Ama Codjoe (she/her) is the author of Blood of the Air (Northwestern University Press, 2020), winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize and Bluest Nude forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in Fall 2022. Her work has been awarded support from Cave Canem, Jerome, Robert Rauschenberg, and Saltonstall foundations, as well as from Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Crosstown Arts, Hedgebrook, and MacDowell. Among other honors, Codjoe is the recipient of a 2017 Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, a 2019 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, a 2020 BRIO Award from the Bronx Council on the Arts, and a 2020 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship.

Fellowship Statement

I want to continue to learn about the world and about myself through the practice of poetry in the hopes of making true for myself and others Adrienne Rich’s lines from Dreamwood: “that poetry/ isn’t revolution but a way of knowing/ why it must come.” I want to be led into poems by color, music, serendipity, research and travel. Currently, I am revising and shaping my first full-length collection Bluest Nude.

Photo by Jamie Harmon

Lexie Bean (they/he) is a queer and trans multimedia artist whose work revolves around themes of bodies, homes, cyclical violence, and LGBTQIA+ identities. They're a member of the RAINN National Leadership Council and a Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Written On The Body, centering fellow trans survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, and served as a keynote speaker for MaleSurvivor and universities around the United States. Their experimental and animated short films, Full, Trans Boy Remember, and The Ship We Built, which later became an #OwnVoices, Kirkus Starred novel with Penguin Random House and a feature-length film script, have played in festivals globally. Their latest writing, A Scavenger Hunt For People Loneliest In Their Own Homes, was commissioned by Price Hill Will. Their work has been featured in Teen Vogue, the New York Times, Huffington Post, Feminist Wire, Ms. Magazine, Them, Logo’s New Now Next, Bust Magazine, Autostraddle, and more. www.lexiebean.com

Fellowship Statement

I’m interested in creating for those who blame themselves for falling into the same mistakes again and again; people who can't hold their own bodies. I want to create for those struggling with shame, developing new vocabularies, and forming families; people who are afraid of change. Queer folks surviving the Midwest, where I'm from. I’m interested in developing narratives where there is danger in forgetting, and remind us all that there is resilience in imagination.

I am currently working on several personal projects relating to these themes: a television pilot, Flyovers; my first Young Adult novel, All My Good Memories Of That House Were With You; my first auto-fiction novel for adults, Across From You; continued building and collaboration for the screenplay version of my debut novel, The Ship We Built; as well as collaborative pieces, like What Will I Become?, through documentary and anthology curation.

Photo by Llewellyn Nuñez

Catina Bacote grew up in New Haven, Connecticut. Her nonfiction has appeared in Tin House, Ploughshares, Kweli, Gettysburg Review, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, The Common, Prairie Schooner, December Magazine, Southern California Review, and in the anthology, This Is the Place: Women Writing About Home. Her work has been supported by residencies at Hedgebrook, Headlands Center for the Arts, The Millay Colony, Willapa Bay AiR, the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony where she received the Ann Cox Chambers Long-form Journalism Fellowship, and the Ragdale Foundation where she received the Alice Judson Hayes Social Justice Fellowship. Bacote holds an MFA from the University of Iowa, where she was admitted as a Dean’s Graduate Research Fellow and subsequently served as the Provost’s Visiting Writer in Nonfiction. Currently, she is an assistant professor of creative writing at St. John’s University in Queens, New York.

Fellowship Statement

I am interested in how the writer’s voice acts as an ethical pointer in a world where poverty and excessive wealth, political repression, gun violence, racial segregation, and mass incarceration persist. My nonfiction writing depends on collecting personal testimony and attempts to uncover intimate stories that have not been told or retell those distorted by the realms of politics or entertainment. However, some tales feel dangerous to share because even the people they touch have kept silent. But as an artist, I aspire to step into uncharted territory and gently bring others along with me. I engage in this work not as a distant observer or objective researcher but as a Black woman whose life has been shaped by racial and economic injustice. Presently, I am working on my first book-in-progress, Eastern Circle, which chronicles the lasting impact of the illegal drug trade on my family and community.

Taja Will is a queer, Latinx (Chilean) adoptee, performer, choreographer, and Healing Justice practitioner based in the Twin Cities, the occupied land of the Dakota and Anishinaabe peoples. Will integrates improvisation, somatic modalities, text and vocals in contemporary performance that explores visceral connections to current socio-cultural realities through ritual, archetypes and everyday magic.

Will has been presented in Walker Art Center Choreographer’s Evening, Red Eye Theater, Right Here Showcase and the Candy Box Dance Festival and is the recipient of a 2018 McKnight Choreography Fellowship, administered by the Cowles Center and funded by The McKnight Foundation. Will recently received support from the National Association of Latinx Arts & Culture, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. As a performer Will has collaborated with Sara Shelton Mann, Rosy Simas, Keith Hennessy, Pramila Vasudevan, Deborah Jinza Thayer, Timmy Rehborg, Body Cartography Project and Miguel Gutierrez among others.

