Crystal Kayiza was raised in Oklahoma and is now a Brooklyn-based filmmaker. Named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film,” she is a recipient of the Sundance Ignite Fellowship, Creative Culture Woman Filmmaker Fellowship and Sisters in Cinema Documentary Fellowship. Kayiza is the recipient of the 2022 Documentary Development Initiative grant in partnership with HBO Documentary Films and The Gotham. Her film, Edgecombe, was an official selection of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was distributed by POV. Her short, See You Next Time, was an official selection of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and released by The New Yorker. Crystal was the winner of the 2020 Tribeca Through Her Lens grant with her film Rest Stop, which premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival and was selected for the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. She is currently working on her first feature film, which received a 2021 Creative Capital Award.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

As a filmmaker, my work has been defined by exploring the in-between. The space between scripted and non-fiction cinema, the western world and the African Diaspora, all of the lines separating communities in my hometown in Oklahoma, the interior of my home as a child of immigrants and my access to space as a US citizen. The emphasis on location, memory and time in my work is largely rooted in a desire to define this gap and to make this nuance more legible. I am interested in how all of these things intersect with the most mundane elements of our lives. The everydayness that we often overlook, particularly within the inner lives of Black folks, is what I find most compelling. During the fellowship period, I plan to continue to work on my first scripted and non-fiction feature projects as well as pursue joy and rest in the most unremarkable and quiet parts of my daily life.

Raven Johnson is an award winning, Liberian-American filmmaker from Minnesota. Her work deals with the realities of Black experiences in predominantly white spaces around the American Midwest. Raven graduated with her MFA from NYU’s Tisch Graduate Film program and is the current filmmaker-in-residence at Augsburg University in Minneapolis. Raven is a 2022 Locarno Film Festival resident in Switzerland, a recipient of Jerome Foundation’s 2021 MN Artist Development Grant, a 2021 Jerome Emerging Artist-in-Residence at the Anderson Center at Tower View, and a 2019-2020 Cinéfondation resident in Paris. Johnson is currently in development with her debut feature film, RUBY: PORTRAIT OF A BLACK TEEN IN AN AMERICAN SUBURB which has received support from SFFILM and the Kenneth Rainin Foundation.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

As a filmmaker, I am deeply committed to telling stories of the African diaspora that focus on Black Joy and Black Liberation as its central source of healing. My goal is to create films that are thought-provoking, emotionally resonant, and which tackle complex issues about the intersectionality of race, gender, and class with profound nuance and astute sensitivity. My hope is that my work will provoke deep and meaningful discourse for a worldwide audience.

Photo by Raven Jackson.

Tahiel Jimenez Medina (he, him his; they, them, theirs) is a Colombian first-generation immigrant director. In dedication to his mother and immigrant mamas who escape generational violence, he presents Colombian immigrant identity through a lens that celebrates ever-evolving emotional and ancestral journeys, memories, and dreams. His visions about immigrant and Colombian identity are culture catalysts to decolonize, remember, and heal ancestral cycles. Medina has premiered films at national and international film festivals including Palm Springs International Short Film Festival, New York Latino Film Festival, and Provincetown International Film Festival—and in local parking lots for his community to gather and imagine new worlds. His documentary about Colombian immigrants in Minnesota, Día a Día 2020: One Day at a Time, is available on PBS online channels (pbs.org, PBS Video App). Recent recognition includes The TPT PBS 2020 Project, The Next Step Grant, The Apichatpong Weerasethakul PlayLab Workshop, and The McKnight Artist Fellowship.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

For this fellowship, I will tend to my creative spirit and relationships to family, friends, and collaborators. It will be a time to be radically honest about what kind of films my soul yearns to create and with who I co-create this path forward. I will rest, focus, and reflect in preparation to develop my first narrative feature film. This film will bring to light the stories of my community and ancestors who shine through me.

For part of my fellowship, I will collaborate with my aunties and my mother to record and make films of the stories of our lives. Their magical journeys tell of spicy romance, unbroken courage rooted in love, and unfathomable lived tragedies. Their narratives will inspire generations far into the future. I dedicate this fellowship to them, in all their undeniable beauty, in their profound wisdom, and unparalleled presence.

Photo by Adja Gildersleve.

