Guest Artists

Marquisa “Miss Prissy” Gardner

Discovered in greater Los Angeles, Marquisa "Miss Prissy" Gardner is one of the most well-rounded entertainers the south side of Hollywood has ever seen. She is trained in all areas of dance, from ballet to hip-hop, and has vocal abilities that have been compared to the likes of Brandy, Keyshia Cole, Mariah Carey and eight-time Grammy winner Lauryn Hill. Not only does she have the chops to kick through pop and hip-hop’s doors, she also has the edgy twist that is sure to get any music head out of their seat. Though tours with Snoop Dogg, the Game and Madonna didn’t come until after her appearance in the 2005 film Rize, which chronicles the lives and competitions of some of South Central Los Angeles’s top krump dancers, Miss Prissy (called “the Queen of Krump” in the film) was already a well-respected dancer and teacher in her own neighborhood before Rize was ever shown. Classically trained, Miss Prissy started lessons at the age of four, learning everything from ballet to jazz to tap. She discovered hip-hop dancing at 13 and enjoyed its expressiveness, but didn’t really begin to take her art seriously until after high school, when she began teaching it to kids. It was at one of these lessons that a student introduced her to krump, the new form of dance in the late ’90s that was becoming popular in L.A., and brought her to a session. Miss Prissy was struck by its wild energy, and soon joined in on the performances and competitions herself, her natural talent and creativity making her one of its stars. In 2006, wanting to focus on her own musical career, Miss Prissy declined Madonna’s offer to continue dancing in her tour and began pursuing music. She is currently running her own production company and released her second mixtape entitled The Diamond in the Ruff in December 2012. In 2012, Miss Prissy also started a street dance company called The Underground, featuring Lil “C”, another star of Rize and founder of krump, and a guest judge on FOX’s So You Think You Can Dance.

K.J. Holmes

K.J. Holmes has been practicing improvisation as process and performance since 1981. These practices have deeply informed her journey as a dance artist as well as an actor, vocalist, writer and teacher. An avid improviser and creator of solo/duo and ensemble work, she has studied with the early pioneers of contact improvisation, including Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith and Daniel Lepkoff and has also been very influenced by the Tuning Score of Lisa Nelson, Body Mind Centering® and the work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Ideokinesis with Andre Bernard, Meisner acting work with Terry Knickerbocker, voice and singing with Richard Armstrong, Barbara Maier Gustern and Samita Singha, among others. Holmes is a certified yoga teacher through her studies with Sondra Loring, and a certified Ayurvedic Holistic Health Counselor through her studies with Dr. Naina Marballi. She teaches at NYU/Experimental Theatre Wing and Movement Research in NYC, as well as traveling nationally and internationally teaching, performing and creating. Holmes has performed most recently in the work of filmmaker/artist Matthew Barney, dancer/writer Karinne Keithley Seyers, a recent music video of Mitski, as well as her own solo work 900 Bees are Humming. She is currently conducting a new ensemble piece, Blu/print, begun Fall 2023 with the mentorship of composer/instrumentalist Henry Threadgill through a grant from the NY State Dance Force.

Jeanine Durning

Jeanine Durning is an Alpert Award winning choreographer and performer from New York whose work has been described by The New Yorker as having “the potential for philosophical revelation and theatrical disaster.” Durning is interested in choreography as a ways and means to mobilize questions about how our basic need for connection and communication aligns, and often misaligns, with how our thinking and feeling come to form and action. She has an ongoing practice, nonstopping, which has yielded several performance works, including her solo inging (based on nonstop speaking). She has performed inging more than 50 times across the U.S., in Europe and Canada. In support of her new project Dark Matters, Durning has received residencies at Seoul Dance Center, the Rauschenberg Foundation, MANCC, and at DNK in Sofia, Bulgaria. Durning collaborated with many choreographers, including Deborah Hay since 2005, working as performer, consultant, choreographic assistant, coach and from 2011-2013, as consultant to the Motion Bank, a project of William Forsythe, on Hay’s choreographic and scoring practices. Durning has shared some of her practices all over the world and was recently guest lecturer at Smith College in Western, Massachusetts.

Stacey Allen

Stacey Allen is a performance artist, curator and advocate for arts education, educational equity and reproductive justice all while being a wife and mother to three beautiful children. Maintaining her artistic practice while navigating motherhood has come with challenges, but integrating the art of mothering with her insistence on telling Black stories through movement and material culture has been worth the while. From starting with Urban Souls Dance Company to co-founding Pretty Cultured to founding and directing Nia’s Daughters Movement Collective, her work is to be delivered back to the people. Nia’s Daughters Movement Collective received a Congressional Recognition for their mission-aligned work of creating and supporting art and wellness initiatives through the lens of Black women and girls. Allen wrote the children’s book A Little Optimism Goes a Long Way and created "The Fairytale Project," a dance theater production centering the Texas Freedom Colony, Shankleville, that is currently touring. Other recent works include "Formed in My Grandmother’s Womb" (2019), "A Single Thread Weaves a Future" (2021), and “it’s about our FREEDOM” (2022), “Aesthetic Inheritances” (2023) and more. Allen, based in Houston, holds a BA in Dance from Sam Houston State University and a MA in Cross Cultural Studies from University of Houston-Clear Lake.

Kara Beadle

Kara (they/them) is a Seattle-based movement artist, dance educator at eXitSPACE Dance and runs their own massage practice, Beadle Bodywork @beadlebodywork. As a freelance artist, Beadle has performed in works by Gender Tender, Hope Goldman, Jordan Macintosh-Hougham, LanDforms Dance, PRICEArts’ N.E.W. Dance Company, Stasia Coup and Vladimir Kremenović. They have performed in The Bridge Project, On The Boards’ NW New Works, Velocity Dance Center’s Next Fest and Portland’s Risk/Reward dance festivals.

Beadle created their work “Navel-Gazing” during Open Flight Studio’s Flight Deck Residency in 2022. This improvised dance work was performed at 18th and Union’s Portable Performance Festival and Velocity Dance Center’s Fall Kick-off: Portals. Beadle’s piece entitled “Fruit Flies” was showcased in different renditions at The Seattle International Dance Festival, eXitSPACE’s Launch, Fremont Fringe, and Cafe Racer.

As a non-binary artist, Beadle values queering dance through improvisational methods that create environments for performers to collaborate, explore and experiment in.

