Group, Sydnie L. Mosley Dances, and Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance. She attended Barnard College, and afterwards studied extensively with David Zambrano, whose work greatly influences her teaching and approach to performance.

Viewing training as both research and craft, she maintains a rigorous personal practice. She is currently exploring intimacy and animacy by creating duets with non-human companions including weeds, speakers, clip lights and extension cords. When not dancing, she can be found working in the local food system as a beginner farmer, greenmarket seller and rooftop gardener.

Photo credit: Gonzalo Guaña

www.sarahchien.com

Sarah Marcus is the Director of Education and Community Engagement at the Mark Morris Dance Group. As Director, she develops and oversees all aspects of education and community engagement programming and partnerships in collaboration with communities across New York City, the US and abroad. Sarah oversees a team of six administrative staff and nearly 150 teaching artists and musicians all of whom are critical to ensuring high-quality delivery of services and programming that reflect and are representative of both Mark Morris’s artistic vision and his mission to provide access to arts and culture to anyone. To this end, Sarah remains steadfastly dedicated to the organization’s mission and core values; ensuring excellent inclusive and equitable dance and music education and artistic experiences. Committed to her role as a teaching artist in the studio, she teaches technique for students of all ages as well as in the Dance for PD® program. Sarah has also taught for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Earl Mosley Dances. Sarah currently serves as an officer and steering committee member of the Museum, Arts, and Culture Access Consortium (MAC), Cultural Programming Committee for the Metro-Tech BID, and is a member of several arts service organizations including National Dance Education Organization (NDEO), NYC Arts-In-Ed Roundtable, Dance/NYC, Downtown Brooklyn Arts Alliance (DBAA), and International Association for Blacks in Dance. Sarah lives in Forest Hills, Queens.

Photo credit: Beowulf Sheehan

mmdg.org

Sarah Wilbur (she/hers) is an Assistant Professor of the Practice in Dance and the Director of Graduate Studies in Dance at Duke University (Shakori/Lumbee/Eno land/Durham, North Carolina). Sarah is a cross-sector choreographer and performance researcher whose current book, Funding Bodies: Five Decades of Dance Making at the National Endowment for the Arts, draws historical attention to the body-level impacts of philanthropic recruitment and reward on generations of US dance organizers. Rather than biographize arts funders or grantees, the text highlights the assimilatory impacts of federal dance funding policies to hold wealth holders accountable for incentivizing ideals of arts production and organization. An artist-scholar with over twenty-years of field-level experience circumnavigating dance investments across the institutional realms of concert dance, theatre, musical theater, opera, K-12 education, health care, and veterans’ affairs, it is Sarah’s primary goal to credit arts labor and laborers in all aspects of her professional work. 

KEY RESEARCH AREAS: Arts labor, funding, and infrastructures, principally in a US context.

Photo credit: Troy Blendell

https://scholars.duke.edu/person/sarah.wilbur

Sewaa Codrington is an Educator, Community Activist, & Cofounder/Director of KowTeff ‘s 30 years-old Cultural Arts Organization. As an educator, she served 32 years in the NYC Department of Education. As a community activist, Sewaa works to secure the rights, sustainability & legacy of the African Diaspora residents of Central Brooklyn.

Sewaa ensures that KowTeff School of African Dance stays true to its mission of empowering people of African descent by providing inspiring opportunities for them to celebrate & gain knowledge of their rich African heritage.

Sewaa has studied the folklore of the Old Mali Empire under the wings of numerous master dance artists. It was her extensive studies throughout the Sene-Gambia region of West Africa under the tutelage of the National Ballet of Senegal during 1986-1988 that solidified her experience & love for African arts & culture.

Sewaa has expertise as a teacher, professional performer, & historian of the art form. As a choreographer, she preserves the purity of African dance while creating for the stage dynamic, electrifying pieces as they relate to the social and historical context of their origins. She undertakes an extensive amount of research in the U.S., the Gullah Sea Islands, West Africa, Montserrat, St. Kitts, Cuba, Belize, Panama, Honduras, Surinam, & Brazil. She choreographs in a manner by which audiences are left with a vivid understanding of traditional African Diaspora lifestyle while experiencing quality entertainment.

Photo credit: Jamila Codrington

www.kowteff.org

Sheila Barker is a Jazz dance educator,master teacher,mentor/artistic coach and a distinctive force of energy in the dance community .Currrently she's on the Jazz dance faculty at Broadway Dance Center and Adjunct Jazz Dance Professor at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City. She holds a BFA in dance and has extensive training in Jazz,Modern,Ballet,Tap,African/Dunham and Musical theater. Her working career as master teacher,choreographer and performer has brought her to many places around the world and across the globe. Sheila's influence on the world of Jazz dance through her mentorship of professionals and young artists alike has created a renowned legacy.