Fellowship Statement

My work is conceptual, state-based, grounded in personal practice, and always in relationship to socio-cultural realities of the moment. In that, my areas of attention for the fellowship duration will include personal movement practice, mentorship, and writing/artist advocacy. For me, a weekly, uninterrupted personal movement practice is a foundation for my creativity, physical range, and the creation of new work. Mentorship is my primary affinity. I intend to continue my mentorship with Sara Shelton Mann, as she is willing and able, and start a mentorship with a voice-based artist and a contemporary performance artist who engages with writing. Another area of focus I’m invested in is writing, creative and pragmatic. I’m interested in developing tools for artists to encourage further equity in relationship with presenters and institutional partners, such as a values rider.

Photo by Nanne Sorvold

Jordan Demetrius Lloyd is a dance artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Originally from Albany, NY, Lloyd graduated from The College at Brockport where he performed works by Maura Keefe and Alexandra Beller. He has collaborated with and performed for Karl Rogers, Netta Yerushalmy, Tammy Carrasco, Monica Bill Barnes, Catherine Galasso, Laura Peterson, Ambika Raina and David Dorfman Dance. His teaching practice has brought him to Rutgers University and Mark Morris Dance Center, and his work has been produced by New York Live Arts, BRIC, ISSUE Project Room, Movement Research at Judson Memorial Church, The Center for Performance Research and Brooklyn Studios for Dance. He was selected as a 2019 Center for Performance Research Artist in Resident and is a recipient of the 2019-21 Fresh Tracks Performance and Residency Program at New York Live Arts. For more please head to jordandlloyd.com

Fellowship Statement

My approach to making is visual and imaginative, using movement as a tool to manipulate time and space and to stretch the edges of the collective experience. I work intuitively when generating material and focus on formal elements such as shape, color and texture to arrive at a place of cohesion. My work is home to considerations of place and moments in the world, teetering along lines of fantasy and vast, radical imagination. By rooting my work in compositional specificity and performative intention, I aim to muddle interpretation and complicate association, keeping the viewing experience active and participatory. Movement, to me, can act as a portal into memory, ancestry and a deeper level of feeling that widens the possibilities of what a moment represents. In many ways, my work seeks to sustain attention, evoke questions, and stimulate opinions while bringing communities together to share a specific moment in time.

Photo by Aundre Larrow

LeilAwa [Leila Awadallah] is a Palestinian, Arab-American dancer, choreographer, filmmaker and cultural activist based in Minneapolis, Mni Sota Makoce and Beirut, Lebanon. She holds a BFA in Dance and minor in Arabic Language and Literature from the University of Minnesota. LeilAwa founded the project: Body Watani (body-as-homeland) and is developing an offering of Arab Rooted Contemporary dance, both of which engage with dance forms, rhythms and rituals of SWANA, ancestral memories, and embodied reflections on settler-colonial occupation and indigenous resistance.

LeilAwa’s work and research has been supported by Jerome Foundation, Springboard for the Arts, Arab American National Museum, Mizna, Lebanese National Theatre, Amalgam, Camargo Foundation, Cedar Tree Project, Walker, Rhythmically Speaking, Threads Dance Co. and SAGE. Leila danced with Ananya Dance Theatre, performing locally, nationally, and internationally in Ethiopia, Palestine and India; is a founding member of Kelvin Wailey, 3wadallahs and Solidarity Rising; and a collaborator with Theatre of the Women of the Camp.

Fellowship Statement

LeilAwa (lay-luh-wuh) merges my gifted name, لیلى , with my family lineage, عوض اللھ , to embody a self that is both rooted in histories and becoming into futures. I dive deep into intersections of arts and activism, beginning with body and breathing outwards to examine the ways dance engages with human rights, invites healing, invokes critical thinking, and physicalizes practices of decolonizing our bodies / lands through re-membering and re-imagining. This emerging project: Body Watani is a pathway, a container with soft edges, space for artists / peoples to reflect on this notion of body as a site of living homeland. Through this fellowship, I will take steps to establish Body Watani as a project-based dance company split between Minneapolis and Beirut, building community, creating workshops, growing collaborations, and initiating the company’s first full piece, Terraena: hakawati of the sea. As well as prioritizing Arab, SWANA, and Mediterranean dance / cultural / political studies. SWANA [South West Asia and North Africa] is a decolonial term used when referring to the ‘Middle East’ or ‘Arab world’ (which is not all Arab) to locate geographically rather than ethnically.

