Alhassane "Sana" Bangoura

2024 DANCER FELLOW

Alhassane "Sana" Bangoura comes from a family of traditional drummers and dancers
from Guinea, West Africa. As current and former members of the world-renowned Les
Ballets Africains and Ballet Merveilles, the Bangoura brothers' talents have brought
them all over the world and led them to make their homes in Italy, France, the US and
Iceland. Inspired by his brothers, Sana began his drum and dance training in 1999 as a
member of the company Wassasso, based in the capital city Conakry. In this company,
under the direction of Ballet Africains dancer, Sorel Conte, Sana rose to the position of
Principal Dancer, and in 2001 became Assistant Director.

During his sixteen years with Wasasso, Sana's duties were manifold. He managed
rehearsals for longtime company members as well as for youth who aspired to join the
group. He provided lessons for students from a myriad of countries to include Chile,
Argentina, France, Finland, Switzerland, Sweden and Portugal. He performed in the
national competition Stars Vacance when the company took 1st place. Sana also
choreographed Wassasso performances that appeared on Guinea National Television
and won his group a 3rd place finish in the nation in 2012.

After moving to Minnesota in 2015, Sana performs with his brother, master
drummer Fode Seydou Bangoura, in their group Duniya Drum and Dance, and teaches
community classes for adults. Performance highlights include Duniya’s many Fakoly
shows and appearances at The Cowles Center, The Cedar Cultural Center and
Orchestra Hall.

duniyadrumanddance.org

Kealoha Ferreira

2024 DANCER FELLOW

Photo by: Laichee Yang

Kealoha Ferreira is a Kanaka Maoli, Filipino, Chinese dance artist from Nuʻuanu, Oʻahu, now residing in Mni Sóta Makoce on the unceded lands of the Dakhóta Oyáte. She is the Artistic Associate of Ananya Dance Theatre and a Co-leader of the company's Saint Paul space, the Shawngrām Institute for Performance & Social Justice. A practitioner of Yorchhā and an emerging student of Oli and Hula, Kealoha's artistry activates at the intersection of these transnational feminist and aloha ʻāina embodied practices.

As a leader, teacher, performer, and maker her work investigates the tensile and expansive nature of relationality while remaining rooted in cultural and kinesthetic rigor . She is a recent participant of Red Eye Theater’s Works in Progress cohort (2020), Hālau ʻŌhiʻa- a land and water stewardship program (2021), BIPOC Leadership Circle (2022), and Chawrchā NextGen ChoreoLab (2023). Kealoha teaches Yoga at the University of Minnesota as an associate faculty member in the Theater Arts and Dance Department.

Tumelo Khupe

2024 DANCER FELLOW             

Tumelo Khupe (alias Melo) is a performing artist, krumper, and emerging choreographer
based in the Twin Cities and from Botswana. Her artistry investigates and explores how the
body manifests lived experiences through movement. Krump is foundational in her work as it offers endless possibilities for storytelling through its technique and language. She makes use of some elements of theater to reveal these moments through freestyle or improvisation. The four pillars of her artistry are rawness, discovery, individuality, and spirituality.

She graduated with a BA in Music Theater with a minor in Dance. Some awards received are the David Wick Leadership Award, the David Wick Best Choreography Award, and The Mabel Meta Frey Outstanding Theater Artist Award. She is a Naked Stages Fellow, Generating Room Fellow, Next Step Fund grantee, and most recently, a Chawrchā, a next-generation choreographic lab Fellow and has performed with Emmy award-winning company, Hip Hop Nutcracker.

Vie Boheme

2024 Choreography FELLOW

Photo by: Conner James

Vie Boheme is a Motown native, blossomed creatively in Pittsburgh and refined in Minneapolis. She’s a multimodal artist; a choreographer, a dancer, actress, and poet. Her work brings athletic agility to her vocal performance by singing and dancing in unison, eliminating the boundary between the visual and audio experience. She designs theatrical dance experiences that weave sentiment and storytelling through poetry and monologues
using dance as the site of embodiment for the story being told. As a choreographer, her
work's intentionality produces a pathway and an environment for viewers to connect to
their own visceral human experience.