Sophia Park is a writer, curator, and arts administrator based in Brooklyn, NY. She received her B.A. in Neuroscience from Oberlin College and is an M.A. candidate in the Curatorial Practice program at the School of Visual Arts. She is the Associate Director of Community at Fractured Atlas, where she co-leads the External Relations team and is helping build an online community for artists. She co-founded Jip Gallery, a curatorial collective, for which she has curated numerous exhibitions. Her curatorial practice centers community building and collective care. She has written for numerous publications including Womanly Mag, Strata Mag, Monument Lab’s Bulletin, Asymptote Journal, and more.

Photo credit: SK

www.myungrangpark.com

Stacie Webster has been moving dance students toward higher levels of personal and group achievement for the past 20 years and has been on the dance faculty at Broadway Dance Center for the past fifteen years. A native of Southern Utah, attended Southern Utah University where she earned a B.S. in Dance Performance, and was awarded the San Christopher Scholarship.

Stacie was the Consulting Choreographer for Laughing Pizza's television series for PBS and most recently choreographed for up-and-coming NYC artist Lala. Stacie is on faculty for the Children and Teen Program at Broadway Dance Center as well as permanent faculty on their open-class schedule. She works closely with young professionals, and loves the opportunity to work with young dancers from the tri-state area. Additionally, she attended the Academy of Massage Therapy and is a Certified Massage Therapist.

Stacie is also the director of her own training program, Jazz Boot Camp, running successfully for the past thirteen years. Performance credits include Nike Industrial, Repertory Dance Theatre, Brigham Young University's Theatre Ballet, Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, Webster Hall, Symphony Space, Boston Convention Center, Javitz Center, and Catastrophe Dance Company. Stacie is currently represented by Clear Talent Group as an Educator, and is on Turn It Up Dance Challenge faculty as a master teacher.

Photo credit: Brinda Guha

www.staciewebster.com

Sydnie Liggett-Dennis is the Executive Director of A.I.M by Kyle Abraham, NY-based dance company founded by Artistic Director and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow Kyle Abraham. She joined A.I.M in 2019 and in a short time, has reorganized the operations teams, re-set the strategic direction, and implemented operational efficiencies for a more agile organizational flow.

Sydnie's 10 years of experience in arts administration, management and programming includes her previous position as the Director of Programs at Dance/USA where she activated the national network of dancers, choreographers and dance administrators through meaningful programs, networking and educational opportunities. This included the production and curation of the organization’s signature event, the Dance/USA Annual Conference.

Prior to her time at Dance/USA, Sydnie served as School Director of The School at the Mark Morris Dance Center in Brooklyn, New York where she designed and managed many new programming initiatives.

Previous positions in non-profit include School Assistant of the Mark Morris Dance Center, Programs Coordinator of Dance New Amsterdam, and member of Dance/NYC’s 2015-2016 Junior Committee. Sydnie has also worked in corporate America, providing client services to senior executives in biotech and pharmaceutical industries, connecting them with thought-leaders for direct mentorship and counsel.

Sydnie is a Magna Cum Laude graduate from The Ohio State University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance and a minor in Communications. Her enthusiasm as a performer has never wavered and for quite some time, she enjoyed dancing for various choreographers on the East Coast.

Photo credit: Joel Cadet

www.aimbykyleabraham.org

Tiffany Rea-Fisher (Executive Artistic Director, EMERGE125) is an NDP Award winner, 2021 Toulmin Creator, 2022 Toulmin Fellow, a John Brown Spirit award recipient and was awarded a citation from the City of New York for her cultural contributions. She subscribes to the servant leadership model and uses disruption through inclusion as a way to influence her company's culture. She has extensive experience in choreographing and curating concert dance. As a choreographer, Tiffany has had the pleasure of creating numerous pieces for her company as well as being commissioned by Dance Theater of Harlem, Dallas Black Dance Theater, NYC Department of Transportation, Utah Repertory Theater, The National Gallery of Art in D.C., and having her work performed for the Duke and Duchess of Luxembourg. Her works have been seen on many stages including the Joyce, the Apollo, Joe's Pub, Aaron Davis Hall, and New York Live Arts. Tiffany was the first Dance Curator at the interdisciplinary arts organization The Tank where she now sits on their Board of Trustees. She also curates the Bryant Park Dance Summer Series providing free art access to thousands while exposing upcoming and established artists to a wider audience. Her professional affiliations include being the Vice President of the Stonewall Community Development Corporation, an Advisory Board member of Dance/NYC, COHI member of IABD, and a proud member of Women of Color of the Arts.

