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).
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
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.
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.
Mário Nascimento
2022 McKnight International Choreographer
Photo courtesy of the artist
Mário Nascimento began his studies in Brazil in 1978, majoring in classical ballet, modern dance, and jazz. He studied with Toshie Kobayashi, Lenie Dale, Fred Benjamin, Redhá Bettenfour, Joyce Kermann, Tony Abbot, and Mayza Tempesta. In 1989, Nascimento studied modern and contemporary dance in Europe. He performed with Charleroi Danses from Brussels. With the creation of the show "Escapada," in partnership with the musician Fábio Cardia, he performed in Germany and started to practice martial arts, athletics, and the composition of musical rhythms, which contributed to the development of his own technique and language. He is considered an artist from the underground world of São Paulo.
Nascimento is the Founder, Artistic Director and Choreographer of Cia Mário Nascimento created 20 years ago. He was the assistant director and choreographer of Cisne Negro Cia de Dança (São Paulo), directed by Hulda Bittencourt, where he created the works: "7 por 7 and “Maracatu de Chico Rei.” In 1997 he was invited by the Choreographic Center of the French-Belgium Community to teach classes at the Post in Hamburg. In 2002, he established Cia Mário Nascimento in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais.
In January 2020, Nascimento assumed the artistic direction of Corpo de Dança do Amazonas - CDA, in the city of Manaus, Amazonas, where he currently resides.
For more information about the residency activities, visit our International Choreographer page.
For more information on the residency co-host Contempo Physical Dance.
Alexandra Eady
2021 DANCER FELLOW
photo by Canaan Mattson
Alexandra Eady was born and raised in Minneapolis and began dancing at the age of seven. While in high school at St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists, she was introduced to the contemporary dance technique of Yorchhā created by Ananya Chatterjea, the Artistic Director of Ananya Dance Theatre. In 2011, she became a company member with Ananya Dance Theatre and continues to perform, teach and tour with the company. Ananya Dance Theatre’s commitment to social justice and intentional choreographic creations is what fuels her performance on stage.
Alexandra teaches Yorchhā workshops and masterclasses in schools across the Twin Cities and nationally and internationally while on tour with the company. Her international performance and teaching experience includes the Harare International Festival of the Arts in Zimbabwe, New Waves Performance Institute in Trinidad, the Bethlehem International Performing Arts Festival in Palestine, and the Aavejak Aavaaz Festival in Delhi. In 2020 she was a collaborator in residence at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography. Alexandra is committed to performing and creating works grounded in narrative and story that do not leave behind ancestral guidance. She works to bring her communities with her and perform in honor of those that have come before, the ones that are witnessing, and future generations. She is incredibly thankful for her wonderful mentors, teachers, students, friends, family, and most significantly, her parents and sister that give her endless energy and light.
2022 SOLO Commissioned Choreographer: Maria Bauman
Hassan Ingraham
2021 DANCER FELLOW
photo by Canaan Mattson
Hassan Ingraham, born and raised in Miami, FL, first discovered dance while attending Charles R. Drew Middle School. He continued his dance training at the New World School of the Arts and then received his Bachelor of Fine Arts at The Juilliard School in New York City. Hassan has worked with various prominent artists from the likes of Alexander Ekman, Christopher Huggins, Darrell Grand Moultrie, Dwight Rhoden, among many others. He has been a guest artist with Wylliams/Henry Contemporary Dance Theater, Urban Spectrum Theater Company, and Peter London Global Dance Company. He was a dance specialist at the Promise Academy at the Harlem Children’s Zone and a faculty member at the Harlem School of the Arts. In 2011, Hassan moved to Minnesota to join TU Dance, where he danced with the company for 5 years. He also has been teaching ballet, modern, and jazz techniques for over 15 years.
With the combination of his experience and education, Hassan brings a fresh contemporary approach to his class that allows dancers to investigate new possibilities while learning how to operate their human anatomy efficiently. Aside from his dancing career and establishing himself as a master teacher, teaching the young aspiring to professionals, Hassan has choreographed for numerous dance schools and programs across the U.S. Currently, you can find Hassan teaching, dancing, and setting his choreography throughout the Twin Cities.
2022 SOLO Commissioned Choreographer: Norbert De La Cruz III
David Stalter Jr.
