Becca Blackwell is a NYC based trans actor, performer and writer. Existing between genders, and preferring the pronoun “they,” Blackwell works collaboratively with playwrights and directors to expand our sense of personhood and the body through performance. Some of their collaborations have been with Young Jean Lee, Half Straddle, Jennifer Miller’s Circus Amok, Richard Maxwell, Sharon Hayes, Theater of the Two Headed Calf and Lisa D’Amour. Becca is a recipient of the Doris Duke Impact Artist Award 2015 and recently wrote a solo show, They, Themself and Schmerm, that will be sneaking in performances in winter of 2017 in a town near you.
mayfield brooks is a cultural worker, dancer, and performance artist currently pursuing a PhD in Performance Studies at Northwestern University in the Chicago area. Before landing at Northwestern, mayfield completed a MFA in Theater and Dance at UC Davis in California, danced with San Francisco aerial dance company Fly Away Productions, studied contemporary dance at the School for New Dance in Amsterdam (SNDO), and was a student of somatics and performance at Moving On Center in Oakland California.
Justin Cabrillos is a choreographer, artist, and writer based in Brooklyn. He is a 2016 danceWEB scholar at ImPulsTanz and a recipient of a 2011 Greenhouse grant from the Chicago Dancemaker’s Forum. His work has been commissioned by the IN>TIME Series in Chicago, and his latest project, Holdings, has been commissioned by Danspace Project and is supported by a residency at Chez Bushwick. Cabrillos has shown work at the Chicago Cultural Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Roulette, and Movement Research at Judson Church. He has performed with Every house has a door and Jen Rosenblit.
Anna Carapetyan has collaborated and performed with many wonderful choreographers in her nearly 13 years in New York. For the past few years she has also been working as a doula, supporting new and growing families through preparations for birth, labor and delivery, and throughout the postpartum period. She is a volunteer full-spectrum doula with the Doula Project.
Ayano Elson is a choreographer and designer. She graduated from Connecticut College with majors in dance and art history. Since moving to New York, her work has been presented by AUNTS, Gibney Dance, New Museum, Roulette, and Triskelion Arts. She has performed in works by Evvie Allison, Phoebe Berglund, Kim Brandt, Liz Charky, and Steven Reker in places like Audio Visual Arts, BRIC, the Invisible Dog, the Kitchen, and Lincoln Center. (Ayano is always looking for more choreographers to dance with!)
devynn emory is a New York dancer, choreographer, and healer. Their company devynnemory/beastproductions uses mapping and psychoanalysis to locate the self and other. emory is also a freelance dance artist most recently working with Andrea Geyer, Gerard & Kelly, Tere O’Connor and Yanira Castro. emory holds a license in both Eastern and Western massage therapy, and has been in practice for 14 years as Sage Massage Therapy, offering an “all bodies welcome” safe space. emory is currently working as a patient advocate at New York Methodist Hospital, and is soon to be entering a third year in studying nursing.
Social Health Performance Club is a collective of artists actively questioning systemic values at work in performance art through themed performances, potlucks, and member collaborations. SHPC gathers as a collective of artists to produce events, exhibitions, and other public art projects which directly confront systemic social issues in the art world and beyond. The Club itself is framed as a performance, gathering together as action, understanding social relationships as artistic processes.
Liliana Dirks–Goodman is a New York based artist. She has a Bachelors and Masters degree in Architecture. She co-organizes AUNTS and makes installations and objects. These things have been seen and happened at the New Museum, chashama, Danspace Project, Movement Research at the Judson Church and most recently in the Union Square Sweetgreen, among others. She has taught workshops at both the New Museum and Whitney Museum in New York City.
Jonathan Gonzalez is a multidisciplinary artist working through performance, sound design/composition, writing and visual practices. He is a Diebold Award recipient in Choreography & Performance, Dancing While Black Fellow (2015-16), POSSE scholar, New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks artist (2015-16), and choreographer with The Possibility Project. He has worked with Ligia Lewis, Patricia Hoffbauer, Grisha Coleman, Phillip Howze, Marjani Forté, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Ni’Ja Whitson, Tony Thatcher, and Gwen Welliver among others. His work has been presented at Danspace Project’s Food for Thought, BAAD!, Socrates Sculpture Park, Project Reach, MaketheRoadNY, Dancewave, Loisaida Center, DanceNOW/DTW, JACK, BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Wimbledon College of Art, Trinity and Bennington College. He is an MFA graduate of Sarah Lawrence College.
As a dancer, Marguerite Hemmings specializes in street styles, social dances, hip hop, and dancehall, and has been training in modern and West African dance. Choreographically, Marguerite has received commissions and grants from Harlem Stage, Jerome Foundation, Brooklyn Arts Council, University Settlement, and the Dancing While Black Fellowship furthering her work as an artist/organizer. As for her current artistic work, she recently self-directed the Blacker the Berry Project, part of an overarching multimedia endeavor called ‘we free’ that explores the millennial generation’s take on liberation. The first installment of ‘we free’ was recently shown at Gibney Dance’s Double Plus Series.