Photo credit: Ayodele Casel

emerge125.org

Dancer, Choreographer and Teacher Timothy Edwards, a Hawaii native, began his journey into dance at the age of fourteen when he entered his first dance class, African dance. From that day on his teacher, Desiree Kramer, would give him the tools and inspiration to pursue his new found dance dream.

He has since joined Camille A Brown and Dancers where he is still a company member. His current commercial works include performing In Harlem on Amazon Prime, Jesus Christ SuperStar Live on NBC, Porgy & Bess as well as Fire Shut Up In My Bones and Porgy & Bess at the Metropolitan Opera House, and The Wiz at the MUNY.

Photo credit: Tatiana Dominguez Photos

https://www.camilleabrown.org/dancers

Violeta Galagarza is an award-winning choreographer and founder of Keep Rising To The Top (KR3Ts); a dance company that has been launching the careers of top-performing dance professionals for more than 30 years in East Harlem.

Acclaimed for her ability to seamlessly integrate traditional dances with hip-hop and other street dance styles has made her a force in the industry. Recently, Violeta choreographed (and KR3TS dancers performed) dance scenes in Lin Manuel’s “In The Heights” movie. 

She has created work for top artists like Aventura, Prince Royce, Jill Scott, Joe, Omarion, Millie Quezada, Jim Jones, Shenseea, TKA, Coro, Lissette Melendez, El General.

In 2012, Violeta won a Latin Grammy Award for “Best Choreography Flash Mob” (Verizon FiOS), a 2012 Bessie Award for “Special Achievement in Dance,” was one of seven women honored with a 2012 MamásLatinas Award. 

Through KR3Ts, Violeta has trained more than 5000 students in hip-hop, mambo, African, Latin, house, hustle, ballet, bachata, and many other styles of dance. The artistic development students receive through KR3Ts has catapulted many careers as professional choreographers and dancers. KR3Ts alumni have performed on world tours with artists such as Beyoncé, Rihanna,Chris Brown, Pitbull, Jennifer Lopez, Usher, Kanye West, Kelly Rowland, Missy Elliot, Lady Gaga, Jason Derulo, Azalea Banks, Cardi B, 50cents, and Arianna Grande.

Her unwavering commitment to dance and community empowerment has earned Galagarza award recognitions from former New York State Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV, a “Commendation Award” from former New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, New York Congressman Charles B. Rangel and many more.

Photo credit: Monica Hahn

Www.kr3ts.com

x (they/themme) is a TRANSdisciplinary artist, choreographer, and curator. x has presented installation, painting, video, and live performance in Detroit, MI; Budapest, HU; Ithaca, NY; and NYC (including Dixon Place, Judson Church, Satellite Art Club, Honey’s Bar, and Starr Bar). They founded the artivist collective, {amdpc}, which operated from 2019-2021. With {amdpc}, x directed, choreographed, produced, and performed as a soloist in their original protest-production, The Contemplative Garden: Nature is Healing (10 Rajas, 11 Feathers, and a Dozen White Kelly’s) in October 2020 at Le Petit Versailles Garden as part of Allied Productions, Inc. 2020-2021 season. Recent notable accomplishments include: City Artist Corps grant, LiftOff Residency at New Dance Alliance, Fellowship with The Performance Project @ University Settlement, and Needing It-a queer performance residency-with Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX). As a curator, x is concerned about diversity and the empowerment of artist-humans of systemically marginalized identities. x’s first publicly curated exhibition, “who is me?”, was on view at the Tompkins County Public Library in 2018, focused on the intersectionality of artists who had multiple marginalized identities; additional curatorial credits include, co-curator with Stigma Unbound for “delicate wash cycle”, the virtual festival fundraiser, “Soft Pallette”, and the January 2020 web gallery, “VIRAL: A Contagious Kiss, a Transmittable Video” presented by Visual AIDS.

https://x-itsjustx.com

An anthropologist, writer and artist, Abou Farman is author of On Not Dying: Secular Immortality in the Age of Technoscience (2020, Minneapolis: Univ. Minn. Press) and Clerks of the Passage (2012, Montreal: Linda Leith Press). He is Associate Professor of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research and founder of Art Space Sanctuary as well as the Shipibo Conibo Center of NY.

Photo credit: Abou Farman

https://www.newschool.edu/nssr/faculty/abou-farman/

Alia Lahlou (she/her/hers) engages individuals and groups to achieve more connection, honesty, and depth, in service to holistic social change and liberation. Her work has taken her around the world and focuses on conflict transformation and mediation; leadership development; collaborative workplaces; identity; processes of deep listening, visioning, and reflection; and community building.