Blake Nellis

Blake Nellis (he/him) is an artist, educator and improviser who creates work with the body. His work is deeply rooted in human connection, physical touch and shared emotion. He originally hails from Door County, Wisconsin, and graduated from Luther College with a degree in Theatre/Dance. He is a 2019 and 2015 recipient of the MN State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant and 2013 recipient of the McKnight Foundation’s Metropolitan Regional Arts Council: Next Step Funds. He has taught and performed around the globe and has recently produced work at the Walker Art Center, Artbox, Red Eye Theatre, TEK Box, Bryant Lake Bowl Theatre and Luther College. He is a freelance photographer, choreographer and dancer. His other professional experience includes performing with Mathew Janczewski’s ARENA Dances, Live Action Set, Stuart Pimsler Dance & Theatre, Jim Lieberthal’s Footholds Project, Jane Hawley, Rosy Simas & Taja Will. His work is inspired by his experience with athletics, the circus, singing, acting, playing piano, photography and filmmaking. His favorite moments are those in which laughter reminds us that play is valuable. He strongly believes that riding a bicycle, eating good food, being curious, compassionate and creative are all integral parts of being a good artist.

slowdanger: anna thompson and taylor knight

anna thompson and taylor knight are co-founders of the Pittsburgh, PA, based multidisciplinary performance entity, slowdanger. Since 2013, they’ve fused sound and movement through improvised, contemporary and postmodern dance frameworks using found material, vocalization, emerging technology and ontological examination to engage in collaborative work. slowdanger continuously transforms its shape to adapt to a variety of different containers. Their performance work has been featured in venues ranging from proscenium theaters and galleries to nightclubs and dive bars in the production of performances, immersive experiences, soundscores, albums and open-level workshops/educational initiatives. They’ve been featured in/by Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch”, Carnegie Museum of Art, Kennedy Center for the Arts, The Warhol Museum, Usine C and more. They were 2022 awardees of the NPN Creation Fund, Mid-Atlantic Arts CONNECT and NEFA National Dance Project Production Grant for their work, SUPERCELL which premiered at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, the Flea, and Velocity Dance Center between 2023-2024. They are currently inaugural New Work Development Artists in Residence for Texas A&M’s College of Performance, Visualization, and Fine Art and adjunct faculty at Point Park University’s Conservatory of the Performing Arts.

Bebe Miller

Bebe Miller’s vision of dance resides in her faith in the moving body as a record of thought, experience and beauty. She has collaborated with artists, composers, writers and designers, along with the dancers who share her studio practice and from whom she’s learned what dancing can reveal. Her work encompasses choreography, writing, film and digital media.

A native New Yorker, she formed Bebe Miller Company in 1985; since then, the company has performed worldwide. Her work has been performed by A.I.M by Kyle Abraham, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, Oregon Ballet Theater, Boston Ballet, Philadanco and PACT Dance of Johannesburg. The company has also produced a variety of digital archive projects that share their creative practice.

Named a Master of African American Choreography by the Kennedy Center in 2005, Miller has been honored by NYC’s Danspace Project and Movement Research, received four New York Dance and Performance awards, honorary doctorates from Ursinus College and Franklin & Marshall College, and is one of the inaugural class of Doris Duke Artist Award recipients. A professor emerita at Ohio State University, she’s spending a year in a forest on Vashon Island, Wash., though her home is in Columbus, Ohio.

Kelly Todd

Kelly Ashton Todd is a director, choreographer, performing artist and environmental activist who makes work for live theater and film. Her work explores land and human exploitation, environmental politics and surrealism.

She received a BFA in modern dance and a double minor in Biology and Environmental Science from Texas Christian University and a master’s in Sustainability Leadership from Arizona State University. Todd performed with Sleep No More from 2015-2022 and graduated from the William Esper Acting Studio in 2022.

Todd’s creations have been showcased globally, earning accolades such as the NYFA Fellowship in Choreography, Emerging Choreographer Springboard Danse Montreal 2022, and the Baryshnikov BAC Open Residency 2023. Todd's award-winning "Under Review" film series has screened at more than 20 national and international film festivals. In 2023, she shared her creations and was a panelist on climate change, female empowerment and technology at the United Nations.

Matthew Henley, PhD

Matthew Henley, PhD, is associate professor in the Dance Education Program and affiliated researcher in the Arnhold Institute for Dance Education Research, Policy & Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University. Henley focuses his research on describing cognitive and social-emotional skills associated with dance education. He takes a phenomenological approach, analyzing how dancers in diverse communities describe the experience of learning concepts in the dance classroom. Henley's related interests include enactive cognition in the arts, developmental and neuroscientific approaches to embodied knowing, research methods for pedagogy, and the pedagogy of research methods.

Henley danced professionally in New York City with Sean Curran Company and Randy James Dance Works. Henley earned his MFA in Dance and his doctorate in Educational Psychology: Learning Sciences from the University of Washington. He served as associate professor of Dance at Texas Woman's University, where he coordinated the BA program and taught in the MFA and PhD programs.

Kayla Hamiton

Kayla Hamilton is a Black disabled choreographer, producer and educator originally from Texarkana, Texas, who now resides in the Bronx. For her Pillow debut, Hamilton brought her newest work, Nearly Sighted/unearthing the dark, which explores how we gather information from artistic experiences without relying on eyesight, and challenges the audience’s imagination by providing multiple ways in which to see the movement. Hamilton is a member of the 2017 Bessie Award-winning collective “the skeleton architecture, or the future of our worlds.” Her work has been presented at Gibney, Performance Space New York and New York Live Arts.

The artistic director of K Hamilton Projects announced Kinetic Light as her cooperation partner for her 2023 Pina Bausch Fellowship for Dance and Choreography. This collaboration will take place September 2023-August 2024.

Each recipient self-designs their own Pina Bausch Fellowship according to their own desires and needs. Internationally-known disability arts ensemble Kinetic Light works at the nexus of access, queerness, disability, dance and race. Though collaborating with Kinetic Light, Hamilton aims to expand her knowledge in design, organization and tech-based possibilities of dance. Both as a low-sight dancer and dance lover, Hamilton wants to experience the vibrant multiplicity of the majority sight-centered performance world. While providing Hamilton the space to test and deepen her ideas about dance and disability arts, the Kinetic Light team provides her with field learnings related to access research, culture and technology, as well as performing arts production and communications.

"It is important to me to learn from and alongside other disabled creatives as we deepen our understandings of ourselves and the world around us," Hamilton said. "It is a privilege to work with the Kinetic Light team. My work is possible due to other disabled artists who have come before me."

"I am so pleased and honored Kayla has chosen to collaborate with Kinetic Light as part of her Pina Bausch Fellowship," said Kinetic Light founder and artistic director Alice Sheppard. "Kayla's ground-breaking dance and disability arts practice is both expansive and deeply rooted in a way that I believe will shatter what we think we know about dance and sightedness. The entire Kinetic Light team is excited to work and explore with her throughout this fellowship year."

The Pina Bausch Fellowship jury noted: "Kayla's choreographic work is outstanding by the way she is creating aesthetic experiences through audio description, and, thus, expanding dance beyond the visual. Her fellowship with the disability arts ensemble Kinetic Light is an exciting partnership. This cooperation will be a great opportunity for Kayla to develop her art by further exploring and unpacking the potentialities of Audio Description as an aesthetic experience and expressive space of community and communication."

ABOUT THE PINA BAUSCH FELLOWSHIP
The Kunststiftung NRW and the Pina Bausch Foundation have been following up on Pina Bausch's credo since 2016 with a co-developed grant program and award: the Pina Bausch Fellowship for Dance and Choreography. The Fellowship supports a broad range of cooperation formats: on-site, international or local, hybrid or virtual. By offering a variety of cooperation formats, the Fellowship adapts to recipients' individual needs and interests. It provides freedom in designing cooperation formats that help them develop their unique artistic signature. The 2023 Pina Bausch Fellowship for Dance and Choreography recipients are Hamilton, Purnendra Kumar Meshram, Haman Mpadire and André Uerba. The international jury included Marc Brew, Dr. Keng Sen ONG, and Lia Rodrigues.