Chitra Vairavan

2024 Choreography FELLOW

Chitra Vairavan is a contemporary Indian dancer, choreographer and educator of South
Indian-American descent, with roots in Kandanur and Rayavaram. Vairavan is immersed in both Thamizh/Tamil culture and progressive brown politics in the U.S. Her embodied practice and experimental process is rooted in deep listening, spatial observation, freedoms, poetry, vulnerability and ancestral memory.

She chooses to gesture towards and embody within the practice of liberation
and decolonization in creative and collaborative choices. The aesthetic of her movement is through
both yoga and contemporary Indian dance forms – mainly a mixture of training in Bharatanatyam,
Odissi and Yorchha™. For more please visit: www.chitravairavan.com or https://linktr.ee/vair0002.
Vairavan has been a proud part of the Mni Sota Makoce dance community for 20 years. Her dance work has been featured transnationally as a founding member and company dancer with Ananya Dance Theatre for 14 seasons, and her choreographic works have been featured in spaces such as The Cowles Center, the Walker Art Center, The Southern Theater, Intermedia Arts, Red Eye Theater, Pillsbury House Theatre and Patrick's Cabaret over the years. Vairavan has been the recipient of the 2016 McKnight Dancer Fellowship, 2018 Naked Stages Fellowship with Pillsbury House Theatre, and the 2020-2021 Springboard for the Artsʼ 20/20 Fellowship among other honors.

Pramila Vasudevan

2024 Choreography FELLOW

Pramila Vasudevan is a movement-centered artist, cultural worker, and maker of
community-rooted/routed transdisciplinary work. Vasudevan is the founder and artistic
director of Aniccha Arts (est. 2004), an arts collaborative producing site-specific
performances that examine agency, voice, and group dynamics within community
histories, institutions, and systems. She is an artist associate of Pillsbury House Theatre.
She has been honored with a Joyce Award (2022), and also United States Artists (2022),
Guggenheim (2017) and McKnight Choreography Fellowship (2016). Vasudevan has been
invested in cultivating art spaces and artist growth as the director of Naked Stages
(2016–21), a fellowship program for early-career performance artists at Pillsbury House
Theatre, and as a teaching artist with Upstream Arts (2015–19), which activates and
amplifies the voice and choice of individuals with disabilities at every stage of life.

Her current practice involves gardening, hosting conversations and community
gatherings, and developing improvisational movement sessions inspired by growing
practices in gardens and greenhouses and by plant cycles in the urban park systems.
Her work engages with physical sites, ranging from human-constructed locations (like a
suburban parking ramp) to natural environments (such as along the Mississippi River).
In this process, she learns about the site’s history and current uses, the people that
have come and gone, the embedded politics, and the materials that physically make it
what it is. In responding artistically, Vasudevan orients from the body while layering in
other media (sound, drawings, sculptural elements, and so on) that illuminate a
multiplicity of perspectives.

Meryl Zaytoun Murman

2024 McKnight International Choreographer

 Photo credit: Hanna Hrabarsk

Meryl Zaytoun Murman is a Lebanese American choreographer and filmmaker and a permanent resident of Thessaloniki, Greece. Her art juxtaposes choreographic, cinematic and live art practices to create movement pieces that emphasize interactivity and intimacy and have been presented in Mexico, Turkey and throughout Europe. Her queer films and choreographies derived from experiments at the intersection of cinema and dance disrupt popular notions of spectacle, the body, virtuosity and gender, and her film le Pain was an official selection at international festivals receiving the Audience Choice award at East End Film Festival in London.