Outside of IISC, Alia is a core member of the facilitation team at YES!, an organization working at the meeting point of personal, interpersonal, and systemic change. At the root of all her work is a dedication to creating brave spaces for people to grow and to learn/ unlearn in community.

Alia grew up in Morocco and has degrees in international relations from Brown University and Al Akhawayn University, though she learned everything she knows outside the classroom. She is deeply inspired by the life and work of James Baldwin, particularly his simultaneous and uncompromised commitment to both justice and to love. Alia strives to walk through the world with authentic attention to both.

Things that make her happy include being on a plane, her color-coded home library, babies, and dance parties.

Photo credit: Jovan Julien

Choreographer, designer, and artist-engineer: Laurel is a transdisciplinary artist making work which imagines new kinds of experience, reinterprets traditional stories, and questions cultural assumptions. Her performing arts career began in music before serendipity brought her to dance, where she found a discipline combining her lifelong loves of athleticism and art. Featuring synthesistic mythology and partnering, her work includes both traditional choreography and novel ways of extending and creating art through technology and design; in the creation of worlds and products experienced, installed, embodied, or virtual. Whether beginning in the studio or with code, her art is grounded in and enriched by liminality, the in-between, and arises from her experience as a queer and genderqueer disabled woman and understanding of disability and access as aesthetic forces.

Laurel began her dance career with Full Radius Dance in 2004 and is part of the disabled artists’ collective Kinetic Light, where in addition to choreographic collaboration and performance in such award-winning works as DESCENT she contributes production design and leads both access and technical research and innovation, including projects such as Audimance and Access ALLways, a holistic approach to equitable accessibility in the arts informed by user experience and hospitality. Co-founder and CTO of CyCore Systems, she brings two decades of expertise in UI/X and product architecture to both technological and artistic work to create impactful experiences, and is also the founder and director of Rose Tree Productions, an Atlanta-based nonprofit.

Photo credit: Robert Kim

Milton X. Trujillo (he/him) is a chronically ill artist, community worker and illegalized person who for now holds DACA, who migrated 23 years ago from Quito, Ecuador, as a result of displacement and was raised in Corona and Jackson Heights. He survives here to create, organize and dream big dreams of radical collective autonomy and solidarity in his communities and beyond with Centro Corona, a local intergenerational and volunteer run community center for and by working class and low income immigrant families of all kinds. When he’s not writing poetry, reading, watching something, talking with people, filming or daydreaming, he’s thinking about connections to land and memory. He has been actively organizing in Corona and with Centro since 2015, taking part of its leadership committees and support of Centro’s fundraising efforts, political education, interpretation, crisis response and intergenerational care work as well as being part of artist collectives such as Un Colectivo Recuerda. His community work as well as cultural work is to engage local community members with the intention to first and foremost fight isolation and alienation, as well as creating and sustaining spaces that welcome intimacy, popular, political and alternative educational models for reflection and action.
He is currently a community fellow at the New School Mellon Initiative for Inclusive Faculty Excellence Fellowship and works as a freelance filmmaker and Spanish-English interpreter.

Photo credit: Dominique Hernandez

Alex Goleman completed his BBA in International Business and BA in German from Hofstra University, and has taken MBA courses from Baruch University. He got his start in arts administration through Pentacle’s internship program where he became passionate about using his business and professional skills to help others create art. Since joining Pentacle in 2014, Alex has provided fiscal administration for dozens of artists and dance entities in the NYC area as well as across the country. As Director of Fiscal Services, he is responsible for managing the department, training new fiscal staff, and setting up new artists’ accounts. Under his leadership, Pentacle’s Fiscal Services have seen unprecedented growth in the number of artists using the services, particularly fiscal administration and the comprehensive fiscal sponsorship programs, Foundation for Independent Artists (FIA) and FIA Projects.

Alex has given presentations and workshops on fiscal sponsorship and financial topics at APAP and Gibney Dance, and he was a participant in DanceNYC's study, "NYC's Foreign Born Dance Workforce," providing insight and data from Pentacle’s fiscal sponsorship programs.

Photo credit: Pentacle

pentacle.org

Brittany Couch holds a BA in Entertainment & Media Studies and a certificate in Music Business from The University of Georgia. Prior to working at Pentacle she was the manager of Dancefx Inc and ALDEN MOVES Dance Theater, where she was able to build the design and copywriting skills that are now the focus of her work at Pentacle. Brittany has several years of experience as a dance instructor, a post-production assistant for documentary films, a dance booking coordinator, and a stage manager for national touring dance competitions. She brings a steadfast enthusiasm for connecting arts organizations with the tools and resources they need to empower their artistry.

