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

Touring Information

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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.

Touring Information

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.

Touring Information

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.

Touring Information

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.