Sequoia Hauck (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, trans, Anishinaabe and Hupa multidisciplinary artist creating film, poetry, and performance art that decolonizes the process of art-making. Their work weaves together Indigenous epistemologies, queer and trans identity and the exploration and possibilities of Indigenous futurism. They make art surrounding the narratives of continuation and resiliency among their communities. Their films have been in the Minnesota International Film Festival and the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Film Festival. They are a Saint Paul Neighborhood Network (SPNN) New Angles 2020-2021 Fellow, as well as a recipient of the SPNN Fresh Vantage Post Production grant supporting their upcoming documentary series They Didn't Deserve to Die. www.sequoiahauck.com

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

I am finishing my upcoming film They Didn’t Deserve to Die, a six episode documentary about six Native families across Turtle Island sharing their heart-wrenching stories of loved ones lost to police brutality. Through memories, stories, and home videos these families honor the lives their sons and brothers lived, not just the day they died. I plan to tour the film to the communities who contributed and shared their stories. This will be the first audiences of the film as a way to honor and celebrate the lives of those we have lost. I believe filmmaking is a powerful form of storytelling. I will take this time during my fellowship to intentionally further my artistic practices. To weave and connect more with ancestors and relatives. Learning from my queer, trans, indigiqueer, two-spirit kin to honor what they have to share and soak up the knowledge they are willing to gift.

Photo by Sam Malm.

Anh Vo is a Vietnamese dancer, writer, and activist. They create dances and produce texts about pornography and queer relations, about being and form, about identity and abstraction, about history and its colonial reality. They earned their degrees in Performance Studies from Brown University (BA) and New York University (MA). Currently based in Brooklyn, Anh is also developing a sustainable relationship to Hanoi, Vietnam.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

I create dances and produce texts about pornography and queer relations, about being and form, about identity and abstraction, about history and its colonial reality. I make art about the life of a Vietnamese desiring America, of a colonized being desiring its colonizer.

With this fellowship, I will deepen my “Weak Body” practice. This practice is loosely inspired by the Vietnamese phrase “yếu bóng vía” (clunkily translated as “weak aura”), which refers to people who are sensitive to spectral presence and susceptible to haunting. In thinking about this vulnerable altered state, “Weak Body” experiments with a repertoire of small, repetitive, rhythmic, vibrational, and durational movements that can softly loosen the connection to reality and heighten sensitivity to other entangled worlds in order to dance with ghostly beings emerging in the wake of wars. “Weak Body” is not just a mode of aesthetic exploration, but also a daily practice of survival that finds value in weakness, vulnerability, and interdependence.

Photo by Maria Baranova.

Joseph “MN JOE” Tran is a founding member of BRKFST Dance Company and also a member of the world-renowned breaking crew Knuckleheads Cali, respected for their uniquely intricate and non-traditional methods of movement. Tran is the recipient of the 2019 McKnight Dancer Fellowship and is known for his signature moves which have earned him multiple first-place victories in breaking competitions across the US, Europe, and South America. Tran has choreographed multiple original works which have premiered at various venues such as The Cowles Center, Southern Theater, and Orchestra Hall with the Minnesota Orchestra. He has toured internationally to Ireland for Dance 2 Connect Festival and nationally to Hartford, CT with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. Tran has set repertoire with BRKFST at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Carleton College, and Bates Dance Festival. From 2007-2019, he was a dancer and choreographer for the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves “First Avenue Breakers.” Tran currently works as a breaking instructor for Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists and Young Dance.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

The 2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship supports my mission as a dancer who pushes boundaries, provides alternative perspectives to conventional ideas, and inspires others to innovate. I will create and present original performances with BRKFST Dance Company and to continue my journey as a breaker at the highest levels of competition. I look forward to the various connections and opportunities it will provide!

Photo by Isabel Fajardo.

Kendra J. Ross is a Detroit native working as a dancer, choreographer, teaching artist, facilitator and community organizer in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. As a dancer, Kendra has worked with Urban Bush Women, Ase Dance Theater Collective, MBDance, Moving Spirits Dance Company, Movement of the People Dance Company and as a guest artist with Oyu Oro. Kendra’s choreographic work has been presented at Florida A&M University, the off Broadway show 7 Sins, Museu de Arte in Salvador, Brazil, Dixon Place, Ailey Citigroup Theater, and Actors Fund Theater. She has been an Artist in Residence at Brooklyn Studios for Dance, The Neighborhood Project Through 651Arts, and The Laundromat Project. Kendra serves as the Founder/Director of STooPS, an outdoors-based community building event that uses art strengthen ties between different entities in Bed-Stuy. She is also a teaching artist at Cumbe: Center for African and Diaspora Dance.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

As an avid student of folkloric traditions of the African Diaspora, my work is grounded in the Ghanian concept of Sankofa—looking back in order to move forward. I am working to develop a Sankofic praxis to collect embodied research that employs Black History as a springboard for imagining all aspects of community—art, culture, movements, people, lifestyles etc. This process will help me to not only navigate my contemporary life as a Black woman but also invite others to learn from the enriching lessons of these forms. Through intentional partnerships with collaborators, community members, especially elders, local organizations and businesses, I will work to collect, share, and interpret their stories. I will continue creating a collaborative archiving of history and culture with the development of my project, the Sankofa Residency. Through my artistic expression, I want to help shape the future of my community by interpreting and reimagining the narratives. My work is to dance Afrofuturism in action.