Key Areas of Expertise: Marketing & Design

Photo credit: James Keller

www.pentacle.org

Chris Bastardi is co-founder of BARO Strategies. From infrastructure, manufacturing, and development to healthcare, gaming, and more, Chris has spent the past two decades leading or joining some of the most consequential public affairs campaigns in New York and across the nation. He has also managed electoral campaigns for both Republican and Democratic candidates at the federal, state, and local level.

His experience includes seeing clients through crises such as active shooter situations, corporate malfeasance cases, product recalls, and criminal and civil court proceedings.

Prior to establishing BARO Strategies, Chris headed the Public Affairs & Crisis practice at Sunshine Sachs Morgan & Lylis. There, he oversaw both proactive and reactive crisis efforts for corporations, organizations, and individuals, including politicians, celebrities, executives, and activists. While at Edelman, Chris founded and led the real estate team at the firm’s New York office.

Earlier in his career, Chris served as Director of Public Affairs and Communications for New York State Senator and Health Committee Chair Kemp Hannon (R). In that role, he supported efforts to enact statewide health policies, responded to a MRSA outbreak, and managed New York’s transition away from hospitals and toward urgent care facilities.

Chris earned his B.A. from Fordham University and his M.A. from New York University. He serves on the board of Dance/NYC and as a member of the New York City Youth Board.

Photo credit: CId Roberts Photography

Clarissa Soto Josephs began working at Pentacle in 2011 after earning dual degrees in Dance Performance and Entrepreneurship with a concentration in Legal Studies from Hofstra University. In 2016 she earned an MBA degree from Quinnipiac University, and was named one of the New York Hispanic Coalition’s “40 Under 40 Rising Stars” in the same year. A staff member of Pentacle for over ten years, Clarissa has worked in the Fiscal and Education & Outreach Departments providing direct services to over one hundred artists, training hundreds of interns and fellows in arts administration, and developing innovative ways to effectively serve young artists through Pentacle’s services and programs. In July 2021, Clarissa was appointed Executive Director of Pentacle, the first BIPOC woman and the first non-founder to hold this top leadership role at the organization.

Clarissa specializes in financial education, strategy, leadership, and overall infrastructure support. She has led professional development workshops at the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP) conference, Dance/NYC’s annual Symposium, Actor’s Equity, and Gibney Dance’s Learning & Leadership Studio Workshop, to name a few, and served on grant panels of major foundations. Today she is proud of her work restructuring Pentacle’s Internship Program, growing Pentacle’s Fiscal Services, and is excited to take on her new role as Executive Director to help more artists in the performing arts community.

Photo courtesy Pentacle

http://www.pentacle.org

Hollis Headrick is a consultant for arts, education and philanthropic organizations focusing on program development, evaluation and strategic planning. His clients have included the Brooklyn Academy of Music, League of American Orchestras, Lifetime Arts, Lincoln Center Education, Pentacle, National Guild for Community Arts Education, NYC Department of Education, The New York Community Trust, Settlement Music School, Third Street Music School Settlement, Wallace Foundation, and the Washington State Arts Commission among others.

From 2003-06 he was the Director of the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall and managed all education activities. He was the founding Executive Director of the Center for Arts Education (CAE) from 1996-2003, a public-private initiative with New York City government and the Annenberg Foundation to restore arts education in City public schools. During his tenure, CAE received the New York Governor’s Arts Award. From 1990-96 he was Director of the Arts in Education Program at the New York State Council on the Arts. Hollis received the Arts Management Excellence Award from the New York City Arts and Business Council in 2002.

He received a B.A. from the University of Missouri and studied percussion at the Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory. He plays drums with jazz, pop, and theatre groups in the US and Europe and has performed at the Apollo Theater, BAM, Lincoln Center, Knitting Factory, and at many clubs and corporate events. He serves on the board of directors of the Creative Music Studio, Woodstock, New York, and the Irondale Ensemble Project, and PLG Arts, both in Brooklyn.

Photo credit: Sonnet Takahisa

Jenny Thompson is a nonprofit professional with over a decade of diverse experience in the cultural sector. She joined Gibney in 2018 and collaborates closely with CEO Gina Gibney on organizational priorities, strategy, and advancement, in addition to leading Gibney’s COVID-19 reopening efforts.

Prior, Jenny served as Director of Madison Square Boys & Girls Club’s $90M dollar capital/endowment campaign. Her career began at RIOULT Dance New York, where she grew into the Director of Development role, before joining the consulting firm, DUNCH, to work on a range of fundraising, campaign management, and strategic planning projects for 20+ NYC dance, theater, music, and arts clients.

