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Click here to view the 2020-21 artists.
Click here to view the 2022 artists.
Click here to view the 2023 artists.
February 1st, 2024
Born and raised in Boston, CJ Donohoe has a deep interest in art accessibility, devised performance, and queering theatre & dance. CJ is a performing artist, early childhood, grade school, and community dance and acting teacher, and arts administrator particularly interested in community theatre and dance making, performing arts for social change, and k-12 and public free arts education. CJ’s work as an artist and educator centers community and process, and is particularly interested in working with folks who do not necessarily consider themselves a ‘dancer’, ‘performer’, or ‘artist’, questioning those very understood definitions. CJ uses props, lighting, moment work, sound, and storytelling to create a sensorial experience and devise dance theater that release, joy, and deep thought in their collaborators and audiences.
Nicole Goodwyn AKA GOODW.Y.N. is a native of New York City and resides and works from the stronghold of East Harlem, New York City. They are the winners of the LMCC Creative Engagement Grant awardee for 2023. They are also a 2022-23 Franklin Furnace Fund Recipient, a semifinalist for the Headlands 2023 Chamberlain Award, a finalist for the CUE Foundation’s 2022 Public Programs Fellowship, as well as the 2018 Ragdale Alice Judson Hayes Fellowship Recipient while advancing to the 2nd Round of the 2018 Creative Capital Awards. They published the articles “Talking with My Daughter…” and “Why is this Happening in Your Life…” in the New York Times’ parent blog Motherlode. Additionally, their work “Ain’t I a Woman (?/!): Poems,” was longlisted for The Black Spring Press Group’s The Christopher Smart-Joan Alice Prize for 2020.
Rulan Tangen’s work explores movement as an evolving language of intercultural relation building, rooted in inclusion of diverse cosmologies from her own experience interwoven with those of cultural guides and artists with whom she co-creates. Her contemporary dance practice strives to serve as a functional ritual for transformation and healing, expressing energetic connection with all relations – human and beyond. As Founding Artistic Director/Choreographer of DANCING EARTH, she has passionately cultivated successive generations of global Indigenous contemporary performing artists as intercultural ambassadors and conduits for social change She is recipient of 2018-19 Kennedy Center Citizen Artist award for Service, Justice, Freedom, Courage, and Gratitude – and is grateful for all that roots her, for the dreaming and doing of Dancing Earth: moving the world into renewal.
FangTing is a certified Graham Dance Teacher, Dancer, and Choreographer. Upon returning to Taiwan to be close to her family during the Covid pandemic, she was put in isolation for a week… unable to see her family or friends during that time… “Silent but Not Silenced” was inspired by the experience of being bound by outside influences. FangTing improvised in silence and the music was later added.
FangTing worked in collaboration with Steven Speliotis, a renowned dance photographer/award-winning filmmaker who started his career as a dancer/dance photographer and has worked with several international dance companies. Steven’s photographs have been published in LIFE, Dance Magazine, NY Times, Italian AMICA, Art In America, The LA Times, The Village Voice, and several others. Steven’s short films on dance have been receiving awards and recognition in several film festivals and recently won Best Newcomer Documentary in the Raindance NY Short Film Festival.
March 7th, 2024
Tamara Johnson is a dancer, educator, and writer as well as the Executive Director of MoveWest. Her work focuses on ways of moving with the extended body of community to explore and challenge history and place-making. She has been designing and facilitating experiential arts education programs for over a decade. As an educator, Tamara is especially interested in empowering students to express themselves and explore/impact their cultural and physical environments. She is passionate about the power of dance to overcome language barriers and cultivate empathy and the potential of technology to augment storytelling and expand the reach of creative work and dialogue.
