Darrius Strong

2021 CHOREOGRAPHER FELLOW

photo by Canaan Mattson

Darrius Strong is a Twin Cities-based choreographer, instructor, and dancer. As the founder and Artistic Director of STRONGmovement, he uses the universal language of dance while blending styles such as Hip hop, Ballet, Modern, and West African to tell stories related to society and humanity. His passion for the youth has led him to the position of hip hop director at Eleve Performing Arts Center where he focuses on teaching young dancers how to connect their identity to movement.

Strong’s creative work is supported by the Walker Art Center’s Choreographers Evening, Rhythmically Speaking, and The New Griots Festival. He was also featured on an American Standard Billboard advertisement in NYC Time Square in 2016. Strong has created works for Threads Dance Project, Flying Foot Forum, Alternative Motion Projects, TU Dance, and James Sewell Ballet.

Strong is a 2019 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, a 2021 McKnight Choreographer Fellow, and a recipient of the 2017 Momentum New Works Award.

www.strong-movement.com

Touring Information

Melissa Clark

2020 DANCER FELLOW

photo by V. Paul Virtucio

Melissa Clark is originally from Gary, Indiana. She began studying dance at the age of two, and teaching at fourteen. She is the founder of COHORTS, a collective for artists that creates opportunities for artists to stage, perform, contribute, and expand artistically through cross-genre collaboration.

As a Diasporic artist, Clark travels both domestically and internationally to research the anthropologic roots of traditional dance and rhythms, and the influence of historical events on the evolution of dance and culture in the Diaspora. Her specific interests focus on identifying and promoting cross-cultural intersections in dance and arts aesthetics, musicality, historical content, and curative elements. Melissa’s background includes: Afro–Brazilian Contemporary, Afro–Cuban, Ballet, Capoeira, Chicago House and Footwork, Contemporary, Hip Hop, Modern, Samba, Tap, Traditional Haitian Dance, as well as Traditional West African Dance from Ghana, Guinea, and Mali.

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2022 SOLO Commissioned Choreographers: Alhassan Bangoura, John “Boodilla” King & René Thompson

Non Edwards

2020 Dancer FELLOW

photo by V. Paul Virtucio

Non Edwards is a dancer, choreographer, and ​GYROKINESIS® Method​ Trainer. Originally from Iowa, she has been in the Twin Cities since 2009.

Non has performed in small, DIY, and non-art spaces as well as the Twin Cities’ Fitzgerald, McGuire, and Goodale Theaters; on the East Coast at Jacob’s Pillow and as far west as the Maui Arts & Cultural Center. Her dancing interests include improvisation, the phenomenology of dancing, and site-specific choreography. She has created original roles in compositions by HIJACK, Mathew Janczewski, Valerie Oliveiro, Kerry Parker, Jinza Thayer, Morgan Thorson, and Laurie Van Wieren.

She has produced and made work parallel to her performing career, most recently ​The Thank You Videos (2016-2017), a 27-video series; ​Repressed Midwest​ (2017); ​Scarlet Gesture​ (2018); and ​Habitat​ (2019). Her choreography investigates the intersection of live and video dance and prioritizes the agency of the performer.

As a ​GYROKINESIS® Method ​Trainer, Non teaches online and out of her home studio in the Phillips West neighborhood of Minneapolis. She is passionate about creating an environment for students to feel better - - - physically, emotionally, and mentally.

In addition to teaching, dancing, and making dances, Non is a freelance writer, grant writer, and editor for DanceMN.

2022 SOLO Commissioned Choreographer: Anna Shogren

Marciano Silva dos Santos

2020 DANCER FELLOW

photo by V. Paul Virtucio

A native of Brazil, Marciano Silva dos Santos is recognized by the American Folkloric Society as a “Brazilian artist of unique and exceptional ability and merit.” he has performed with renowned companies such as TU Dance, Stuart Pimsler Dance & Theater, Penumbra Theatre, and in his dance company Contempo Physical Dance. Marciano has been named “Best Dancer” by City Pages and “one of the most graceful movers on any Twin Cities stage” by the StarTribune and “one of the hottest choreographers in town” by Minnesota Monthly Magazine

Silva dos Santos has established a much-celebrated dance company Contempo Physical Dance with a mission to create work that is artistically exceptional, riveting to watch and that speaks to the cultural dynamics of his ancestry. Marciano is both Afro-Brazilian and indigenous. He is interested in contemporary movement and the ways it intersects with traditional movement forms. Marciano has garnered numerous recognitions as a choreographer and a performer. He has worked in residence at the University of Campinas (Brazil), Minnesota State University- Mankato, St. Olaf College, Macalester College, the University of Minnesota, and many others.