Murman has guest taught at ImpulsTanz International Dance Festival in Vienna, Companhia Instavel in Porto, Zelyonka International Dance Festival in Kyiv, and at Tulane University, CalState Long Beach University, and The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Thematically, her work is engaged with moving bodies, particularly between borders and across binaries, and human rights in transitional spaces. She has twice received international fellowships through the US Embassy to implement multi-faceted projects with female and LGBTQ+ refugee populations in Ukraine and Northern Greece exploring sexuality, gender, and the effects of assimilation and migration on the body. These projects integrate trauma informed pedagogy, a kinesthetic approach to media, ritual and public performance intervention. Her work has been supported by the National Performance Network, the Arab American Museum, and the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography. She is currently in development on her first feature film, ways of forgetting.

For more info, visit: merylmurman.me

Demetrius McClendon

2023 DANCER FELLOW

Born and raised in the south side of Chicago, Demetrius McClendon, who is also known as ImagineJoy, began dancing with street hip-hop at the age of 15 and has traveled nationally and internationally as a professional dancer, teacher, and choreographer sharing their passion for the arts. They began their formal training at Northern Illinois University (where they also minored in Black and LGBT Studies) and were awarded scholarships to take summer intensives with the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, Hubbard Street, and Deeply Rooted.

Since graduating from NIU in 2011, they have danced professionally with DanceWorks Chicago, TU Dance, Owen/Cox Dance Group, and as a guest artist with Lyric Opera of Chicago, Twin Cities Ballet, Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, and the Minnesota Opera, among numerous other companies. As community organizer that believes wholeheARTedly in the power of loving action, political education, and spiritual practice, they co-create experiences with others that heal and empower BIPOC & Queer communities; engaging radical imagination as a revolutionary tool to awaken/expand creative genius, they utilize heART as a powerful vehicle to inspire and shape change.

Demetrius is currently a board member and organizer/facilitator for Million Artist Movement: a global vision that believes in the role of ART in the campaign to dismantle oppressive racist systems against Black, Brown, Indigenous and disenfranchised PEOPLES; they also lead the BIPOC practice for “Don’t You Feel It Too?,” a movement meditation social-justice based organization in the Twin Cities, where they were formerly an associate artistic associate.

Sam Aros-Mitchell

2023 DANCER FELLOW

Sam Aros-Mitchell (he/him/his) is an enrolled member of the Texas Band of Yaqui Indians. As an Indigenous art-maker and scholar, Aros-Mitchell ’s work spans the disciplines of performance, sound/light/scenic design, choreography, and embodied writing. Aros-Mitchell holds a Ph.D. in Drama and Theater from the joint doctoral program at UC San Diego/UC Irvine, an MFA in Dance Theatre from UC San Diego, and a BFA from UC Santa Barbara. As a choreographer, Aros-Mitchell has completed two recent works, a solo titled Ania Bwia Bwia Toochia, performed by Aros-Mitchell at Red Eye’s Works in Progress in May of 2023, and Finding Sentience, performed by Semaphore Dance Repertory in November of 2023.  

 Since 2017, Aros-Mitchell has worked with Rosy Simas Danse (RSD) as a performer, teacher, and community engagement organizer. He has performed with RSD in Skins (2018), Weave (2019) Simas short film, yödoishëndahgwa’geh (2021), and she lives on the road to war (2022-2024). Aros-Mitchell has also appeared in Prairie/Concrete with Aniccha Arts, founded by Pramila Vasudevan in 2023 and Morgan Thorson’s Untitled Night, commissioned by The Great Northern in 2024. Aros-Mitchell is currently collaborating with Dante Puleio, Director of Limón Dance in NYC by restaging/reconstructing two original Limón pieces, the Indio solo from Danzas Mexicanas (1939) and "the Deer solo" from The Unsung(1970). This marks a new passage for Aros-Mitchell and for Limón Dance, in that José Limón and Aros-Mitchell share the proud lineage of Yaqui ancestry.
www.samarosmitchell.com

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Yuki Tokuda

2023 DANCER FELLOW

Yuki Tokuda is a ballet dancer, choreographer, and teacher, based in the Twin Cities. She is originally from Japan and was trained under Mikiko Dei, Hideo Fukagawa, and Jun Ishii, internationally recognized dancers, teachers, and competition judges. She moved to the United States in 2000 to continue her training in New York at the Joffrey Ballet School. Ms. Tokuda has danced professionally with USA Ballet, Peoria Ballet, and the Metropolitan Ballet and she was the principal dancer at Continental Ballet for 7 years.