ABOUT KINETIC LIGHT
Founded by Alice Sheppard in 2016, Kinetic Light is a disability arts ensemble working at the intersections of disability, dance, design, identity and technology. Through nuanced investment in the histories, cultures, and artistic work of disabled and/or Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), the company promotes intersectional disability as a creative force and access as an aesthetic critical to creating transformative art and affirming the disability arts movement.

Tony “Sekou Heru” Williams

Tony “Sekou Heru” Williams is from Trenton, New Jersey. His unique dance style fuses an array of forms from Hip-Hop, House, martial arts and even fitness training.

Williams has toured with Jazzy Jeff/Fresh Prince and with Fred Ho's Voice Of The Dragon (Columbia Artist Management national tour). He has also performed with Mariah Carey in Michael Jackson's United We Stand concert, has appeared in the films Brown Sugar, Marci X, 25th Hour and in music videos including Will Smith's Ring My Bell, Aretha Franklin's Same Ol Song, MC Lyte's Ice Cream Dream and Foxy Brown/JayZ's I'll Be.

Williams choreographed Fall Out Boy's Dance Dance, which won numerous awards, including Viewer's Choice at the MTV Music Video Awards and two Teen Choice Awards. He has appeared on VH1 Fashion Awards, Soul Train and The Arsenio Hall Show. Sekou has traveled the world teaching House dance and judging organized street dance competitions, is a certified fitness instructor and has created his own dance method called POWERHOUSE DANCE Fusion Fitness. His most recent stage performance, The Greatest, with The Peggy Choy Dance Company (La Mama Theater in New York and the University of Madison in Wisconsin) examines the life and times of boxing great Muhammad Ali.

LAJAMARTIN

Influenced by cultural past and present, LAJAMARTIN aspire to create engaging live performance. Grounded in relatable themes, LM rides into imagination where anything is possible. From floor to air, a variety of dynamic movement defined by musicality and rhythm crafts the vocabulary that embodies the work’s intention. Originally composed music immerses the viewer into a specific cinematic environment from where the journeys are then limitless. Experiencing the impact of live performance that can invoke a freeing feeling of wonder is the main purpose of  LAJAMARTIN’s work.

Laja Field is a performer, teacher and creator based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Teaching at West High School as a paraprofessional, Field is also the co-director of LAJAMARTIN physical dance theatre and continues to travel with the company. Originally from Salt Lake City, Field holds a BFA in dance from the University of Utah 2012. She credits her childhood education and deep love of dance to Miss Pearl and the Life Arts Center as well as her high school dance teacher, Sofia Gorder. In college, Field performed works by Martha Graham directed by Kaye Richards, Satu Hummasti, Abby Fiat, Eric Handman and Kendra Portier among others. While in school she also performed with the company RawMoves for several years and reveled in the making and performing of “The Story of Eight.”

Field began her professional career abroad with Johannes Wieland at the Staatstheater Kassel, Germany. During almost four years at the theater she worked with many inspiring colleagues, guest teachers, rehearsals directors and guest choreographers such as Stella Zannou, Evangelos Poulinas, Ryan Mason, Michael Langeneckert, Chris Haring/Liquid Loft (for a piece also performed in Vienna for ImpulsTanz 2013) as well as the re-staging of Hofesh Schechter’s “DOG” under the direction of Sita Ostheimer. Highlights also include the creation and performing in pieces such as “Ich Bin Du,” “100,000 Superstars” and “Science!Fiction!Now!” by Johannes Wieland.

In 2015, Field relocated to NYC as a founding member of VIM VIGOR Dance Company and traveled to teach, perform and co-create throughout the U.S. and Canada for three years at Springboard Danse Montréal. Field performed shows in New York, Santa Barbara with DanceWORKS and toured to Prisma Festival in Panama.

Field has taught at Gibney Dance in NYC, NYU Tisch, Brigham Young University, University of Utah, CalArts, CSULB, UCLA, MOVE NYC, Early Mosley’s Institute of the Arts, Newcastle College, Prisma Festival in Panama, Artist Commons in Brussels, Contemporary Prostor Pro Tanec in Prague, Bad Lemons in Munich, b12 festival in Berlin and for companies Abraham in Motion and Johannes Wieland.

In 2017, Field and partner Martin Durov created LAJAMARTIN physical dance theatre and have taught, performed and/or created work in 11 countries world-wide. Field looks forward to more opportunities of bringing LAJAMARTIN’s vivacious work to life locally in SLC as well as to new communities abroad.

Martin Durov is teacher and performer was born in small town Slovakia. A push from his grandmother started him into ballroom dance at the age of six. Several years later he met a friend that encouraged him to venture into a Slovak Folklore group where he eventually became a soloist. This led him to study dance at the Conservatory J.L Bella Banska Bystricia (Slovakia) for six years. In school he was a member of the dance company that toured pieces to festivals in Slovakia, Belgium and Spain. As a student he also collaborated with Studio Tanca, the professional dance company in Banska Bystricia. In the final year of school Martin took over the role of leader for the school’s company, created several pieces and choreographed his own full evening-length graduation concert.

In 2013, Martin graduated with a DiS. art. (certified artist) and went on to join Johannes Wieland’s company in Staatstheater Kassel as a full time member for two years. In that time he had the experience of collaborating with many dancers and teachers and creating pieces by Helge Letonja, re-staging Hofesh Shechter’s DOG with the help of rehearsal director Sita Ostheimer as well as  several pieces by Johannes Wieland, totaling more than 100 shows. In 2015 Martin was invited to NYC to help found VIM VIGOR dance company, created and performed shows in NYC, Santa Barbara with DanceWORKS and toured to Panama to perform at Prisma Festival. Martin also had the opportunity to travel teaching and creating work for Lines Ballet Training Program, San Francisco Conservatory, NYU Tisch, University of Michigan and Springboard Danse Montréal. After three years living in the United States and frequently visiting Europe teaching, traveling, choreographing and performing, he developed his own voice in dance using his Slovakian Roots and passion for other dance styles. In 2017, he and partner Field founded the Physical Dance Theatre company, LAJAMARTIN.

Karen Nelson

Karen Nelson (she/her) rests playfully within dance improvisation and spiritual practice. As explorer-collaborator, teacher, maker, touring performer, author/contributor to Dancing with Dharma and Contact Quarterly she has been a mutator of the form Contact Improvisation since 1977.

She co-founded mixed-ability experiments Dance Ability and Diverse Dance Research Retreat and integrates Material for the Spine (Steve Paxton) and Tuning Scores (Lisa Nelson/Image Lab) into her physical-sensation based approach to dancing, along with investigating dominant cultural narratives and re-versioning these fictions within her own embodiment and wider community. www.explomov.weebly.com.