Since 2008, Jenny has been published in multiple performance publications as a contributing writer and in 2016 she collaborated with a team of scholars in the field of arts entrepreneurship to develop a course/web-based resource launched by DePauw University’s 21st Century Musician Initiative. She has also served as a long-time volunteer teacher at Groove With Me, a free dance center for girls in East Harlem, proudly joining its Board in 2020, and now chairing its Board Development Committee. 

Jenny is a lifelong dance lover who earned her M.A. in Arts Administration through the University of Kentucky’s online graduate program. She also holds a B.A. in Dance Studies, Choreography, and Writing about Performance from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.

Photo credit: Julia Vickers

https://www.gibneydance.org/

Julian serves a broad range of creative clients including artists, entertainers, and digital influencers, providing comprehensive financial education, planning, and wealth management. Julian’s clients include multi-platinum selling musicians and producers, award winning actors, directors and choreographers as well as trailblazers in the NFT and crypto landscape. In addition to his private client work, Julian provides financial education and literacy seminars to arts grant recipients and clients of arts non-profit organizations.

Julian has been named a ‘Top-100 Financial Advisor’ by Investopedia, honored as one of the top financial advisors under 40 by American Bankers Association, and was a contributing writer for New York Foundation for the Arts book, ‘The Profitable Artist,’ penning three chapters focusing on personal finance for creatives. Julian has been featured in Business Insider, Barron's, US News & World Report, Investopedia and many other publications.

Photo credit: Ellen Wolff Photography

https://www.julianschubach.com/

Nathalie Matychak brings a decade of experience in the performing arts field to her new role at Georgia Tech Arts. Most recently, she was the Booking Associate for the Southern region at Pentacle, an arts management non-profit organization, where she represented a diverse roster of dance and theater companies. She has also created her own dance works for the stage and screen since 2010, and co-founded an emerging female choreographers project in 2013. She holds a BFA in Dance Performance & Choreography from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

Photo credit: Nathalie Matychak

www.arts.gatech.edu

Niya Nicholson is a justice driven, creatively inclined nonprofit arts leader with 8 years of advancement expertise–namely, strategic fundraising and marketing coupled with business, leadership & program development. A native New Yorker raised in Harlem, Niya studied dance at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School and obtained her B.A. in 2014 from Vassar College.

Niya’s career began in 2015, supporting both nonprofits and individual artists/collectives. Prior to the public launch of MOVE|NYC| in 2015, Niya served the organization as its sole volunteer administrator and has since served as its Managing Director who is responsible for the nonprofit’s growth and thriveability, including the acquisition of its 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, 11 Board of Directors, and rising from a $25K to ~$700K operating budget. Niya's prior positions include Director of Development of the José Limón Dance Foundation and previously Development Manager at Gibney, bringing 6 new high tech studios and an elevator to fruition.

Concurrently, Niya is Board Chair of MICHIYAYA Dance. Niya is also an inaugural and 5th year member of Dance/NYC’s Symposium Programming Committee and has been featured as a 2-time SMART Bar Consultant and 2018 session speaker. She was the Co-Chair for the 2017-18 Dance/NYC Junior Committee. Niya was selected as a 2018-19 Dance/USA Institute for Leadership Training mentee (9% acceptance rate) and subsequently a featured speaker at the 2019 Dance/USA Conference.

Photo credit: Lelund Thompson

https://www.movenyc.nyc/niya-nicholson

Sandy Garcia became Director of Booking at Pentacle in 2016, after almost two decades of experience working at presenting organizations, artist management companies and with internationally renowned artists in dance, theater, visual performance art and music. Prior to joining Pentacle she was a Booking Representative, International Tour Coordinator, and Director of Administration at Rena Shagan Associates, Inc. where she represented a roster of artists including Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, SITI Company and Martha Graham Dance Company, among others. In 2020 she served as the Agents Managers Promoters and Producers Council Chair at Dance/USA and has been an active participant in Equitable Contracting efforts, serving in subcommittees alongside fellow dance colleagues at Dance/USA and Creating New Futures and participating on panels at the Western Arts Alliance and Arts Midwest conferences, APAP, IPAY, NAPAMA and NPN.

Photo credit: Pentacle

https://www.pentacle.org/

A. Browne Esq. is an intellectual property, entertainment, and business lawyer. Adjckwc (pronounced A-Zha-Ko) is passionate about helping people protect their legacy through ownership and the creation of strong legal relationships. Her goal is always to provide the best legal representation for your creative endeavors, both tangible and intangible. She loves dance, music, literature, film and working with the creatives that bring those genres to life.

