Michael Manswell, Artistic Director, Teaching Artist, Choreographer, Singer began his performance life as a storyteller at Arts Festivals in his native Trinidad & Tobago, winning many prizes and awards. He studied music at St Mary’s College and at Brooklyn College (CUNY). As a singer he has toured Europe, the UK, and the Caribbean and has performed as a soloist in many productions of opera and oratorio including Dido & Aeneas, The Marriage of Figaro, Die Fledermaus, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Handel’s Messiah, Missa Criolla and Missa Luba. He studied dance at the Trinidad Dance Theater with Dr. Eugene Joseph training in Modern, Ballet, Jazz, Ballroom, and Folkloric styles. Michael worked with Geoffrey Holder on “Dougla II” and “La Valse des Bakas” for TDT and toured with the company in the USA and the Caribbean. A prolific choreographer, he has created several works currently in the repertoire of Something Positive Inc, the performing company he now directs. He has performed in Costa Rica, Belize and Trinidad & Tobago, Morocco and Cote d'Ivoire. Mr. Manswell presents lectures and workshops in dance, music, and traditional religious practice. One of “Brooklyn’s Black Men of Distinction 2000” and one of “Brooklyn’s Black Dance Kings (2010)”, Michael is currently an Adjunct Prof (Dance) at Lehman College (CUNY) and teaches for Something Positive Inc., Purelements An Evolution in Dance, the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI), and E.M Techniques.

http://www.somethingpositiveinc.org

Ximena Garnica is a Colombian-born artist based in Brooklyn, working in the visual and performing arts fields as a multidisciplinary artist, choreographer, director, curator, and teacher. With her partner, Shige Moriya, Ximena is the co-founder and co-artistic director of the arts organization LEIMAY and the multidisciplinary performance group the LEIMAY Ensemble. The word LEIMAY is a Japanese term symbolizing the moment of change as in the moment between darkness and the light of dawn, or the transition from one era to the other. Their work is rooted in questions of being, perception, interdependency, and coexistence. She has been nominated for the USA Artists Fellowship and the Herb Alpert Award, and she was recently a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California Riverside. Her works have been presented at leading arts venues such as BAM, HERE, The Brooklyn Museum, Japan Society, The Czech Center New York, The New Museum, The Watermill Center, The Asian Museum of San Francisco, Carnegie Mellon University; and in large and small public spaces such as Times Square, NYRP Community Gardens, and NYC streets, among many other spaces in the US and abroad in Japan, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Mexico, and Colombia. Garnica and Moriya’s practice is rooted in what they called “the entanglement”, their values are centered on practicing harmony in the circulations of powers and through the act of creation they are constantly rediscovering their standing point. Through their projects and works, they offer the spectator multiple entry points to engage with questions of being, interdependence, and coexistence.

www.leimay.org

Rokafella is a multi faceted Afro Latin artist who is internationally known for her Breakdance/Street Dance mastery. She co-founded NYC's only Breakdance Theater company Full Circle Souljahs with her husband street dance Pioneer and Historian BBoy Kwikstep. She is currently a Part Time professor at The New School and she offers Classic Hip hop dance classes to beginners at various studios.

www.larokasoul.com

Sydney Skybetter: Hailed by Dance Magazine as “One of the most influential people in dance today,” Sydney’s work has been performed at such venues as The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Jacob’s Pillow and The Joyce Theater. He has consulted on issues of change and technology for The National Ballet of Canada, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Hasbro, New York University and The University of Southern California, among others. A sought-after speaker, he has lectured on the relationship of dance history to emerging surveillance technologies at Harvard , South by Southwest Interactive, Yale, Mozilla, and Stanford. He is a Public Humanities Fellow and Lecturer at Brown University where he researches the problematics of human computer interfaces and mixed reality systems. He has served as a Grant Panelist for the National Endowment of the Arts, is a founding member of the Guild of Future Architects, and is the winner of a RISCA Fellowship in Choreography from the State of Rhode Island. He received his MFA in Choreography from New York University.

https://www.skybetter.org

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

Jerron Herman is an interdisciplinary artist creating through dance, text, and visual storytelling. He's based in New York City. 

Jerron was born and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area where he began his career pursuing performance and playwriting. In 2009 he moved to New York City to study Dramatic Writing at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Continuing his dream of crafting stories to be performed, he then studied Media, Culture and the Arts, with an emphasis in Art History and Playwriting at The King's College where he graduated in 2013. While in school he was "discovered" by a choreographer who led him to audition for Heidi Latsky, quickly becoming a key member of her company, Heidi Latsky Dance. Jerron has performed at venues like Lincoln Center and The Whitney Museum of Art, resulting in the New York Times calling him, “the inexhaustible Mr. Herman.” As a strong advocate for disabled athletes and performers, he has been a featured model for both Tommy Hilfiger and Nike.

His performances have begun to shed light on an often overlooked niche of performance. He currently sits on the Board of Trustees at Dance/USA . As a writer, Jerron was a finalist for the inaugural Lark Play Development Lab/Apothetae Playwriting Fellowship, 2017. He is a 2020 Disability Futures Fellow, a joint initiative of the Andrew W. Mellon and Ford Foundation, respectively.

http://www.jerronherman.com

Sonali Skandan is a passionate and accomplished artist of Bharatanatyam, and represents a generation of artists that are dedicated to the art outside of its homeland. Sonali has been an NYC resident for almost 30 years, and her work reflects the urban, dynamic and diverse atmosphere inherent in the city. This hybridity allows her to infuse her art with varying sensibilities and perspectives with which she creates works that are unique and fresh. Sonali’s  vision is to create work that expresses the evolving nature of Bharatanatyam as an art form that is rich in technique, history and culture but also has the capacity to transform and transcend boundaries of geography, language and time.Sonali is the Artistic Director of Jiva Performing Arts, where she teaches and creates engaging dance productions to increase the accessibility of the classical arts, and Jiva Dance, a professional dance company presenting compelling works based on Bharatanatyam.

http://www.jivadance.org/ | http://www.jivaperformingarts.org/

Lauren Slone (She/Her/Hers) has created grant programs, arts education curricula, youth mentorship programs, presentation platforms, and performance projects that democratize public access to arts and culture throughout the United States.

Expertise: systems design, grant making practice, mentorship, research. 

https://lauren-slone.com/nationalgrantmaking

Alison T. McNeil is a nationally recognized award-winning strategic thinker and creative entrepreneur with nearly 20 years of experience in performing arts and education. She leads with the intention of creating resources, removing roadblocks and designing roadmaps to make arts and culture accessible to all. With technical expertise in nonprofit management, grantmaking, assessment and program evaluation, Alison has led multi-million-dollar change efforts that have directly informed policy, grantmaking, and strategic partnerships. Her efforts have also fortified leadership and secured grants that expand equity and access for women, emerging leaders and communities of color.

www.mcearts.com

Tara Sheena is a dancer, writer, and independent arts manager based in Brooklyn, NY. As a performer, she has collaborated on new projects with Catherine Galasso, Ivy Baldwin. Gillian Walsh, Leyya Mona Tawil, Nadia Tykulsker, Ursula Eagly, Lindsey Dietz Marchant, stormy budwig, and Marion Spencer. Recently, she was featured in the pages of Dance Magazine (May 2020) and named as a recipient of the 2020 Emerging Artist Award from the University of Michigan. Her original writings have been supported by Gibney, Dance/NYC, the Knockdown Center, and Critical Correspondence, among others. She was born in Detroit, raised in Michigan, and graduated from the University of Michigan in 2011.