Her projects include Gaggle, Image Lab, Deal, Co-Brew, “pause play scrub,” Redux Forward (with K.J. Holmes), Unimaginable and CI interrogates it’s own History lec-dem participatory Jam event.

Beatrice Capote

Beatrice Capote is a Cuban-American contemporary dancer, choreographer, educator and founder of Contempo: Capotechnique Exercises. In her work, she fuses modern, ballet, African and Afro-Cuban dance techniques to support artists with building technical skills while deepening knowledge on African diaspora traditions.

Capote has served as the choreographer for Citrus, a choreopoem play (Northern Stages) and The Wedding Band Musical (Montclair State University). She received choreographic commissions from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and The Dark Elegy Project inspired by Suse Lowenstein, performed at Gibney Dance. In 2019, she was a MANCC Forward Dialogues artist in residence where she developed her most recent solo based on “Reyita, The Life of a Black Cuban Woman in the Twentieth Century” written by Maria De los Reyes Castillo Bueno. Her work has also been shown in major festivals/venues such as WestFest Dance Festival, Battery Dance Festival, BAAD! ASS Women’s Festival, Amherst College, Casita Maria!, Contemporary Dance Series at Bryant Park, Vision Festival and more.

She began her training at Alvin Ailey American Dance Center and was featured in “Attitude! Eight Young Dancers Come of Age at the Ailey School” written by Katharine Davis Fisherman. She received her AA from University of North Carolina School of the Arts, a BA in dance education and an MFA focused on Afro-Cuban dance forms from Montclair State University. During the graduate program, her MFA thesis choreography excerpt was featured on Bronx NETTV.

Capote has performed for prestigious companies such as INSPIRIT, a dance company, and Kyle Abraham/Abraham. In. Motion. She is a member of Bessie Award-winning Camille A. Brown & Dancers.

To continue her work in the Latinx artist community, she co-founded The Sabrosura Effect dance company and co-curates Pepatián’s Dancing La Botanica: La Tierra Vive project and Bronx Arts and Conversation showcase under the direction of Pepatián South Bronx.

Prior to her position at IU, she served on faculty at Montclair State University, The Ailey School, Gibney Dance, Joffrey Ballet School and as a guest artist/mentor for many universities and dance institutions.

http://www.beatricecapote.com/

Crystal Davis

Crystal U. Davis, MFA, CLMA is a dancer, movement analyst and critical race theorist. Her research explores implicit bias in dance and how privilege manifests in the body.

Her work has been published in the Journal of Dance Education, Palgrave Handbook of Race and the Arts in Education, and in her book, Dance and Belonging: Implicit Bias and Inclusion in Dance Education.

As an artist, her performances span from Rajasthani folk dance to postmodern choreography examining incongruities between what we say, what we believe and what we do. She is an assistant professor of dance performance and scholarship at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she teaches anti-racist pedagogy for dance and theater, modern technique, somatics and movement analysis.

Kayla Hamilton

Kayla Hamilton is a Texas-born, Bronx-based performance maker, dancer, educator, cultural consultant and the artistic director of K. Hamilton Projects.

Hamilton is a 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow. Her past performance work has been presented at the Whitney Museum, Gibney, Performance Space New York, New York Live Arts, Abrons Arts Center and the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD).  

Hamilton developed "Crip Movement Lab," a pedagogical framework centering cross-disability accessible movement practices that are open to every-body. She has taught dance at Sarah Lawrence College, Amherst College, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Utah and Texas Improv Festival. 

As a consultant, Hamilton has developed and implemented disability arts programming for the Mellon Foundation, ArtSpeak, Dance USA, Movement Research and The Shed. 

As a dancer, Hamilton was part of the Bessie award winning Skeleton Architecture Project. She has also danced for Maria Bauman, Sydnie L. Mosley and Gesel Mason.

Hamilton is in the process of creating a future organization centering the work of BIPOC disabled creatives, while co-leading the 10th anniversary season of Angela’s Pulse/Dancing While Black, and developing a new evening length performance set to premier in NY in 2024.

Russ Mitchell

Russ Mitchell is a Feldenkrais method practitioner and martial arts instructor.

He specializes in helping people develop physical agility and talent so that they can perform easily and without strain.

He is the author and editor of numerous books on movement and fencing.

Abdel Salaam

Abdel R. Salaam is the executive artistic director/co-founder of Forces of Nature Dance Theatre, (FONDT) founded in 1981, and is the artistic director of Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Dance Africa, originally founded by the late Chuck Davis in 1977.

Born in Harlem, New York, Salaam is a critically acclaimed choreographer. He served as a dancer, teacher and/or performing artist on five continents throughout his 52-year career in the dance world. He has received numerous awards and fellowships for excellence in dance, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the New England Foundation on the Arts, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council for Arts, the National Council for Arts and Culture, and Herbert H. Lehman College.

He and his company received the 2013 Audelco Award for Dance Company of the Year. He has served as a choreographer and/or director for the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Billie Holiday Theater, the Apollo Theater, the Winter Solstice at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the New York Musical Theater Festival, BAM, Black Dance USA and the Tennessee Performing Arts Festival.

His credits in theater, film and television include: “Measure for Measure,” New York Shakespeare Festival (Choreographer ); “Pecong,” Newark Symphony Hall (Choreographer); “TUT," New York Musical Theatre Festival, (director/choreographer); "Ebony Magic: The Life and Legend of Marie Laveau,” Aaronow Theater, (director/choreographer); “JuJu Man“, Billie holiday Theater (director/ choreographer); “ The Liberation of Mother Goose”, Billie Holiday Theater (director choreographer); “Eclipse; Visions of the Crescent and the Cross” and “Rhythm Legacy”, Tennessee Performing Arts Center (director/choreographer/artist in residence); “Free to Dance “, PBS Channel 13 (choreographer); ” The Conan O’Brien Show“, NBC Channel 4 (choreographer); “Expressions in Black; The Story of a People”, ABC Channel 7, (choreographer); “Reading Rainbow”, PBS Channel 13, (choreographer); “Talk of the Town”, WPIX Channel 11 (choreographer); “The Richard Pryor Show”, NBC Channel 4 (dancer); and “ Black Nativity” Fox Searchlight Films (performing artist). Abdel created ballets for Philadanco, Joan Miller Chamber Arts/ Dance Players, Ailey II, the Chuck Davis Dance Company, Union Dance Theater (London), Ballet Islenos (Puerto Rico), Sakoba Dance Theater (London), Muntu Dance Theater, the Nashville Ballet, the African American Dance Ensemble and Gywa Maten.

Salaam and his company have provided services in arts education and youth empowerment for students in schools K-12, colleges, universities and community-based organizations through residencies, workshops, master classes, seminars and performances through Young Audiences, Arts connection, Developing Arts of the Bronx, Restoration Youth Arts, Aaron Davis Hall, the Caribbean Cultural Center and Hospital Audiences. Salaam served on the faculties of the American Dance Festivals in the United States and Seoul, Korea, Herbert H. Lehman College, The Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, the Restoration Youth Arts Academy and the Harlem Children’s Zone. Salaam is the creator of the Kwanzaa Regeneration Night Celebration in Harlem, now 42-years old, which was inspired by the teachings of its visionary creator and founder of Kwanzaa, Dr. Maulana Karenga.