Photo by Trista Marie Photo

Herb Johnson III (aka JDot Tight Eyez) graduated from Perpich Center for the Performing Arts in 2010 and studied 3 years at the Lundstrum Center for Arts. Johnson is now an an Urban & Street dance instructor at the University of Minnesota. He choreographs and performs solo and in groups 612 Crew, DeadPool, and Mixtape. Professional work includes iLuminate from America’s Got Talent, choreographing G-Easy's Halftime Show 2018, and Super Bowl 52 Halftime Show 2018 with Justin Timberlake. Johnson was a 2017 McKnight Dancer Fellow and received a 2018 Momentum: New Dance Works commission and a grant from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts. Additionally, he received a Jerome Travel/Study grant in 2018 to travel to Dusseldorf, Germany to attend European Buck Session’s annual Krump dance event.

Fellowship Statement

Herb Johnson III is a multi-disciplinary artist and Krump Scholar. As a leader of the Krump dance movement in Minnesota, he aspires to continue to build and bring visibility to the community through training within the style and event organization.

Photo by Juiceedope (Julius Johnson)

Jerron Herman (he/him) is a disabled artist working in dance and text to facilitate welcoming. From late 2018 into 2019 he produced four world premiere commissions for Gibney, Performance Space New York, The Whitney Museum, and Danspace Project, and performed excerpts at The Kennedy Center. Jerron joined Kinetic Light in 2019, having been a member of Heidi Latsky Dance since 2011.

Jerron has served on the Board of Trustees at Dance/USA since 2017, most recently as Vice Chair. He was a finalist for the Lark Play Development Lab/Apothetae Fellowship and received The King’s College Alumni Award also in 2017. From 2019-2020 he curated the series Access Check 2.0: Mapping Accessibility for the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation and writes extensively on art & culture. Jerron was named a 2020 Disability Futures Fellow by the Ford Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Fellowship Statement

My work aspires to connect disparate contexts together to reveal their cohesion. In recent pieces I’ve sampled and sourced from history, popular culture, and text. Now, I wish to use my body as a source. Growing up in medicalized contexts such as physical and occupational therapy I relied on others’ expertise of my body to will it and control it; I experienced a similar fashioning in dance, but through movement experimentation have noticed explicit choreography across my limbs. When mitigating pain or crossing my body I’ve noticed the movement is active, and has the potential to parallel contexts outside the body. I’m following the symbolism in my diagnosis to reveal the scholarship inherent in the unnoticed quakes. What can my warring hemispheres teach me?

Photo by Mark Wickens

Fana Fraser was born and raised on Kairi, now known as Trinidad and Tobago, and is currently living in Brooklyn on Lenape land. Her work is rooted in a contemporary Caribbean aesthetic and framed by narratives of eroticism, power, and compassion. Her performances have been presented at region(es): Central, ISSUE Project Room, Wassaic Project, Brooklyn Museum, The Knockdown Center, Movement Research at Judson Church, BAAD!, La MaMa Moves!, the CURRENT SESSIONS, Gibney, Trinidad Theatre Workshop, and Emerging Artists Theatre.

Fraser was a Movement Research Van Lier Fellow (2017), a resident artist at the inaugural MANCC Forward Dialogues Choreographic Lab (2017), the Dance & Performance Institute in Trinidad & Tobago (2016) and Dance Your Future (2016)—a project partnership between BAAD! and Pepatián. She has served as Rehearsal Director for Ailey II. A full spectrum doula-in-training, Fraser currently works as a co-director for Pepatián.

Fellowship Statement

I am guided

by spirit

animal

shadow

knowing and desire. I am from playful heat, fire and nebula

ocean, salt sweet, ferocious madness. Grounded by love and rage I dance,

embody sound and string language, to resurrect voices of ancestors

unsilenced,

I serve as a channel for remembered stories to be told.

I am opening to delightful fantasy, winding and spiraling things into wild

magnificence

in honor and as offering

to the survivors, the warriors who have come before me.

With kin, I am ready to help cast hope for the children of our children’s

children’s children,

to listen, give thanks and praise their dreams.

Photo by Whitney Browne

DejaJoelle is an African Centered artist that focuses on the Healing and Liberation of Black Communities across the globe. DejaJoelle does not find comfort in highlighting where she’s been or what she has “accomplished” but has accepted that life is an everlasting journey that is worth being present for. Give Thanks.

Fellowship Statement

I am an African Centered - Healing Artist, Choreographer, Director, and Cultural Healing Curator. I believe Dance serves as our connection to ourselves, our communities, and our overall Divinity. I create intentional spaces for Black, LGBTQ2, and Deaf community to discover their own practices toward Healing using Dance, Body Reclamation, and other Healing practices. As the world experiences collective hurt and grief, I trust that our greatest act of REVOLUTION and REBELLION against hatred and corruption is Self-Love and Healing through Dance. I refuse to fuel the fire of destruction and heinousness and instead focus my Art and energy on properly handling Black people who continue to be mishandled.

Photo by Awa Mally