Robert Kocik is a poet and design/builder. He is co-founder (with choreographer Daria Faïn) of the Prosodic Body—an experiential field of research and practices interrelating language, movement, individual fulfillment and social transformation. He co-directs and is librettist for the Commons Choir—a multi-lingual, multi-racial troupe performing investigative musicals. In keeping with his belief that “business” is a proper and imperative artistic medium, he has created a business for each letter of the alphabet. His writings include Supple Science (ON Contemporary Practice, 2013,) E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2012) Rhrurbarb (Field Books, 2007) and Overcoming Fitness (Autonomedia, 2001.)
Melanie Maar is a New York based dance artist and teacher. In her early works she processed her father’s movement disorder and questioned how the desire for wholesomeness exists within the need to also objectify struggle and discomfort in performance. Studies in neuroscience, psychology and somatic practices have furthered and contradicted her questions as an artist who teaches movement awareness and who works with touch. She has taught internationally, most recently in Mexico and was awarded the 2015 Grant to Artists from the New York Foundation for Contemporary Arts. She worked with choreographers luciana achugar, RoseAnne Spradlin and Daria Faïn.
Michael Mahalchick was bred in Pottsville, Pennsylvania and is now the toast of New York City. He is a multidisciplinary artist who finds many ways to train his chosen material into forms of his liking. In 2010 he received a “Bessie” for his work with luciana achugar and is currently working on something secret.
Sarah Maxfield creates performance and structures for viewing/discussing performance and its context. Maxfield’s work has been presented by The Chocolate Factory Theater, P.S. 122, and the Museum of Arts and Design, etc.. Maxfield has written for The Brooklyn Rail, The Performance Club, Contact Quarterly, and the Movement Research Performance Journal. She was a Context Notes Writer for DTW’s final season. For nearly a decade, Maxfield curated THROW, a performance development series she created, presented by The Chocolate Factory Theater. As a Fellow at Abrons Arts Center, she launched Now and Then, a performance reading series. Currently, Maxfield is collecting an artist driven archive with Nonlinear Lineage, is a founding manager of ArtsPool, and improvising with her kiddo.
BASHIR DAVIID NAIM IS A MOVEMENT ARTIST BASED PRIMARILY IN LOS ANGELES. THEIR FAMILY FOUNDED A DANCE AND PERFORMANCE ART COMMUNITY IN THE BERKSHIRE MOUNTAINS. BASHIR WAS EARLY ACQUAINTED WITH ARTISTS LIKE DAVID AMRAM, THE KRONOS QUARTET, PINA BAUSCH. BASHIR NAIM HAS COLLABORATED WITH PEACHES, SIA, DEVENDRA BANHART, ROSE MCGOWAN, OUR LADY J, MILLIE BROWN, RYAN HEFFINGTON, ZACKARY DRUCKER AND SOFIA MORENO. THEY CAN BE SEEN OPPOSITE ANJELICA HUSTON AND JEFFREY TAMBOR ON JILL SOLOWAY’S “TRANSPARENT”, AND IN BENJY RUSSELL’S “BATTLEFIELD OF FLOWERS”.
iele paloumpis is a dance artist, educator, intuitive healer and death doula. Their works have been presented through Brooklyn Arts Exchange, New York Live Arts, Dixon Place, the Flea Theater, Movement Research, Painted Bride Art Center, Franklin Street Works, and Taubman Arts, among others. They’ve danced for artists including niv Acosta, devynn emory, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Jen McGinn, Sebastienne Mundheim, Katy Pyle, Emily Wexler, and Nina Winthrop. iele has studied Tarot since 1996, most recently under Eva Yaa Asantewaa. In 2006, iele received a BA from Hollins University and in 2016 they earned a certificate from Deanna Cochran’s Accompanying the Dying program.
Weena Pauly has lived as a dancer in NYC for the last 18 years. She has over 20 years of experience in movement based healing and transformation. Weena is a Registered Yoga Therapist (RYT-700) as well as an Experienced Registered Yoga Teacher (E-RYT-500) and has certifications through National Academy of Sports Medicine, Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy, PhysicalMind Institute, Little Flower Yoga and Mindfulness for Children, ISHTA Yoga, and Reiki. Weena has been a company member of STREB, Brian Brooks Moving Company, David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group, Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company and most recently with Katie Workum.
Marissa Perel’s interdisciplinary work includes performance, installation, criticism and curatorial projects. She is interested in how identity serves to contextualize one’s artistic research and methods. Currently an Artist-In-Residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Perel has presented her work at The Chocolate Factory Theater, Dixon Place, The Poetry Project, Danspace Project, DIVO Institute (Prague, CR), Medium Gallery (Bratislava, SK), and Konstfack (Stockholm, SE), where she was recently a visiting artist. She has taught workshops for Movement Research Spring Festival: Somewhere Out There (2008), CLASSCLASSCLASS (2009-2013), What Is Queer Performance? (2014), and Community of Practice (2015).