Salaam was recipient of the 2017 Bessie Award for Outstanding Production of “The Healings Sevens” and the 2019 American Dance Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in Dance. Salaam premiered his first dance film short, entitled ” Dawnfeather Rising: In the Age of MA’ AT,” on the Apollo Theater’s Virtual Kwanzaa Regeneration Night Celebration in December 2020, featuring the Forces of Nature Dance Theatre and the music of Oumou Sangare . On May 29, 2021, Salaam directed and choreographed the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s first dance film “Earth Born,” which premiered as the featured element of BAM’s 44th Annual DanceAfrica Virtual Festival entitled “Vwa Zanset Yo: Y’ap Pale N’ap Danse” (Ancestral Voices: They Speak We Dance). In the same year, the Apollo Theater commissioned him to direct and choreograph his latest dance film short entitled "Nguzo Saba,” which aired in December. This is his 17th year as the event’s artistic director. Under Salaam 's artistic direction and leadership, which is now in its seventh year, DanceAfrica received the 2021 Bessie Award for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance. The 2022 New York Dance and Performance Awards (The Bessies) nominated Salaam for Outstanding Musical Composition or Sound design for “Terrestrial Wombs.” In February 2023, Salaam will be the featured guest on CUNY Television’s multi-award winning series “Black America.”

Rosie Trump

Rosie Trump is founder and chief curator of the Third Coast Dance Film Festival, and is the choreographer/director/editor of 11 short dance films.

She is interested in the reflexive nature of the camera lens and the cinematic possibilities of digital media. Trump’s dance films screened at the San Francisco Dance Film Festival, ADFs Movies by Movers, San Souci Dance Film Festival, Light Moves, Extremely Short Shorts at the Aurora Picture Show, the Utah Dance Film Festival, and Dance Film Association’s Long Legs Short Films. She is a regular guest curator for Frame X Frame Dance Film Fest in Houston. Currently residing in Reno, NV, Trump is an associate professor of dance at the University of Nevada, Reno.

www.rosietrump.org

Danza Chikawa Conroe

https://shoutouthtx.com/meet-xochitezca-alejandra-tapia-educator-primera-palabra/
https://www.facebook.com/DanzaChikawaDance/
Motto: Education, Culture and Dance Tradition. Honoring our elders.
En honor, reconocimiento y aprecio por los abuelos que nos precedieron.

Chikawa Conroe Texas Aztec Dance is a community-based group of Conroe, Texas, that represents the modern tradition of Aztec dance. Chikawa is also a cultural and educational dance group that explores the cultures, customs and native traditions of the Americas.

Chikawa Works started in 2002 in Conroe under the guidance of educators Xochitezca (Alejandra Tapia) and Eheca (Francisco Garcia). The group performs at different venues in schools, museums, libraries, festivals and community events. The theme of the dances is nature and the agricultural cycles, its elements and their connection to modern life. Dances are very energetic.

Matthew Cumbie

 “I make dances to reawaken a sense of vitality and ferocious curiosity about ourselves and the world around us. I believe dancemaking is a powerful and necessary form of inquiry and exploration, and that our dancing creates opportunities to see and feel more acutely.” — Matthew Cumbie

Matthew Cumbie (he/him/his) is a collaborative dancemaker and artist educator living in Washington, DC. His artistic research cultivates processes and experiences that are participatory and intergenerational, moving through known and unknown, and bring a poetic lens to a specifically queer experience. 

An organizing principle of Cumbie’s work is a commitment to centering LGBTQ+ artists and experiences, and collaborating across disciplines to expand the social relevance of his work and to broaden the notion that every body can dance. His choreography and dancemaking- considered “a blend of risk-taking with reliability, [and] a combination of uncertainty and wisdom,” by Kate Mattingly- weaves together a physical vocabulary of momentum and clarity, revelatory moments, and a belief in a body’s capacity to document and reflect back our lived experiences. He is the founder of Matthew Cumbie Projects, the central body to further and support the work of Cumbie and his collaborators. 

In 2016 he began Growing Our Own Gardens, a multiyear performance project to contend with a growing need for intergenerational LGBTQ+ dialogue. With support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Arcus Foundation and Dance Exchange, Gardens blossomed into an iterative process that partners with LGBTQ+ and arts organizations in multiple cities to use performance and engagement as a platform to surface stories, struggles, and possibilities of queer communities: to reflect and re-imagine LGBTQ+ life in our communities and country. Through Gardens, he has partnered- and continues to partner- with the Rainbow History Project, the DC Center, the Rainbow Seniors of Berkshire County and the Dallas Way- creating short form and evening-length performances, facilitating workshops and discussions, and leading embodied engagements (like Queer History Walks).  

Committed to this range of outcomes, Cumbie’s dancemaking has been shared and shown on stages, in parks, in classrooms, on online learning platforms, in a car, and in healthcare settings with people of all ages and backgrounds. He is currently an artist-educator with Jacob’s Pillow, including their Curriculum in Motion program: a residency program that brings choreographers into classrooms to animate and integrate movement and dance to support cross-curricular learning. With Dance Exchange, he has helped develop and brand Cassie Meador’s Moving Field Guide: a program that connects artists with scientists, naturalists, and environmental educators to help people learn about environmental issues, and that has partnered with park rangers in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, US Park service educators in the Boston school-district, and local historians and environmental experts in communities across the US. While with Dance Exchange, Cumbie also stewarded the growth of ways that people connect to Dance Exchange through local programming. Cumbie has been on faculty at TWU, Queensborough Community College, Colby College and American University; he has been an invited speaker at the New York City Roundtable Arts in Education conference, the Advancing the Human Condition Symposium at Virginia Tech, and the LGBT Health and Art Making conference, in partnership with the Human Rights Commission and the GWU Health and Well-being graduate program.

He has danced in the companies of Christian von Howard, Keith Thompson | danceTactics Performance Group, jill sigman | thinkdance, Paloma McGregor | Angela’s Pulse, and Dance Exchange- an intergenerational dance organization founded by Liz Lerman- where he joined as the first full-time artistic appointment in a post-founder transition and eventually became an Associate Artistic Director and the Director of Programs and Communications. Currently, he creates work with Annie Kloppenberg, Betsy Miller, and Tom Truss, and collaborates with a host of multidisciplinary artists through Matthew Cumbie Projects; he is also dancing with Christopher K. Morgan & Artists on the creation of a new work. His work has been commissioned and supported by places like Dance Place, the Kennedy Center, and Harvard University, and by the National Endowment for the Arts, the DC Commission for the Arts and Humanities, the Arcus Foundation, and the Somerville Arts Council. Originally from Houston, Texas, Cumbie holds undergraduate degrees from Texas Lutheran University and Texas State University and an MFA in dance from Texas Woman’s University. 