Barbara Mahler is a choreographer, movement educator, performer, bodyworker, and has been working nationally and internationally in these categories for 35 plus years. Based in New York, Barbara has traveled internationally to Europe, Asia, Canada, South America, Scandinavia, and Iceland. Barbara has traveled to the Middle East mainly as a movement educator – a lover, advocator, and experienced teacher of Klein Technique. Barbara began her learning of Klein Technique in the late 70’s, with her main teacher Susan Klein. Currently, in New York Barbara is teaching Movement Research. Her body work/hands on practice is called Zero Balancing, which she has also worked in/with for many years as a practitioner and teacher. As a movement artist, Barbara has performed/created mainly solo dances and has worked, in New York, with the Queensboro Dance Community Festival for eight years, New Dance Alliance many times, Green Space, Dixon Place, and others. Internationally Barbara has performed in Montreal, Guelph, and Toronto, Canada and in Denmark. She has performed in Minneapolis many times, receiving a Sage Cowles Land Grant from the University. She has also performed with New Dance Lab, and Rosy Simas. Barbara has an MFA from UWM/Milwaukee, and a BA /Dance from Hunter College where she first became smitten with the ideas of how the body moves, as well as the space around it by Dorothy Vislocky and Jana Feinman.
Sriradha Paul is an India-based performer specialized in Odissi dance for more than two decades, an independent researcher, dance educator, and curator. She has extensively performed in India and abroad (US, UK, Sri Lanka, China, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Sri Lanka, China, Hungary, Bhutan, and South Korea) in solo and group categories. She holds a master’s degree in dance anthropology as an Erasmus Mundus scholar in the choreomundus programme. She is the disciple of Guru Bichitrananda Swain at Rudraksha Foundation. She has worked with the inmates at Cherlapally jail, Hyderabad, and worked closely with the survivors of human trafficking under US Consulate, Kolkata. She is a recipient of Indo-Pacific grant from US Consulate. She was the lead of this project and worked with two Indonesian artists. She is a senior national scholarship holder from Ministry of Culture, Govt of India and an empanelled artist of ICCR & SPICMACAY. She curated an exhibition in London for Brady Arts Centre and performed at Richmix and Nehru centre in London. Currently, she is the logistics expert of Choreodance Film Festival funded by ESAA. She worked as an assistant rehearsal director of an off broadway show in New York organized by Surati. Her upcoming work is Pallavi – a contemporary Odissi production commissioned by Maghenta and led by Sooraj Subramaniam as a choreographer.
April 4th, 2024
Teresa Fellion founded BodyStories: Teresa Fellion Dance in 2011, after choreographing independently since 2004. Fellion’s work has been positively reviewed by several publications such as the New York Times, performed in a diverse range of proscenium and site-specific venues such as Baryshnikov Arts Center, with Phish in outdoor concerts, and NYC Department of Transportation, and has received a diverse range of grants such as New Music USA and NY Community Trust.
Tessie Herrasti is a multifaceted actress, writer, and filmmaker, who blends her diverse talents and experiences to create compelling stories. Based in NYC, originally from Mexico City, she has performed professionally on stage and in film across the globe. Tessie is passionate about promoting mental health awareness, justice, and equality. She’s currently developing a TV series, Jewels of Light, based on her original novel. Her project 85’ is a tribute theater piece for the devastating earthquake in Mexico City currently in a playwriting workshop. A certified Social-Emotional Arts Facilitator, Tessie believes compassion and kindness drive positive change. In her free time, she plays the Irish harp, explores myths and folklore, and invents goofy songs. A proud member of SAG-AFTRA and Actor’s Equity Association.
Tamie Rietenbach is based in Columbus Ohio, for the past 5 years she has been producing short whimsical dance videos. The work has been inspired by her experience with the Flux & Flow movement center and the desire to maintain a creative practice.
sarAika movement collective is a contemporary dance collective with a distinct taste for interdisciplinary collaboration. Founded in 2021 by Aika Takeshima & Sara Pizzi – they unified their skills and knowledge as dancers, choreographers, activists, immigrants, and part of the LGBTQIA+ community, gathering a shared goal to create art about and for humans pursuing this value of authenticity to bond their community advocating for a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment. Their art is a form of activism documenting key issues and personal insights, to highlight minority groups and underrepresented communities, and create a safe space for reflection.