Jumatatu Poe is a choreographer and performer based between Philadelphia and New York City. His early exposure to concert dance was through African dance and capoeira performances on California college campuses where his parents studied and worked, but he did not start formal dance training until college with Umfundalai, Kariamu Welsh’s contemporary African dance technique. His work continues to be influenced by various sources, including my recent sociological research of and technical training in J-setting with Donte Beacham. I produce dance and performance work with idiosynCrazy productions. Also, I am an Assistant Professor of Dance at Swarthmore College.
Randy Reyes graduated from Williams College with a self-designed B.A. in Dance & Performance Studies (including a year of study at Tanzfabrik) and was the recipient of the Hubbard Hutchinson Fellowship in Dance Award. Most recently, he directed a collective of artists under his performance project Barrio Cartography and performed The Present Sense (Phase 1) – Agua Caliente, Agua Tibia, Agua Fria as part of his residency at Shuaspace, presented Never Arriving as part of Work Up 2.0 at Gibney Dance Center, is participating in the Hemispheric Institute’s EMERGENYC program, and is in process with Daria Faïn. Reyes moves between NJ, NYC, & the Bay Area and is mostly rehearsing in his living room.
Regina AKA Wolf Medicine is a Brooklyn-based Ayurvedic Wellness Counselor and yoga instructor trained at the Kripalu School of Yoga and Ayurveda. In 2013 she took a pause from the dance world to pursue a certification in Ayurveda from Kripalu followed by receiving her 200-hour yoga teacher training in 2014. She believes her challenge in this lifetime is to live in the now and sharing Ayurveda and yoga are a constant reminder that the present is all there is. Her love of Ayurveda and yoga has lead her to study both in the US and India helping her to gain a wealth of knowledge and experience that she is enthusiastic about sharing with her clients. She is a member of the National Ayurvedic Medical Association (NAMA) and 200 hr RYT.
Julia Santoli threads image, gesture, and aural experience: navigating memory and presence through the ghost-nature of sound. Her explorations take the form of improvisatory vocal performance and movement-generated audio feedback, sonic installation, video, and prints. Based in New York, she has presented in a myriad of roles + spaces/places in & outside of the U.S.
Lily Bo Shapiro has been variously image making here, the birthplace, since 1990.
Risa Shoup is the Executive Director of Fourth Arts Block. Risa has worked as an administrator, curator and leader in the NYC arts community since 2005. In recent years, she has done extensive consulting work on the intrinsic and instrumental impact of the arts on community development. Most recently, she became a lead-facilitator of the NYC Real Estate Investment Cooperative. She has a masters in City & Regional Planning from Pratt Institute and is on the board of The Invisible Dog Art Center.
Anna Adams Stark is a performer, dance-maker, arts administrator and stage manager. Anna has performed works by Lindsey Dietz Marchant, Kendra Portier/BANDportier, Megan V. Sprenger/MVworks, Alexandra Beller, Laura Peterson Choreography, and Alex Springer & Xan Burley/the median movement, among others. Currently, Anna dances with Kim Brandt, Levi Gonzalez, Sarah A.O. Rosner/A.O. Movement Collective and Tara Aisha Willis. Anna’s own work has been shown at THROW, AUNTS, Dance New Amsterdam, the Tank, Triskelion Arts, and the University of Iowa. In 2014, she joined the staff at Movement Research.-
Mariana Valencia, (b. 1984, Chicago Ill.) is a dance artist. She’s had residencies at New York Live Arts, Chez Bushwick, Pieter Pasd, Showbox LA and ISSUE Project Room. Valencia has received generous support from The Yellow House Fund of the Tides Foundation, The Jerome Travel and Study Grant, and the FCA Emergency Grant. She has costumed works by Vanessa Anspaugh, Lauren Bakst, Juliana May, Jen Rosenblit, and Geo Wyeth. Valencia has performed in work by Kim Brandt, Kate Brandt, AK Burns, Elizabeth Orr, Jules Gimbrone, and robbinschilds. She holds a BA from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA.
Ni’Ja Whitson is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist and educator. Recent awards include an LMCC Process Space Residency, Bogliasco Fellowship, Brooklyn Arts Exchange Artist Residency, two-time Creative Capital “On Our Radar” award, and dozens of other residencies and awards across disciplines. They are a practitioner of indigenous and diasporic African ritual and resistance forms, creating work that reflects the sacred in street, conceptual, and indigenous performance. Proudly, they have worked with many notables in theatre, dance, visual art, and music including closely with Sharon Bridgforth and Douglas Ewart, and other leaders such as Dianne McIntyre, Oliver Lake, Edward Wilkerson Jr., Guillermo Gomez Peña / La Pocha Nostra, and Baba Israel.