Photo by Bostock Images.

MX Oops is a multimedia performance artist and educator whose work centers hybridity, encouraging ecstatic disobedience as a path toward embodied wellness. Their creative practice links urban arts [breaking, house, vogue femme, rap, dj, vj, fashion], somatic studies [yoga, thai yoga massage, energy healing, sound baths], media and gender studies. Through this transdisciplinary approach, their work questions whether consciousness itself is the primary medium.

A certified yoga instructor (500hr RYT) and practitioner of Thai Yoga Massage, trained in various forms of energy healing, they completed a BA in dance and religion at the George Washington University and completed an Integrated Media Arts MFA at Hunter College. They are currently an Assistant Professor of Dance, Multimedia Performance, and Somatic Studies in the Department of Music, Multimedia, Theatre, and Dance at Lehman College CUNY. www.mxoops.com

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

During this fellowship I will develop UnFiNiShEd aNiMaL, a party and multimedia performance that uses the vibrant aesthetics of queer nightlife culture to reveal how cognitive bias connects us all. This piece tells the story of humanity coming to grips with our collective inheritance, a ramshackle meshwork of cognitive processes evolved to survive, not for self-awareness. An interdisciplinary approach invites the audience to meditate on what might be unfinished about human cognition and how these biases keep us from building a better world together.

With support from the National Performance Network Creation Fun, this work will be developed in the Live Feed Residency at New York Live Arts toward a Spring 2024 premiere. Additionally, this fellowship period will incubate [NONFATAL_ERROR], a multimedia ensemble of artists engaged in collaborative world-building. Ensemble members work in dance, new media, interactive video projection design, sound design, voice, and costume, fashion, sculpture and more. These mediums come together to welcome party people into a lush world of queer becoming.

Valerie Oliveiro is a dance and performance maker based in the Twin Cities and from Singapore. While they currently engage movement as their primary motor for expression, they also engage in other expressions, such as design, writing, drawing and photography, as generative, complexly relational proposals. Their choreographic work has been presented at Walker Art Center, Red Eye Theater, Hair+Nails Gallery and Bryant Lake Bowl and Cowles Center and has been supported by Minnesota State Arts Board, MRAC, Jerome Foundation and MAP Fund. Currently, they are a Co-Artistic Director at Red Eye Theater, ensemble member at Lighting Rod (QTBIPOC-led performance organism) and co-run a small performance incubator MOVO SPACE.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

Valerie is creating new work in 2023/2024 and will foreground their own artistic research in North America and Asia.

Photo credit: Valerie Oliveiro.

Margaret Ogas is a choreographer, performer, and teaching artist based in the Twin Cities. Using an interdisciplinary approach rooted in dance and informed by Chicana cultural sensibilities, her works tell surreal everyday stories through a collage of movement, text and sound. Ogas has been presented by the Walker Art Center, Candy Box Dance Festival, Red Eye Theater, Center for Performing Arts, FD13, Mizna, Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio and others. She was awarded a 2022 Next Step Fund grant by the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council and was a 2021 Naked Stages Fellow at Pillsbury House + Theatre.

Margaret is a core collaborator and performer with the Taja Will Ensemble. She has also performed for Laurie Van Weiren, Chris Schlicting, Sequoia Hauck and others. Margaret is a teaching artist, specializing in modern technique, improvisation, and composition. She is currently a youth instructor at Young Dance. She holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Minnesota.

FELLOWSHIP STATEMENT

I am a dancer and improviser who is interested in the way choreography can be used to tell stories and traverse the messy, layered nature of identity.

My dances weave personal narrative and thoughtful aesthetic choices to connect with audiences through humor and heartfelt storytelling, intentionally blending the everyday with the surreal. I am inspired by the political spirit of the Chicano art movement and the vibrancy of communities I find myself within and around.

During this fellowship, I will root into my choreographic practice, taking time to develop my voice and experiment in interdisciplinary modes. I will build on my connections with BIPOC and queer artists to develop and present a new ensemble work.

Photo by Caroline Yang.