Contempophysicaldance.org

Touring Information

2022 SOLO Commissioned Choreographer: Gil Mendes Coelho

HIJACK (Arwen Wilder and Kristin Van Loon)

2020 CHOREOGRAPHER FELLOWS

photo by Jaime Carrera

HIJACK is the Minneapolis-based choreographic collaboration of Kristin Van Loon and Arwen Wilder. HIJACK is the confluence and clash of two independent compositional/kinesthetic impulses. Their dances embrace juxtaposition. Their dances house unlikely intimates and question “who is the enemy?

Over the last 26 years they have created over 100 dances and performed in venues ranging from proscenium to barely-legal. HIJACK has performed in New York (at DTW, PS122, HERE ArtCenter, Catch/Movement Research Festival, La Mama, Dixon Place, Chocolate Factory, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, 9 Herkimer), Japan, Russia, Ottawa, Chicago, Colorado, New Orleans, Seattle, Philadelphia, San Francisco, at Fuse Box Festival in Austin Texas, and Bates Dance Festival in Maine and Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation.

HIJACK has enjoyed long relationships with Bryant Lake Bowl Theater (where their 1996 Take Me To Cuba was the theater’s first ever dance concert), Zenon Dance School (where they have taught every Wednesday morning for 19 years), and Walker Art Center (which commissioned redundant, ready, reading, radish, Red Eye to celebrate twenty years of HIJACK). In 2014, Contact Quarterly published the chapbook “Passing for Dance: A HIJACK Reader”, edited and instigated by Lisa Nelson. Jealousy (HIJACK’s 2019 installation/performance collaboration with Ryan Fontaine and Heidi Eckwall) was selected as one of the “Best of 2019” shows by the Star Tribune.

Ranee Ramaswamy and Aparna Ramaswamy

2020 CHOREOGRAPHER FELLOWS

photo by Ed Bock

Ranee Ramaswamy and Aparna Ramaswamy are Artistic Directors of Ragamala Dance Company, founded by Ranee in 1992. Through their work, they explore the dynamic tension between the ancestral and the contemporary, highlighting the fluidity between the secular and the spiritual, the human and the natural. Their training in the South Indian classical dance form of Bharatanatyam under legendary dancer/choreographer Alarmél Valli, known as one of India’s greatest living masters, is the bedrock of their creative aesthetic.

Ranee and Aparna are recipients of Guggenheim Fellowships, Research Fellowships at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center (Italy) and Bogliasco Foundation (Italy), and Doris Duke Artist Fellowships, among others.

The New York Times writes “Ragamala shows how Indian forms can be some of the most transcendent experiences that dance has to offer.” Ranee and Aparna’s work has been commissioned by Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, American Dance Festival, the Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi, and Walker Art Center, among others; and has been presented widely, highlighted by the Joyce Theater, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, International Festival of Arts & Ideas, Cal Performances, and National Centre for Performing Arts (Mumbai, India).

Ranee serves on the National Council on the Arts, appointed by President Barack Obama. Among her awards are a 2012 United States Artists Fellowship, and a 2011 McKnight Distinguished Artist Award. Aparna is a recipient of a 2016 Joyce Award, and a Bush Fellowship for Choreography, among others, and was selected one of Dance Magazine’s 25 to Watch for 2010.

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Karen Sherman

2020 CHOREOGRAPHER FELLOW

photo by Aaron Rosenblum

Karen Sherman’s work incorporates her background in dance, writing, theater, music, and the manual trades. Hands-on in all aspects of her work, she choreographs and performs, builds sets and props, designs sound, and writes text. Her explorations in craft and visual art, including glassblowing, woodworking, and sculpture, illuminate how the body extends to and through other materials, culminating in an interdependent world where objects elucidate bodies, choreography is language, and words become tools. She has been a freelance stage technician, technical director, and production manager for 25 years, which allows her to instinctively strategize the technical execution of her work as she creates it, and signals a lifelong commitment to helping other artists realize their work.