D. Chase Angier

D. Chase Angier is an interdisciplinary artist and choreographer/director. As artistic director of Angier Performance Works, D. Chase Angier creates and performs site-specific performances, performance installations, dance-theater, and walking performances. These intuitively driven works are created in collaboration with dynamic artists in the visual arts, performance, music, theater and dance; and have been performed internationally (Japan, Czech Republic, Germany, Mexico, The United Kingdom) and nationally in theaters, galleries, and visually inspiring sites. Angier has been living and working in both Brooklyn, NY and in Alfred, NY. She is a dance professor at Alfred University where she has developed a dance program based on creative place making, site specific choreography and interdisciplinary performance. Angier received her MFA in choreography from Ohio State University and her BA in dance from UCLA. She is the artistic director for the Marlin Miller Dance Residency Program, an elected member of the NYSCA/NYState DanceForce, and will be co-curating of the Formations section of the Prague Quadrennial.

Learn more:

• astheairmovesbackfromyou.com
• lettertotheworldproject.com
• Angier Performance Works on Facebook

Trent D. Williams Jr.

Trent D. Williams Jr.  a native Houstonian received his MFA in Dance Performance & Choreography from The Florida State University and BA in Psychology from Morehouse College. Williams was a founding member of Urban Souls Dance Company in Houston, Texas and he has been a guest artist with Tallahassee Ballet in Tallahassee, FL, EDGEWORKS Dance Theatre in Washington, DC.  While at Morehouse College, he worked with choreographers such as Nicole Wesley, Jhon strokes, Ivan Pulinkala, Darla Johnson and Wayne Smith as a member of the Spelman Dance Theatre.

Additionally, Williams has performed alongside Destiny’s Child, 112, and Janelle Monae among others. In 2007, Williams was invited to dance with Dayton Contemporary Dance Company (DCDC) in world-renowned works by Talley Beatty, The Stack Up (1992) and Eleo Pomare, Las Desenamoradas (1987), Donald Byrd, Rodney A. Brown, William B. McClellan, Jr., Debbie Blunden-Diggs, Shonna Hickman-Matlock and Bill T. Jones, to name a few.  In addition, he has performed works by choreographers like Gerri Houlihan, Anjali Austin, and Michael Foley. He is currently working on a new project with Liz Lerman and Jawole Zollar called Blood, Muscle, and Bones. Williams’ choreography has been performed by Dayton Contemporary Second Company, Texas Tech University, Towson University, University of Trinidad & Tobago, Coker College Dance Company, Urban Souls Dance Company, and has been showcased at The American Dance Festival, The American College Dance Festival, The Modern Atlanta Dance Festival, The Dance Gallery in Huntsville, Texas, and Kennedy Center: Millennium Stage.

Williams has served as a faculty member at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), University of Trinidad & Tobago, Howard Community College, Howard University Division of Fine Arts and Johns Hopkins Estelle Dennis/ Peabody Dance Training Program for Boys. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Theatre + Dance at the University of Florida.

Stephanie Liapis

Stephanie Liapis received her BFA in dance from NYU Tisch School of the Arts as the recipient of the Helbien Scholarship in 1998. Her career as a professional dancer spans sixteen years and includes company work with Doug Varone & Dancers and Nicholas Leichter Dance and freelance and guest artist work with Nancy Bannon, Susan Marshall and Company, the MET Ballet and Netta Yerushalmy among others. She has staged the works of Doug Varone and Jamie Bishton at various universities and festivals. Additionally she has served on faculty at Dance New Amsterdam, the 92nd Street Y in NYC, and as adjunct faculty at the University of Washington, Hunter College, Barnard College and SUNY Purchase College. She is currently on faculty at the Mark Morris Dance Center and is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Long Island University-Brooklyn Campus. Stephanie creates her own work for concert and film. Stephanie recently completed an 8-month travel fellowship that took her around the world!

Amy Morrow

Amy Morrow is a teacher, choreographer, and consultant based in Austin under AM Arts. She founded TBX [ Toolbox Series ] to provide professional workshops and collaborations with international choreographers in Austin, Texas. TBX hosted more than 150 artists and featured eleven intensives including Gaga, CounterTechnique, Dance & Technology with Jason Akira Somma, and performance development with Deborah Hay. AM Arts also produces performances for The Theorists, a collective who aim to bridge the gap between artist and citizen by presenting homegrown art as a relevant and inclusive experience. AM Arts also manages the award winning Idan Sharabi & Dancers Company based in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Trained and certified by Ohad Naharin to teach Gaga/dancers and Gaga/people, Morrow travels internationally teaching Gaga and Toolbox Workshops as well as Ballet and Indian Dance. She currently serves as adjunct professor at the University of Texas in Austin and McCallum Fine Arts choreographer in residency, and has taught at the Suzanne Dellal Center for Dance, the American College Dance Festival Association, Vassar College, Southern Methodist University, Texas Christian University, Texas Women’s University, the University of Maryland College Park, The University of Houston, The University of New Mexico, and Emory among others and offered workshops at the American Dance Festival Scripps Studio, The Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, Hope Stone, Tapestry, Houston MET Dance, The University of Tulsa, and New Dialect among others.

Through her “Hiraeth Portrait Series” of film, music, and dance collaborations, Morrow has performed in Tel Aviv, New York, India, Puebla, México City, Austin, Fort Worth, Dallas, Tulsa, Albuquerque, Birmingham, Huntsville, Richmond and Houston. “The Lady of” portrait was selected as one of Arts and Culture’s standouts for the 2015 season, noted by Nancy Wozny as “a sassy mix of precision and abandon, something we rarely see on contemporary dance stages.” The Dance Dish raved the performance as an autobiographical breath of fresh air. “It was her authenticity that held me; real people and real stories are captivating.”

Morrow’s latest commission is from The Wanderlust Project and will premiere July 2016 at the Majestic Theater in Dallas. Avant Chamber Ballet also commissioned her as an inaugural guest choreographer for the Women’s Choreographic Voices series, with the debut of String Theory in collaboration with Dallas Symphony members. It was noted as “the most emotional work, making cleaver use of the title prop” by the Dallas Morning News and “magic…making the biggest splash” by Theater Jones, reiterating, “seldom do we see a work so fascinating.” String Theory and Super String Theory have since toured the PAC in Tulsa as well as Tulsa’s Ballet’s Studio K, Zilker Hillside Theater, The Fort Worth Modern, Barnstorm Dance Fest, and the Grace Street Theater in Richmond.

Morrow graduated from Belhaven University with a BFA Dance Honors. Her senior thesis, Contextualizing Art Cross-Culturally, presenting dance to diverse audiences in unconventional venues and was a collaborative process with mentor Jesse Zaritt. Morrow was awarded scholarships to study choreography and improvisation techniques at the Nikolais/Louis Legacy Workshop directly under Murray Louis and Phyllis Lamhut. Morrow has received the Artful Dance Scholarship from the Dance Council of North Texas, Austin Emerging Arts Leadership Award, and Community Initiatives fund from the Cultural Arts Division in Austin to produce “TRIBE,” her latest full-length collaboration with The Theorists.

Ting-Ting Chang

Darrell Jones

Whether working as a performer, collaborator or choreographer, ideas investigated through the physical instrument is an essential part of Darrell Jones’ artistic practice.