With diverse training in classical, contemporary, modern, and jazz, she is an international guest dancer and collaborator with many companies. She has expertise in pointe work, partnering, and class etiquette and enjoys teaching aspiring dancers. At Steps on Broadway as one of the first International Visa Program students. She is also trained with the Boston Ballet and the Connecticut Ballet. She has performed many principal roles in Giselle, Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Coppelia, Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Ms.Tokuda is a faculty at Minnesota Dance Theatre, Interlochen Center for the Arts, and a certified STOTT Pilates teacher. She is a recipient of the Minnesota State Arts Board and St. Louis Park Arts & Culture Grant. Her choreography was chosen for Choreographer’s Evening at The Walker Arts Center, Wayzata Symphony Orchestra, Wooddale Church, Japan America Society of Minnesota, and Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists. She is the owner/designer of YukiTard and the owner/instructor of Tokuda Ballet.
www.yukitokuda.com

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Joe Chvala

2023 Choreography FELLOW

Joe Chvala has created over 30 original works for the stage that have toured from New York to Paris and from Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival to Litle Falls, MN. He is the founder and artistic director of the highly acclaimed percussive dance company, Flying Foot Forum. Articles and reviews of his work have appeared in national and international magazines and newspapers including the New York Times, La Monde, the Chicago Tribune, Dance Magazine, and the Village Voice. The range of his work has been described as "somewhere between Sammy Davis, Jr. and Samuel Becket" and has
earned such accolades as "Fred Astaire on acid" and "the Agnes DeMille of the tap."

Chvala has also choreographed, directed, and/or been commissioned to create new work for a variety of venues including the Walker Art Center, The Ordway Center, the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, The Guthrie Theater, the Minnesota Opera, Arkansas Repertory Theatre, The Children’s Theatre Company (to name a few). He has received Ivey and Minnesota SAGE Awards for theater and dance, as well as numerous other awards, fellowships, and grants from organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, Minnesota State Arts Board, Target, and McKnight Foundation. Chvala also choreographs and directs dance for films. His first short film, COOKAPHONY, has been chosen as an official selection at 14 film festivals, winning four awards at various festivals including Paris Short Film Festival, Sedona International Film Festival, Vasteras International Film Festival (Sweden) and the Minneapolis/St. Paul Internatonal Film Festval.

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Rita Mustaphi

2023 Choreography FELLOW

Rita Mustaphi is a choreographer, dancer, educator and disciple of the legendary master late Pandit Birju Maharaj in the Kathak style of Indian classical dance. She is known for her innovations in Kathak dance, her multi-disciplinary productions incorporating spoken word, live and commissioned music, and the utilization of production elements. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of Katha Dance Theatre. Under her vision and leadership, the company has become renowned for its dynamic productions, distinctive movement style, and technical virtuosity. Her work, intelligently crafted storytelling, is recognized as being profoundly moving and effortlessly intimate.

Ms. Mustaphi is a recipient of a Leadership award from the Council of Asian Pacific Minnesotans, a Lifetime Achievement award from the India Association of Minnesota, and an Education award from the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in the category of Excellence in Vision. Most recently, she received the 2021 “Nari Shakti Award” from the Indian Government in New Delhi, India, given for her work in the cause of women empowerment.

With a career and a commitment to Kathak dance spanning 30+ years, over 500 performances, and 50+ original choreographic works, she still revels in the process of directing bodies in space, creating movement on her own body, and exploring what “moves” an audience to become engaged emotionally, intellectually and musically. Her works have been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Minnesota State Arts Board, The McKnight Foundation, three past McKnight Choreography Fellowships (‘88, ‘92, ‘98) the Jerome Foundation, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, Target Foundation, and the 3M Foundation.