Her projects have been presented nationally by Walker Art Center, P.S. 122, Center for the Art of Performance UCLA, PICA/TBA Festival, Fusebox Festival, The Chocolate Factory Theater, American Realness, The Southern Theater, Diverseworks, Movement Research, Highways, ODC, and many others. Honors include a 2007 Bessie Award for her performance in Morgan Thorson's Faker, multiple McKnight Fellowships, a Bush Foundation Fellowship, residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Performance Lab, ADI/Lumberyard, Movement Research, and the Bogliasco Foundation in Liguria, Italy. She was a 2016-2017 Hodder Fellow in The Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University and is an inaugural Caroline Hearst Choreographer-in- Residence in its dance program. Her writing has been featured in such forums as e-flux journal, Movement Research Performance Journal, Criticism Exchange, and The Triumph of Poverty: Poems Inspired by the Work of Nicole Eisenman.

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Erin Thompson

2019 Dancer FELLOW

Erin Thompson’s dance performance career began in 1970 with the Minnesota Dance Theatre and continued in New York City in the companies of Nina Wiener and Bebe Miller. She received a New York Dance and Performance award, “BESSIE”, in 1986 for her dancing in Nina Wiener's ​Enclosed Time​ at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival. Erin moved back to Minneapolis in 1990, danced with Zenon Dance Company for two years, and founded ​45 Chartreuse Dance Company​ with her husband, Byron Richard, in 1992. They received Choreographer Fellowships from the McKnight Foundation (1993) and from the National Endowment for the Arts (1994, 1996). Since 1992, Erin has been on the faculty of the University of Minnesota's Department of Theater Arts and Dance as well as at Zenon Dance Company where she continues to provide advanced professional contemporary/modern dance training for the Twin Cities’ dance community. In the past five years, she has appeared in the work of choreographers Joanie Smith, Judith Howard, Penny Freeh, Sharon Picasso and Deborah Jinza Thayer. Erin received a Minnesota SAGE Award for Outstanding Dance Educator in 2008 and the City Pages Best Dancer Award in 2016. She is an ATI certified Alexander Technique teacher. 

2021 SOLO Commissioned Choreographer Bebe Miller

Joseph "MN Joe" Tran

2019 Dancer FELLOW

Joseph “MN Joe” Tran has been a professional breaker since 2005. He is a member of the world-renowned crew Knuckleheads Cali and a founding member of BRKFST Dance Company, an exploratory dance company rooted in breaking. He has worked as a dancer and choreographer for the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves “First Avenue Breakers” from 2007-2019, choreographed original works, and has set repertoire with BRKFST at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. He currently works as a breaking instructor for Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists and Concordia University. He has accumulated multiple first-place victories in breaking competitions across the US, Europe, and South America.

brkfstdance.com

Touring Information

2021 SOLO Commissioned Choreographer Rudi Goblen

Elayna Waxse

2019 Dancer FELLOW

Photo credit: Michael Slobodian

Elayna Waxse is a Twin Cities-based performer, dance educator, and choreographer who hails from Overland Park, Kansas. She received her early dance training with Alecia Good-Boresow and at the Kansas City Ballet School, spending summers at the School of American Ballet in New York City. At the age of sixteen she was invited to Seattle to study in the Professional Division program at Pacific Northwest Ballet School, where she frequently performed with the company.

Waxse has worked professionally with Minnesota Dance Theatre, Colorado Ballet, Black Label Movement, BodyCartography Project, and TU Dance. Over the course of her career she has performed works by Uri Sands, Loyce Houlton, Alvin Ailey, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Dwight Rhoden, George Balanchine, Carl Flink, Francesca Harper, and Katrin Hall among many others. In the summer of 2014 she was selected to perform with Cie. Ismael Ivo e Grupo Biblioteca do Corpo at ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival as well as in ​São Paulo​, Brazil.