Photo credit: @reflexion.raw

www.lawwhereyouare.com

Carol has always loved the arts. She majored in English as an undergraduate, graduating Phi Beta Kappa with Honors in English. She went on to teach in a univerisity high school where she taught classes in literature and Greek mythology. After law school, Carol began counseling artists who lived in her building in the East Village and began teaching Artists' Rights at the School of Visual Arts. She meets her artist/creator clients where they live and work, including the stoop of her East Village building, a gallery in Sag Harbor, or an artists' studio in Tribeca. She continues to counsel creator clients in NYC and the East End of Long Island, provide educational programs for artists, and teach Artists'Rights at the School of Visual Arts. Carol is active in the New York City Bar Association's Art Law Committee, the New York State Bar Association's Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Section where she co-chairs the Fine Arts and Pro Bono Committees, and the East Hampton Arts Council.

Photo credit: Durrell Godfrey

www.carolsteinbergesq.com

Cheryl L. Davis is General Counsel of the Authors Guild, where she oversees the organization’s legal affairs, including its in-house corporate affairs and management of literary estates. She also writes about copyright and intellectual property and participates in domestic and international public speaking engagements on those topics.
She is a graduate of Princeton and Columbia Universities and a former partner at Menaker & Herrmann LLP, where her practice focused on counseling clients on intellectual property issues and litigating copyright and trademark cases. She holds leadership positions in the following legal organizations: ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law (Literary Works Committee Chair), ABA Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Forum (Arts and Museums Vice Chair), New York State Bar Association, Entertainment Arts and Sports Law Section (Diversity Committee Co-Chair), Dramatists Guild Legal Defense Fund (Board member). In her copious spare time, she is an award-winning playwright and television writer.

Photo credit: Menaker & Hermann LLP

www.authorsguild.org and www.cldplay.com

Over the course of more than two decades as a prosecutor and corporate attorney, Deborah has worked to effectively enforce the rights of American creators and inventors in both the public and private sectors.

As head of global intellectual property enforcement at ViacomCBS – whose brands include CBS, Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, BET, CMT and Paramount – she developed and implemented anti-piracy protocols to protect music, television, digital and consumer products properties.
Prior to joining ViacomCBS, Deborah worked for five years at the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and seven years as an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia. While serving as a prosecutor, she supervised 35 attorneys and the litigation of 65,000 cases annually. She also maintained a personal caseload of high-profile major felony cases.

Areas of expertise are intellectual property, content protection/anti-piracy, copyright.

Photo credit: Deborah Robinson, Esq.

Law School Attended: Fordham University Class of 1984 J.D.

University Attended:

Johns Hopkins University
University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business Class of 1977 B.S.

Associations & Memberships:

The Association of the Bar of the City of New York (Member, Entertainment Law Section
Co-Chair, The Theatre and Performing Arts Section and Entertainment and Sports Law Section)
New York State Bar Association (Co-Chair)
The League of Professional Theatre Women (Member, Board of Governors).

Languages: French and Hungarian

Practice for over 35 years in entertainment law in NYC. Please see my website for further details.

Photo credit: NYCBA

www.DianeKrausz.com

Since its inception, I have been honored to be Chair of the Board of Directors of Dance/NYC. A long-standing New York Super Lawyer, I have a wide range of experience in corporate, copyright, and trademark law, with clients that/who encompass a large spectrum of the business and entertainment world, including established and new ventures, individuals, creators, and both for-profit and not-for-profit entities. I have extensive experience with contracts, licensing, digital issues, Trademark Law, Copyright Law, Intellectual Property, and all aspects of running a business. I optimize legal and business affairs for individuals, startups, and businesses of all sizes.

My goal as an attorney is to help resolve your legal and business affairs issues, enabling you to do what it is that you do best; running and growing your business/brand, acquiring deals and investors, creating and acquiring commissions, and moving forward.

My approach is to listen carefully to you to determine how we can best work together in order to accomplish your needs. I advocate and negotiate on your behalf and make sure that all of your questions and issues are properly addressed.

I take a “bird’s eye” view of your situation and work to address your legal needs. In addition, I often act as a sounding board for non-legal issues, especially those that are crucial to big-picture decisions. My focus is on you as a whole, rather than as a single legal issue.

Elissa D. Hecker Esq. is a New Yorker for Dance

eheckeresq.com

Ethan Bordman an entertainment attorney who represents authors, screenwriters, producers, directors, and actors, guiding them through the legal and business matters they face in bringing their dreams to the screen. Before starting his legal practice, Ethan was with AFTRA (American Federation of TV and Radio Artists), a performers union, during which time he worked on film and television projects with networks including ABC, CBS, FOX, TNT, and Lifetime Networks.