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Deneane Richburg

2023 Choreography FELLOW

Deneane Richburg (Choreographer, Dancer, former Competitive Figure Skater, Founder/Artistic Director of Brownbody) grew up a competitive figure skater—in spaces where she had to check her blackness at the door, as world skating was dominated by whiteness and rooted in values that subjugated her ancestry’s truths; to quote Zora Neale Hurston, she always felt “most colored when [she was] thrown against a sharp white background.” Richburg realized the need to carve out space for her ancestral history hence her decision to establish Brownbody.

Since 2013 Brownbody has honored complex narratives of U.S.-based Black communities by disrupting assumptions, and disenfranchising ideologies, around blackness. She received her MFA in dance and choreography from Temple University in 2007, an MA in Afro-American Studies from UW Madison, and a BA in English and African American Studies from Carleton College. Richburg has been choreographing work for both the stage and ice since 2007 most recently completing an evening-length work called “Tracing Sacred Steps” which brings ring shout onto the ice. Deneane was a recipient of a 2017 McKnight Choreography Fellowship, a 2019 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, and a Dance/USA Fellowship to Artists made possible with generous funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

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Sandy Silva

2023 McKnight International Choreographer

Photo by Jules DeNiverville

Sandy Silva is an award-winning performer, choreographer, composer, producer, and internationally acclaimed pioneer of percussive dance. She draws from global percussive dance practices infusing themes with movement, voice, theater, and impeccable musicality. The result is a unique and powerful form of performance and storytelling. After 35 years of performing and teaching around the world, Silva started the Migration Dance Film Project (MDFP) with award-winning director Marlene Millar. Their films have been screened internationally and won numerous awards. Sandy is also a teacher/mentor, artistic curator, and co-founder of the International percussive dance lab based in Montreal.

In her artistic practice, compositions and body percussion draw upon traditional art practices of Turkish Usul rhythms, African-American juba, Québécois gigue, Celtic mouth music, Andalusian palmas, and Hungarian legends. Through 35 years of study and deconstruction of these vocabularies, Silva’s new vocalized choreographies integrate rooted sounds and gestures to evoke a sense of travel, journey, and migration.

​​Silva’s teaching sequences and her public choreographies are designed around themes that explore the human condition. She explores and combines vocal melodies that support a narrative to her percussive movement, which ultimately becomes an orchestral body of work. In her teaching, whether with pedestrian beginners or experienced professionals, she grounds the group experience through a common pulse. based on sonic gestures, which can also move into more complex polyrhythmic explorations. The intent is to build a personal practice suited to each person’s skill, capacity, and genre. The requirement and commitment for each participant is to take the time to go deeper in their listening and to embody the elements of the work in a way that is meaningful to them so that this touches the human experience in each of us.

https://sandysilvadance.com

For more information about the residency activities, visit our International Choreographer page.

Leila Awadallah

2022 DANCER FELLOW

photo by Canaan Mattson

Leila Awadallah ليلى عوض الله (she/her) is a dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker based in
Minneapolis and partly Beirut, Lebanon. Dancing with a body of Palestinian, Arab-American, Sicilian, and mixed Mediterranean ways and waves. Born on Dakota, Lakota land near the Thick Wooded River (Sioux Falls, SD) she moved to Minneapolis, Mni Sota in 2012 to pursue a BFA in Dance at the University of Minnesota, and found home here.

Leila is the creator, choreographer, and teacher of Body Watani dance project/practice in
collaboration with Noelle Awadallah. As a member of Ananya Dance Theatre (2014 - 2019), she trained in Yorchha, toured Nationally / Internationally, and was impacted by ADT’s commitment to intersecting dance and social justice. She is a founder of Kelvin Wailey (2015-2019), and performed works by Paula Mann, Leyya Tawil, Karla Grotting, Slo Dance, Emma Marlar,
HIJACK, Emily Gastineau, Morgan Thorsen, and Paulina Olowska. She lives and works part-time
in Beirut where she’s a collaborator with Theater of Women of the Camp.