In addition to performing, Waxse’s choreographic work has been commissioned and/or presented by Minnesota Dance Theatre, Ballet Minnesota’s MN Dance Festival, The School at TU Dance Center, Zenon Dance Zone, JSB TekBox Theatre, Bryant Lake Bowl, Detroit Dance Race, and Public Functionary. 

https://www.elaynawaxse.com

2021 SOLO Commissioned Choreographer: Bobbi Jene Smith

Paula Mann

2019 CHOREOGRAPHER FELLOW

Photo by V. Paul Virtucio

Paula Mann’s work has been presented by performance venues both in New York at New York Live Arts, P.S 122, Danspace, and in the Twin Cities, by the Southern Theater, the O’Shaughnessy Dance Series, The Walker Art Center, and solo work presented throughout the U.S, Canada and Italy.

Mann has received several awards from the McKnight Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, Meet the Composer, the MN State Arts Board, St. Paul Cultural Star, MRAC Arts Activities (2015, 2016) and Community Arts, the Sage Cowles Chair at the U of M, a Bush Artist Fellowship, an American Composers Forum Music for Dance grant, a 2017 Artist Initiative Grant from the MN State Arts Board and a 2016-17 commission for new work from GT Artistry. In 2003, 2005 and 2007 her company, Time Track Productions, completed a trilogy of evening-length work that explored the effect of media on humanity through live performance. In July 2009 the company presented the evening length “I Love Tomorrow” at New York Live Arts.

Newer works include “Here & After” (2012), ‘The One And The Many” (2014) and “Rules Of The Crowd” (2015) for the Weitz Center for Creativity at Carlton College. From 1993-2013 Mann was full-time faculty at the U of M and was a 2015-16 visiting professor of dance at the U of W, Eau Claire. She is a graduate of New York University.

www.timetrackdance.org

Touring Information

Ashwini Ramaswamy

2019 CHOREOGRAPHER FELLOW

As an independent choreographer, Ashwini Ramaswamy’s work references ancient myths and ritualistic practices, global literature and poetry, and the mixed media contemporary culture she has absorbed for 35 years, drawing from myriad influences to express a personal identity with collective resonance. Celebrated for her ability to “[weave] together, both fearfully and joyfully, the human and the divine” (New York Times), Ashwini studies Bharatanatyam from the legendary dancer/choreographer Smt. Alarmel Valli of Chennai, India, and Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy, Artistic Directors of Ragamala Dance Company.

As Choreographic Associate/featured performer with Ragamala, she has toured extensively, performing throughout the U.S. and in Russia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Japan, the U.K, and India. Ashwini’s choreography was among the “Best of the Year” in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Big Dance Town, and Minn Post, and has been presented by the Joyce Theater (NYC), Triskelion Arts (NYC), Cowles Center (Minneapolis), The Yard (Martha’s Vineyard, MA), and Just Festival (Edinburgh, U.K.), among others.

Ashwini is a recipient of grants from the McKnight Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and Jerome Foundation, including a recent inaugural Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship. Ashwini’s work is supported by USArtists International, National Endowment for the Arts, and New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project. A recent piece was commissioned by The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music Series, and her work has been developed in residence at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) the Baryshnikov Arts Center (New York, NY) and the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron, OH.

http://www.ashwini-ramaswamy.com

Touring Information

Jinza Thayer

2019 CHOREOGRAPHER FELLOW

After spending the first six years in Japan and Southeast Asia, Jinza Thayer grew up in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University and received an MFA in Dance at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Now based in Minneapolis, she has created over 60 original works and presents her work as Movement Architecture – a blend of dance and theater in structured environments.

Some of the awards include being a two-time semi-finalist for France’s Rencontres choregraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis (Bagnolet) in 1999 and 2001, and receiving a 2010 SAGE Award for Choreographic Concept and Design. Fellowships include a 2004 McKnight Artist Fellowship for Choreographers, 2006 Associate Artist Residency at Atlantic Center for the Arts, and a 2010 Blacklock Nature Sanctuary Fellowship. She has received additional support from the Minnesota State Arts Board (1999, 2002, 2009, 2014, 2018), Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (2017), American Composers Forum (2006, 2011, 2014), and Jerome Foundation (2006).