2021 Dancer FELLOW
Photo by Canaan Mattson
David Stalter Jr., born and raised in Minnesota. He started dancing the summer after freshman year of high school, dancing as an outlet to express himself. He’s self-taught, teaching himself all sorts of styles like Hip Hop Freestyle, Animation, Breaking, House, and many more. He’s danced with the 612 Timberwolves crew, where he’s danced with G-Eazy, Lil Jon, and Skee-Lo.
Winning over 15+ competitions in his dance career. He focuses on musicality, control, and becoming one with the music. He comes from a street background but has built studio experience throughout his dance career. He’s been teaching since 2015. Dance has taught him many different things and has made him the person he is today. His ultimate goal is to inspire as many people as possible with his art to spread love and light and help those in need. He believes it's important to be yourself no matter what because that's what makes you special, and that's what makes you, you. He's based in Minnesota, but his passion, art and dance have allowed him to travel to many different places so far like Chicago, Texas, L.A, Paris, and more. Currently, he works hard to become an even more versed artist and a better teacher. He has faith that one day he’ll travel the world teaching about self-love and dance, while continuing to be a student learning new things along the way.
2022 SOLO Commissioned Choreographer: Sheopatra
Ananya Chatterjea
2021 CHOREOGRAPHER FELLOW
photo by Canaan Mattson
Ananya Chatterjea/ অনন্যা চট্টোপাধ্যায় ‘s work as choreographer, dancer, and thinker brings together Contemporary Dance, social justice choreography, and a commitment to healing justice. She is the creator of Ananya Dance Theatre’s signature movement vocabulary, Yorchhā, and is the primary architect of the company’s justice- and community-oriented choreographic methodology, Shawngrām. She is a 2011 Guggenheim Choreography Fellow, a 2012 and 2021 McKnight Choreography Fellow, a 2016 Joyce Award recipient, a 2018 UBW Choreographic Center Fellow, a 2019 Dance/USA Artist Fellow, and recipient of the 2021 A. P. Andersen Award.
Ananya Dance Theatre is a company of BIPOC cultural activists and women and femme dance artists who believe in the transformative power of dance. In dancing stories where their lives and dreams occupy the center, they shift the landscape of mainstream culture, build understanding about arts and social justice, and empower artistic voices.
Alanna Morris
2021 Choreographer FELLOW
photo by Canaan Mattson
Alanna Morris (formerly Morris-Van Tassel) is a Brooklyn-born Dancer-Choreographer, Educator, Artist Organizer, and Curator, who danced with TU Dance (St Paul, Minnesota) under artistic directors Toni Pierce-Sands and Uri Sands from 2007-2017. She was featured in works by Kyle Abraham, Gioconda Barbuto, Camille A. Brown, Ronald K. Brown, Greggory Dolbashian, Katrin Hall, Francesca Harper, Dwight Rhoden, and Uri Sands. In 2020 they served as the company's Artistic Associate and is a founding Teaching Artist at The School at TU Dance Center.
Alanna is the Artistic Director of I A.M. Arts (formerly Alanna Morris-Van Tassel Productions), founded in 2017 as a fiscally-sponsored project of Springboard for the Arts to sustainably provide opportunities for the development and presentation of new dance works, international collaborations, educational and community-development initiatives. For more on community development programs go here.
In January 2023, Morris premieres Invisible Cities, a collaborative reimagining of Italo Calvino’s metaphysical novel, interweaving cultural perspectives with a dynamic group of dance artists—Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy (Bharatanatyam), Berit Ahlgren (Gaga), Alanna Morris (Modern), Joseph Tran (Breaking)—and visual artist, Kevork Mourad, who creates Invisible Cities’ interactive, immersive projections in real time. For in-person and livestream tickets go here.
Alanna is a proud graduate of The Juilliard School with academic honors and of Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts (NY). She is an Artistic Advisor to Springboard Danse Montréal and was recently co-curator of the Walker Art Center’s 50th Anniversary of Choreographer’s Evening alongside Judith Howard in November 2022.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Kaz K. Sherman
2020 CHOREOGRAPHER FELLOW
photo by Aaron Rosenblum
Kaz K. 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.
Erin Thompson
2019 Dancer FELLOW
Erin Thompson by V. Paul Virtucio
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