Embodied research is his focus.

Jones has performed in the United States and abroad with a variety of choreographers and companies such as Bebe Miller, Urban Bush Women, Ronald K. Brown, Min Tanaka and Ralph Lemon. Along with performing, he continues to research and teach. He has collaborated with writers, musicians and designers in dance films, documentations and interactive multimedia installations. In addition to his collaborative work, he continues to work in solo forms and with ensembles.

Jones has received choreographic fellowships from MANCC, CDF (Chicago Dancemakers Forum) and is a two-time Bessie award recipient for his choreographic and collaborative work. He has taught workshops and master classes in dance technique, improvisational processes and the voguing aesthetic throughout the United States and in other countries such as South Africa, UK, and South Korea.

Jones is an associate professor at The Dance Center of Columbia College in Chicago. His classes are informed by his training and studies in a variety of contemporary dance techniques and traditional dance forms.

Nia Love

Nia Love earned her MFA in Dance with distinction from Florida State University in Choreography and her BFA in Theatre Directing from Howard University. Love has performed and produced over 30 choreographic works from New York to California and Accra to Paris.

She trained in Cuba with Alicia Alonzo in ballet, Japan with Min Tanaka in Butoh, and with King Osei Tutu II in the traditional Court dancing of Ghana. Love served as Associate Director and Artist consultant for the seven-time award winning Documentary film Bringing in da Spirit, a look at African-American midwives from the turn of the century to the present, and is presently associate producer for Lou.Production- Filmworks.

Love is a two-time award recipient of the prestigious Fulbright Fellow Award for research and teaching in Ghana for 2000-2002. Presently, her work has been showcased at Sadler’s Wells (London, England), The Joyce Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Central Park’s Summer stage, Dance Theater Workshop, Symphony Space and Dancenow Festival. Love has served as Adjunct Professor and/ or Guest Lecturer at Manhattanville College, Barnard College and Sarah Lawrence College, Smith College, University of Florida State University. She joined forces with Marjani Forte and co-created a collaborative collective, LOVE|FORTE the collective.

Catherine Cabeen

Catherine Cabeen, MFA, is a dancer, choreographer and teacher based in New York City. She has received choreographic commissions from On the Boards, the Seattle Art Museum, and Donald Byrd’s Spectrum Dance Theater in Seattle, the Visa2Dance Festival in Dar Es Salaam, Alsarab Dance Troupe and the Lebanese American University in Byblos Lebanon, Moving People Dance Theater in Santa Fe, and Pig Iron Theater Company in Philadelphia, among others. The New York Times called Cabeen's Hyphen, “highly kinetic, complex... visually exquisite,” and “beautifully performed.”

Cabeen founded Hyphen in 2009, to explore how interdisciplinary research and collaboration can be used to build new movement vocabularies. In the last six years Hyphen has shown work throughout the continental United States and in Dar es Salaam, Byblos, Belfast, Cork, and Vieques PR. Cabeen has received support for her work from the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, 4 Culture, The Washington State Arts Commission, the National Performing Network Creation Fund, The Bernstein Foundation, and generous individual donors. Cabeen was a finalist in The A.W.A.R.D. Show! Seattle: 2009. During the summer of 2011, she was Emerging Choreographer at Bates Dance Festival.

Cabeen performs in her own work and with Richard Move. She is a former member of the Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company (1997-2005), and the Martha Graham Dance Company, among others. Cabeen is also an Assistant Professor of Dance at Marymount Manhattan College.

Mary John Frank

Mary John Frank is a choreographer and filmmaker creating dance for film, commercials, the web and stage. Recent works include directing content for New York City Ballet's spring season and choreographing content for brands including Bonnaroo, American Apparel, and Sony.

Her dance film works have been screened at film festivals in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. In 2011, Frank received Panavision's New Filmmaker Grant and directed, choreographed, and wrote her first film, Einstein's Dance. The film received festival recognition and awards including Best Film Direction at the Women's Independent Film Festival in Los Angeles. Before creating dance on camera, Frank spent seven years working in film production and acquisitions in Los Angeles for studios including Lionsgate, Paramount, and Warner Bros. She has also served on panels at the South By Southwest Film Festival and was a judge for the screenplay competition and the feature film competition at the Austin Film Festival. Frank is based in New York and she hopes to continue directing, creating movement, and partnering with brands to create memorable content.

Kira Blazek

Kira Blazek is a dancer, teacher, and choreographer. Her classical training began at the Houston Ballet Academy, under the direction of Clara Cravey and Steve Brule. Blazek went on to receive a BFA in Modern Dance Performance from the University of Oklahoma.

She then joined Hubbard Street 2 (Chicago, IL) and toured extensively in the U.S. and Germany, dancing works by Robert Battle, Christian Spuck, Edward Liang, Julian Barnett and Amy Raymond among others. Blazek then relocated to New York and immediately began dancing for Douglas Dunn & Dancers, becoming both rehearsal director and assistant to Douglas. While in New York, she also performed for Christopher Williams, Pilobolus Creative Services, Nicole Wolcott and Shen Wei Dance Arts.

In 2009, she was invited to dance in the US premier of SHOT, created by Anoukvandijkdc (Netherlands). She eventually became one of four Americans certified to teach Countertechnique, a contemporary dance technique developed by Anouk van Dijk. Blazek has since led classes at Dance New Amsterdam, Princeton University, San Jacinto College, Maine Island Dance Festival, Hope Stone Dance, CalArts, and currently at the University of Oklahoma.

As a choreographer, Blazek has presented works at New York venues such as Galapagos Arts Space, Dixon Place, Elizabeth Dee Gallery, and Danspace St. Mark’s Church. She was featured in the music video for ‘Lazuli’ by Beach House, and has worked in collaboration with Ryan McNamara and Jack Ferver in various projects blending performance art and dance. She was an artist in residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Residency where she created a trio, Zorya, using her own visual artwork as backdrops for the piece. In the summer of 2013, she set a commission on the Florida based company Fuzion Dance Artists, directed by Leymis Wilmott. Blazek recently collaborated with Hartel Dance Group at Oklahoma Contemporary Arts, where she also presented a solo, Banksy My Warhol.

Rachel Bernsen

Rachel Bernsen is an independent dance artist, dance educator and certified teacher of the Alexander Technique based in New York City and New Haven, CT. She is one part of Quartet Collective, investigating improvisational practices and interdisciplinary possibilities with dancer and choreographer Melanie Maar and composer/performers Taylor Ho Bynum and Abraham Gomez-Delgado. Her latest work After the Meadow, Before the Forest is a collaboration with composer Carl Testa and the vocalists Anne Rhodes and Jean Carla Rodea.

She has collaborated extensively on multiple projects with Ho Bynum including two recent dance works Corridor (2011) and Glimmer Glint Glisten (2010). Bernsen is also currently performing with composer Anthony Braxton in his interdisciplinary Pine Top Aerial Music project, and will be choreographing his opera Trillium J in the spring of 2014. She has also worked with composer and bagpipes player Matthew Welch, and collaborated on numerous projects with Testa and Rhodes including User (2010) and Unicorns Were Horses (2009). Rachel was a participating artist in the World Performance Project's Think Jam: Improvisation Across Disciplines, a symposium on improvisation at Yale University. She is a multiple year recipient of the Mayor's Community Arts Grant from the city of New Haven, a 2007 NEA Honorary Fellow at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and was a 2005/06 Dance Theater Workshop Fresh Tracks artist-in-residence.