Ethan has authored articles and been a source on entertainment law in publications including The New York State Bar Association Journal, The New York State Bar Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Journal, The Washington Lawyer, The Chicago Bar Magazine, The American Bar Association, and The Hollywood Reporter.

He is the Chairperson of the New York State Bar Association Entertainment, Arts and Sport Law committee.

Photo credit: Ethan Bordman

Innes Smolansky is an entertainment attorney specializing in representing production companies, distribution companies, writers, authors, directors, performers, visual artists and composers in international co-productions, independent motion picture production, documentaries, television, theater, book publishing and personal management deals. Ms. Smolansky holds degrees from Brown University (B.A.), the University of Pennsylvania (J.D.); and the University of Paris X (Diplome D'Etudes Juridiques Europeennes et Internationales).

Photo credit: Innes Smolansky

Merlyne Jean-Louis is the founder of Jean-Louis Law, a New York-based virtual law firm that focuses on business and entertainment law. A former dancer, she uses her legal and creative knowledge to help transform her clients (content creators, influencers, creatives and entrepreneurs) into CEOs via contract, trademark, copyright, and business law.

Merlyne is also a dance law commentator. She has discussed copyright law as it relates to choreography on CBS, The Verge, Marketplace Tech and the podcasts Poplaw and Carry on Friends. She also was mentioned in the book Choreographing Copyright: Race, Gender and Intellectual Property Rights in American Dance.

Merlyne received her J.D. from Duke Law School and B.A., cum laude, in Psychology and French, minor in Pre-Business Studies from NYU. She is admitted to practice in New York and California. She is also a member of the Entertainment Arts Sport Law (EASL) Section of the NYSBA and the Black Entertainment and Sports Lawyers Association (BESLA).

For more information about Merlyne and her practice and a free business checklist, visit www.jllaw.net.

Photo credit: Joe Jenkins

www.jllaw.net

Experienced licensing and technology transactions attorney, specializing in software, technology and media development and licensing, as well as associated privacy and regulatory issues. Mchael's experience includes working within law firm and in house legal teams, as well as nine years as the solo GC of an industry leading organization.

Photo credit: Michael Burke

I have been practicing intellectual property law for over a half century, protecting and defending the patents, trademarks and copyrights of companies and individuals in the federal district and circuit courts of appeal as well as representing those companies and individuals who have been charged with violations of the intellectual property rights of others.

Photo credit: Philip H. Gottfried

www.arelaw.com

Rosemarie Tully focuses her law practice on advising producers, creators, and talent in entertainment-related matters involving independent film, music, literary works, copyright, publishing, and corporate/business organization and operation. Her clients include Grammy Award recipients, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees, award-winning independent Film Producers, Screenwriters, published Authors, major league Sports Figures. Involved in bar associations and the community, Ms. Tully is a past Chair of the Entertainment, Arts & Sports Law Section of the New York State Bar Association, a Co-Chair of its Annual Music Business Law Conference, a member of its CLE Committee, an adjunct professor of Entertainment Law, a member of New York Women in Film, and a speaker at industry, business, and community events.

Photo credit: Len Marks Photography

www.tullylaw.com

Angel Kaba is an International artistic director and award-winning choreographer based in Brooklyn, New York. Angel has more than 15 years of experience in art production, youth development, and women empowerment. Angel holds an honor BA in Marketing Management from the Brussels Business School. Currently, she is a professor at Rider University, a faculty member at Broadway Dance Center, Alvin Ailey Extension, and Steps on Broadway. Angel is an NYFA alumni from IAP (Immigrant Artist Program), a board member on the Steps Support Black Artists (SSBA), supported by Steps Beyond foundation in New York City to empower Black voices in the arts. Angel is also the founder of the platform Afro’Dance New York, created in 2016 to celebrate diversity, community, and global culture. As a well-respected African Caribbean woman from The Republique Democratique of Congo and Martinique, Angel is passionate about uplifting black experiences and stories from around the globe.

Photo credit: Pixcp.com

www.angelkaba.org

One of UK’s top choreographers, dance artist, teacher, mentor and advocate for women in dance. Olu Alatise is the founder of Afroqueens dance company and Afroqueens dance camp which has toured around Europe. Olu has choreographed and worked with artists such Mr Eazi, Shaybo, SteffLonDon, Jason Derulo, Sports Direct X Adidas and many more.
Olu’s passion for teaching has allowed her to teach and mentor young aspiring and professional dancers providing them with tools to navigate the professional dance industry not only with dance skill but work ethic, values, morals and forward planning for longevity.

Photo credit: Nik Pate

www.misslulucreates.com