Thayer has taught somatics, modern technique and composition at Zenon Dance Company and School in Minneapolis for twenty years.

https://www.movementarchitecture.com

Galia Eibenschutz

2019 International Choreographer

by Rodrigo Valero-Puertas

Galia Eibenschutz is a dance and multimedia artist from Mexico City whose work has developed through both movement and visual art techniques. Her work registers the passing of time as well as the scenic presence of the human body and its projection within architectural spaces. Her most recent performance pieces include presentations at Teatro de la Danza (Mexico City, Mexico; 2018); Museum of Contemporary Art in Oaxaca (2018) in collaboration with musician Natalia Perez Turner; FABRIKA in Beirut, Lebanon (2016) in collaboration with Corinne Skaff; at Ex-Teresa Arte, and during Art Basel at The Center for Visual Communication (Miami, 2013).

Her work has also been displayed as part of several collective exhibitions at Modern Art Museum (Mexico City); Carrillo Gill Art Museum (Mexico, City); Contemporary Art Museum of Oaxaca, MUCA Roma and MUCA CU (Mexico, City); Palacio Nacional de Bellas Artes (Mexico, City); Witte de Witt (Rotterdam), Blain|Southern (London branch); Mexican Cultural Center (Paris); Saidye Bronfman Center for the Arts (Montreal) and in Stedelijke Museum Voor Actuele Kunst Gante (Belgium).

She has been in residency programs in Casa Wabi; Casa NANO, Villa Iris (Botín Foundation), L’École des Sables (Senegal) and the Mexican Fine Arts Museum of Chicago. As a performer, Eibenschutz has also participated in projects from other artists such as Joan Jonas and Carlos Amorales. 

For more information about Galia, visit her website.

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

For more information on the residency co-hosts Kristin Van Loon and Arwen Wilder, visit their page.

Renée Copeland

2018 Dancer FELLOW

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

Renée Copeland is a Twin Cities-based artist originally from the wooded valleys south of Winona, Minnesota. She graduated from the University of Minnesota with a BFA in Dance and minor in American Indian Studies. Upon graduating in 2010, she joined Ananya Dance Theatre and continues to perform and teach with the company, touring all over the world.

She co-founded the dance/performance-art duo Hiponymous in 2012 with Genevieve Muench and became a founding member and collaborator of hip-hop-based dance company BRKFST in 2014. She is also a poet, multi-instrumentalist, and singer-songwriter. She is indebted to her parents for their abundant support and participation in all things creative, nourishing, and sacred. 

2021 SOLO Commissioned Choreographer Erika Bettin

 Hiponymous Touring Information

Yeniel ‘Chini’ Perez Domenech

2018 Dancer Fellow

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

Born in Matanzas, Cuba, Yeniel ‘Chini’ Perez Domenech has been a professional dancer for over 25 years. He graduated from the prestigious Escuela Nacional de Arte in Havana, Cuba in 1991. Chini then became a member of Afrocuba de Matanzas, under the direction of Francisco Zamora Chirino ‘Minini’. He danced in both national and international tours, taught and was invited to choreograph for the company.

In 2006, he moved to Mexico and danced with a variety of groups and performed as a guest dance artist with famous Latin bands including Latin Grammy award winning Los Van Van and Pupy y Los Que Son Son.

In 2011, Chini moved to Minnesota. He immediately began dancing with Rene Thompson’s Street to Stage group. He went on to work with Patrick Scully, Curio Dance and has connected with Brazilian, West African and Hip Hop artists in the Twin Cities. Chini now performs and choreographs for Rueda de la Calle and his own performance identity Chini Company. He is a passionate dance educator teaching Cuban and other Latin dances in a variety of venues from school workshops to nightclubs to Chini Studio. Throughout his career he has performed in theaters, festivals and nightclubs reaching a broad range of audiences and communities. 

2021 SOLO Commissioned Choreographer Ephrat Asherie

Sharon Mansur

2018 Dancer Fellow

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

Sharon Mansur is a dance and interdisciplinary experimental artist, educator, curator, and community mover and shaker of Lebanese heritage based in Keoxa/Winona, Mni Sota Makoce/Minnesota, Dakota country. Her creative practices weave movement making, improvisation, visual environments, food, screendance, audience participation, and site-situated/responsive art to offer multi-sensory and immersive experiences rooted in body, imagination, and environment. She loves creating artistic opportunities for people from all walks of life to connect and engage.