In NYC, her work has been shown at The Austrian Cultural Forum's Moving Sounds Festival, Arts For Art, Danspace Project, Dance Theater Workshop, Roulette, The Chocolate Factory, The Vision Festival, Issue Project Room, Movement Research Spring Festival, Catch! Performance Series, The Poetry Project, The NOT Festival, Dixon Place, Jalopy Theater, ArtSpace New Haven and Movement Research at the Judson Church. Rachel has also presented projects internationally at The Free Music Festival in Antwerp, Belgium; Vienna, Austria; Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Bologna, Italy, and in Cologne and Kassel Germany.

Rachel is the founder of the performance space and movement laboratory, The BIG ROOM in New Haven, CT and curator of its interdisciplinary performance series, Take Your Time. The series' debut in May 2010 was profiled in the New York Times and received an overall Best of 2010 mention in the New Haven Register.

As a teacher of Alexander Technique and contemporary dance, Bernsen has been a guest artist at Yale University, Wesleyan University and Connecticut College. She is on faculty at Movement Research, and recently traveled to Russia as a teaching artist for the Moscow Dance Agency Tsekh Summer Dance Festival. She is part-time faculty in the dance dept. at The Educational Center for the Arts (ECA), an arts high school in New Haven, CT. Bernsen also maintains a private practice in the Alexander Technique. From 2009-11 she served on the board of the American Society for the Alexander (AmSAT), and currently is on the board of Elm City Dance Collective (ECDC).

From 2002 to 2006 Bernsen performed and toured with the performance art group and recording artists Fischerspooner. She has also performed with Emily Coates, RoseAnne Spradlin, Juliette Mapp, Sam Kim, Risa Jaroslow and Dancers, Urban Bush Women and Minneapolis-based artists Morgan Thorson, Wynne Fricke and Leah Nelson.

Bernsen is a contributor and former managing editor of the Movement Research Performance Journal and has written for the AmSAT News. She holds an MFA in Dance from New York University Tisch School of the Arts, and a BA in English Literature from Macalester College.

Allyne D. Gartrell

A native of Atlanta, GA, Allyne D. Gartrell brings twenty five years of experience to the art of dance. A graduate of the Dekalb Center for the Performing Arts in Atlanta.

Gartrell also attended Florida A&M University and Florida State University where he excelled in Instrumental Music and Dance. As a dancer, Gartrell has worked with Joel Hall Dance Theater, Ballet Wisconsin, City Ballet Theatre and for seven years he was one of the lead male dancers for the Internationally known Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, where he served as company instructor and rehearsal director for DCDC II. While at DCDC, Gartrell performed ballets of Alvin Ailey, Donald McKayle,Talley Beatty, Ulysses Dove and Donald Byrd. His Broadway credits include: the Wiz, A Chorus Line, Sophisticated Ladies and his most notable performance as Crown in the National Touring Production of Porgy & Bess. Gartrell also served as assistant to the Tony Award winning choreographer Hope Clark for the production of Porgy & Bess which premiered at the Kennedy Center for the Arts.

Over the past decade, Gartrell has worked as principal male dancer, rehearsal director and resident choreographer for the Dallas Black Dance Theatre. In 2006, Gartrell became director of DBDT II, Dallas Black Dance Theatre's 2nd Touring Company. Gartrell is a highly recognized master dance instructor in the country, known for his high energy, and physically demanding jazz and modern classes. His pulsating choreography has been featured on several dance companies and universities, including Dallas Black Dance Theatre, DBDT II, Milwaukee Dance Connection, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, Morgan State University, Spelman College, City College of San Francisco and Grambling State University. In 2006 Gartrell choreographed Primary Movements; a contemporary ballet in collaboration with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, with original scoring by classical composer Jonathan Bailey Holland. Primary Movements became the official kick-off for Dallas Black Dance Theatre's 30th Anniversary Celebration.

In 2000, Gartrell founded the Arts Unlimited Project, a non-profit multicultural organization focused on the preservation of the art of dance and African American culture in the city of Milwaukee. In 2004 Gartrell was recognized for his contribution to at-risk youth in the midwest by Senator Russ Feingold, and was awarded the 2004 AKA Trail Blazer Award for Outstanding Community Service. Gartrell is a member of the International Association of Blacks in Dance and National Performing Arts Guild, and for the past 10 years he has serves as scholarship chairman for the Black College Dance Exchange, a coalition of historically-black colleges and universities. Most recently Gartrell was inducted into the 2009 Presidential Edition of Who's Who in the Arts, awarded the Dallas Black Dance Theatre 2009 Artist Award and in December 2009 Gartrell was featured in Dallas Modern Luxury Magazine as one of The New Iconoclasts for 2010 and was awarded the 21011 Phoenix Award by Mayor Kasim Reed of Atlanta.

Andee Scott

Andee Scott is an interdisciplinary artist with a primary focus in dance.

As a choreographer, Scott’s areas of interest include technology, site-specific design and aerial work. Her most recent major piece, Light Interrupted, explored and exploited the relationship between light, technology and dance. Her research is concerned with indicating a different relationship with space and light, where space is made tangible and light is made visible. Her recent choreography, The Shape of White, involved dancers performing in and around trees, tunnels and water, projecting images of birds on and in tunnels and snow. Portrait was an aerial work in four parts, with a section that adapted the romantic ballet Les Sylphides to a wall.  She developed Silo/Solo, a full-length work to be performed and filmed in a silo, investigating ideas of frontiers and boundaries through movement, video, text and light. Initial work on the project was developed during a residency at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in the fall of 2011, and she performed a video section, Walking The Line, as an invited guest at CORD's Meanings and Makings of Queer Dance Conference at The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor this past spring.

As a performer, she curated and performed Woman’s Work: Reconstructions of Self, a solo dance project in which she invited five international choreographers to create solos for and with her. Choreographers included Lenka Flory of Deja Donne (IT), Jeanine Durning (NY), Claudia Lavista of Delfos Contemporary Dance (MX), Lee Kyung-Eun of Lee K. Dance (S. KOR), and Elizabeth Gillaspy (TX). "Woman’s Work" premiered in the Fuse Box Festival in Austin and received numerous awards, including Outstanding Dance Concert and Outstanding Dancer. She has subsequently toured works from the project in the US, Italy, and Mexico. Scott has been a member of Sharir+Bustamante Danceworks, Blue Lapis Light, and Michael Foley Dance, and has performed with David Dorfman Dance and AlienNation Co., under the direction of Johnanes Birringer.

Scott has conducted residencies and taught master classes nationally and internationally and has been on faculty at the University of Texas and the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC. At USF, she teaches modern technique, choreography and BFA projects. She holds an MFA in Dance and Related Arts from TWU and degrees in Dance and German from The University of Texas.