Leila received multiple fellowships: Jerome Hill (2021-2023), Daring Dances (2019) and
Springboard 20/20 (2018). She has been an artist in residence at Hinge (MN), Arab American
National Museum (MI), Hammana Artist House and Amalgam (Lebanon), and the Camargo
Foundation (France). Her works/research received support from National Performance
Network, MSAB, and Goethe. She presented work at the Cedar Tree Project, MIZNA, and RAWI
Arab Lit conference. Leila received a MN SAGE Award for Outstanding Design (2016) for the film “Reflections on Ice: Climate Change in Peru” and Best Performance from the Lebanese National Theater (2019).

leilaawadallah.com

Sharon Picasso

2022 DANCER FELLOW

Photo by Canaan Mattson

Sharon Picasso (she/her) is a Minneapolis based movement, performance and transdisciplinary creative Artist and Founder/Artistic Director of Picasso Projects and Lupa Studio. Her work as a freelance performance and dance artist lives parallel to her work as a choreographer since 1995. Picasso’s creative and collaborative practice has expanded into design including sound, light and installation. Paramount in her collaborative process is cultivating an inclusive, respectful and sustaining creative environment where value is placed on the wholeness of an individual.

Her performance work provides the privilege of collaborating with a wide variety of artists, most recently Deborah Jinza Thayer/Movement Architecture, Rosy Simas Danse, Jennifer Glaws/Jagged Moves, Pedro Pablo/Viva La Pepa, Jess Forest, and Paula Mann/Time Track Productions. Picasso studied Theatre and Psychology at the University of Minnesota-Duluth and earned a degree in Dance Performance and Choreography from The Boston Conservatory.


Picasso is grateful to have been consistently performing and collaborating as a freelance dance artist for decades. The relationships cultivated through the moving performing arts have offered her diversity in artistry, growth and renewed energy. She considers her long-time collaborative relationships and community as the greatest rewards of her craft.



www.picassoprojects.com

Cheng Xiong

2022 DANCER FELLOW

Photo by Canaan Mattson

Cheng Xiong grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota and received his Bachelors of Art in Dance at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Though he began his journey as a street dancer, he currently collaborates with professional dance companies such as Black Label Movement, STRONGmovement and BRKFST Dance Company.

In 2015 Xiong and Black Label presented the “Bodystorming Hits Bangalore” initiative in partnership with the National Centre for Biological Science in Bangalore, India. Two years later in 2017, STRONGmovement and Xiong participated in the Momentum project, “New Dance Works Festival.” He participated in the “I’m From...Vol. 2,” evening show in 2018, where he also debuted his solo “Being Hmong, Being Free.” In 2019, Xiong participated in Rhythmically Speaking’s show, “The Cohort,” where he performed for the Rovaco Dance Company and the JazzAntiqua Dance & Music Ensemble. Later that year, he toured in Gainesville, Florida with Black Label and received a residency at the Curtis M. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. After premiering “60/40” with BRKFST Dance in 2021, they did their first tour residency in Dublin, Ireland.

Alongside his repertoire of performances, Xiong is a Breakdance instructor and educator. He has taught at after-school programs such as Washington Technology Magnet Middle, Hazel Park Preparatory Academy, and Ramsey Middle through the East Side Arts Council. At present, Xiong is currently teaching at Cypher Side Dance School.

Leslie Parker

2022 CHOREOGRAPHY FELLOW

Photo by Canaan Mattson

Leslie Parker, a St. Paul, MN Rondo native, is a dance artist with art bases in Brooklyn, NY and in Twin Cities, MN. As a dance artist/maker, improviser, performer, director, collaborator, and educator, her work is awarded by National Dance Project (2021), National Performance Network Creation Fund (2020), National Performance Network Development fund (2021), National Performance Network community engagement fund (2021), and National Performance Network Storytelling & Documentation fund (2021).