Sharon has recently received support from the McKnight Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council, the Winona Fine Arts Commission, and Springboard for the Arts. She was also a 2019-20 National Arts Strategies Creative Community Fellow. Mansur is the director of The Cedar Tree Project, presenting and amplifying regional, national and international creative voices of the SWANA/Arab diaspora.

www.mansurdance.com 

Sharon Mansur Touring Information

2021 SOLO Commissioned Choreographers Yara Boustany, Andrea Shaker & Mette LouLou von Kohl

DejaJoelle

2018 Choreographer Fellow

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

DejaJoelle is a Black artist who uses dance, poetry and theater to explore the many bridges to and from Black America and Africa. She has studied dance at Howard University and with master dancers from Senegal and Guinea. She is also a graduate of Penumbra Theatre’s Summer institute program where she has honed the skill of art for social change. She continuously explores body image, language, culture, and modes of oppression. She believes her art is something not to be performed but witnessed and has replaced the word “performance” with “observance” mainly to keep the artist’s raw emotions intact. The art is not gifted for the observers, but in fact a ‘rites of passage' for the artist. Her most recent work includes Taneber/BLAQ Wall Street with her dance company BLAQ. BLAQ thrives off four main pillars: Dance, Writing, Discussion, and ASL (American Sign Language). BLAQ’s mission is to strive for freedom and aspire to embody the true reflections of themselves and their vast communities. 

Laurie Van Wieren

2018 Choreographer Fellow

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

Laurie Van Wieren has been a creative force in the Twin Cities for 30+ years. Her choreography has been shown in the Twin Cities, nationally, and in Europe. 9x22 Dance/Lab, her monthly showcase, is the pre-eminent performance platform for local and visiting choreographers. She’s developed work for the Walker Art Center’s Open Field performance, which highlighted 100 local choreographers.

Van Wieren has curated performance for the Southern, Ritz, Bryant Lake Bowl Theaters and Soo Visual Art Center. She is a recipient of fellowships/grants from McKnight, Jerome, Bush, NEA, Rockefeller Foundations and Mn State Arts Board. She has received a Special Citation SAGE Award and a SAGE Award for Outstanding Performance. Van Wieren received a City Pages Artists of the Year in 2016 for her solo dance Temporary Action Theory and her ongoing curation. She is currently making site-specific ensemble dance performances for parks and large spaces and a series of solo works for small spaces. 

Laurie Van Wieren touring information

Taja Will

2018 Choreographer Fellow

Photo by Tim Rummelhoff

Choreographer Taja Will is a queer, Latina artist. Her body of work includes multi-dimensional contemporary performance and holistic therapy. These two parallel worlds come together in her artistic work through modalities of somatic movement and structured improvisation. Will’s aesthetic is one of spontaneity, bold choice making, sonic and kinetic partnership and the ability to move in relationship to risk and intimacy.  Her practice and performance works are deeply rooted in exploring a visceral connection to current socio-cultural realities.

Will’s work has been presented throughout the Twin Cities and across the United States. Including local performances at the Walker Art Center Choreographer’s Evening, the Red Eye Theater’s New Works 4 Weeks, the Radical Recess series and Right Here Showcase. Will has been named ‘One to watch, one to embrace’ as the Keeper Award recipient in 2010 from Metro Magazine, she received a 2011 Sage Award nomination, and was a featured artist in Lavender Magazine’s ‘Choreographers that Move Us’. Will received the Right Here Showcase commission, Jerome Travel Study Award and Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant for her most recent solo work Bruja // Fugitive Majesty. Her futuristic trio Gospels of Oblivion: To the End premiered at the Southern Theater presented by ARENA Dances' Candy Box Dance Festival, and received support from the MRAC Next Step Award and MSAB Artist Initiative grant.

In addition to her own work Will has collaborated and dance with Rosy Simas Danse, Aniccha Arts (Pramila Vasudevan), Deborah Jinza Thayer, Off Leash Area, Vanessa Voskuil, and Body Cartography Project among others. Will maintains a private healing practice blending modalities of healing justice work with developmental psychotherapy and somatic bodywork.

 Taja Will Touring Information