She is an Outstanding Performance Bessie Award recipient and an inaugural Jerome Hill Foundation Artist Fellow. Growing up in the Rondo community rooted her in socially engaged art and led her to hold a BFA in Choreography and Modern dance technique from Esther Boyer College of Music & Dance (Temple University) and an MFA in dance from Hollins University in partnership with the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, The Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts and The Dresden Frankfurt Company in Frankfurt, Germany.

Parker’s original works have been presented by New York Live Arts, HarlemStages EMoves13, Thelma Hill Performing Arts Center, Tribeca Performing Art Center, University of Minnesota Dance Program, Southern Theater, Pillsbury House Theatre, Pangea World Theater, Walker Art Center, and Painted Bride Arts Center. Parker co-directed the annual 44th (IHOB Puppet Theatre) MayDay Tree of Life Ceremony 2018. She was choreographer for Jimmy & Lorraine: A Musing by Talvin Wilkes and Collidescope 4.0 adventures in Pre and Post Racial America by Ping Chong and Talvin Wilkes; Penumbra Theatre’s 45th production of Black Nativity; and Parks, a portrait of a young artist.

For more information, go to: www.leslieparkerdance.com

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Pedra Pepa

2022 CHOREOGRAPHY FELLOW

Photo by Canaan Mattson

Pedra Pepa is a Venezuelan-raised, Minneapolis-based queer dancer / performance maker. Founder/director of Viva la Pepa, their works are fueled by the overlapping values of Latinx and Queer cultures: melodrama, passion, decadence, and sensuality. An inaugural Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, Pedra continues a transnational collaboration with Argentinian choreographer Celia Argüello, spending time in natural landscapes researching the nature of the encounter. Pedra developed their recent work Contained, Alive as a U of MN Cowles visiting artist, in the Berkshires (MA), with Red Eye Theater, and through Candybox festival. Their previous work, Holy Doña, re-imagines the crucifixion as a queer performance ritual; they performed a preliminary iteration of this work in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Pedra continues research weaving latinx immigrant identities, queer (gender/sexuality/activism) histories across the Americas: across time/colonizations, and nature; manifesting materially in their most recent 331 residency at Rosy Simas Danse space and continues in Guna Yala, May 2022. Pedra co-directs a children and family theater program Drag Story Hour, and entertains the adults at night as their draglesque persona Doña Pepa. Pedra is currently a teaching artist with Upstream Arts and with the Pillsbury House Theatre.

www.vivalapepa.org

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Rosy Simas

2022 CHOREOGRAPHY FELLOW

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

Rosy Simas is an enrolled member of the Seneca Nation. She is a transdisciplinary and dance artist who creates work for stage and installation.

Simas’ work weaves themes of personal and collective identity with family, sovereignty, equality, and healing. She creates dance work with a team of Native and BIQTPOC artists, driven by movement-vocabularies developed through deep listening.

Simas’ dance works include Weave, Skin(s) and We Wait In The Darkness, which have toured throughout Turtle Island. Her installations have been exhibited at the Seneca Iroquois National Museum, All My Relations Arts, SOO Visual Art Center, and the Weisman Art Museum.

Simas is a 2013 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Choreography Fellow, 2015 Guggenheim Creative Arts Fellow, 2016 McKnight Foundation Choreography Fellow, 2019 Dance/USA Fellow, 2022 USA Doris Duke Fellow, 2017 Joyce Award recipient from The Joyce Foundation, 2021 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation SHIFT award recipient, and has received multiple awards from NEFA National Dance Project, the MAP Fund, and National Performance Network.

Simas’ yödoishëndahgwa'geh (a place to rest)  a micro-short film, performance, and installation, has been shared with audiences in New York City, Minneapolis, Colorado Springs, Miami, Niagara Falls, and Buffalo.

Simas’ upcoming work, she who lives on the road to war, will premiere in September 2022 at All My Relations Arts and the Target Studio for Creative Collaboration in the Weisman Art Museum, both in Minneapolis, and will tour Turtle Island in 2023–2024. 

Simas is the Artistic Director of Rosy Simas Danse and three thirty one space, a creative studio for Native and BIPOC artists in Minneapolis, MN.

www.rosysimas.com

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