As an independent choreographer and Choreographic Associate with Ragamala Dance Company, Ashwini Ramaswamy’s (she/her) work references ancient myths and ritualistic practices, global literature and poetry, and the mixed media contemporary culture she has absorbed for over 30 years. Her work draws from myriad influences to express a personal identity with universal resonance. Celebrated for her ability to “[weave] together, both fearfully and joyfully, the human and the divine” (New York Times), Ashwini has studied Bharatanatyam since the age of five. She has toured extensively with Ragamala, performing throughout the U.S. and in Russia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Japan, the U.K, and India. Ashwini's choreographic work has been presented by the Cowles Center, the Yard, and the Joyce Theater, among others. Her work is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation’s US Artist International, and the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, among others.

Fellowship Statement

I have spent decades steeped in the south Indian classical dance form of Bharatanatyam. I am committed to maintaining the beauty, technique, rigor, and values embedded in the form as it has been taught to me, while creating my own personal vision of women’s representation in performance. Like a phantom limb, my Indian ancestry lingers within me, informing my artistic work and daily interactions; my upbringing in both India and the U.S. has encouraged an aesthetic perspective with a hybrid internal compass. As an artist of diaspora, I am a cultural carrier with an instinct to move within ancestral patterns. There is a continuum between what we perceive as real/tangible and what we accept as unknown/unknowable; this gravitation between the human, the natural, and the metaphysical—which are forever engaged in sacred movement—is a focal point in my work.

Photo by Ed Bock.

Leslie Parker is a dance artist, performer, director, maker, improviser and educator holding a BFA from Temple University in Choreography and Modern dance technique and a MFA from Hollins University in partnership with the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, The Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts and The Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company in Frankfurt, Germany. Leslie is a 2017 Bessie award winner and a Jerome Hill Foundation Artist Fellow 2019 -2021. She has a rigorous research and practice in dance forms derived of the African Diaspora. She designed “Moving Dialogue for Non-Violence” using dance art as a platform for Broadway Women’s House Shelter in Brooklyn, New York and at The Family Place in Saint Paul, MN. She is currently a member of the collective, Skeleton Architecture based in New York. Her director credits include co-director and choreographer for IHOTB MayDay Tree of Life Ceremony; choreographer for Jimmy & Lorraine: A Musing by Talvin Wilks; and Ping Chong and Talvin Wilks for Collidescope 4.0.

Additional credits include, crystal, smoke n’spirit(s) presented by Momentum: New Dance Works at Frey Theater St. Catherine’s University; Crossroads/Gateways pt 2. at the Walker Art Center’s Choreographer’s evening; Bone Womyn Traces in Black at Hollins University (Roanoke, VA) and at Southern Theatre; Ripen: Forbidden Truth In da Flesh Pt.2 at Pillsbury House Theatre “Mama Laurie’s Late Nite Series”; Center for Performance Research's Fall Movement Series (NY, NY); and New York Live Arts. Parker choreographed an original work, In Search of Colors, as faculty for University Dance Theater (UDT) at U of MN Theatre and Dance dept. Currently, Leslie Parker Dance Project, is in residence for Spring 2021 at Pillsbury House Theater and Pangea World Theater.

Fellowship Statement

I am a dance artist, performer, dance maker, educator and improviser, trained in and experimenting with an aesthetic rooted in the Black experience. I make dances that explore spirituality, identity and social justice to spark questions and conversations with and between people.  As an improviser, I invite observers to a real-time exchange through movement, sound, space and the body. Described by choreographer Bill T. Jones as “haunting,” former Director of Quixote Foundation, June Wilson describes the experience of “watching Parker’s work is like being a voyeur; the intimacy and emotional energy of her movement makes you want to look away and yet it’s impossible to stop watching.”

Photo courtesy of Leslie Parker.

Dustin Maxwell (he/him) is a dancer, choreographer and visual artist originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, now based in Brooklyn, New York. In New Mexico he trained in Graham and Limon with his dance “mother,” Joanne Emmons. He has a BA in Dance from the University of Minnesota and extensive training in Yoga and Butoh. As a freelance dancer he has worked with Aniccha Arts, Chris Schlichting, Morgan Thorson, and many others. His choreography and performance installations have been shown in galleries, theaters, basements and alleyways in Minnesota, New York and Germany. He was a nominee for the 11th Annual Sage Awards, Outstanding Performer.

Fellowship Statement

I work primarily within the modalities of somatic improvisation and butoh. Being born queer into a Mormon family of eight has shaped my perspective in many ways. Sexuality, spirituality and the experience of otherness are major themes in my work. My choreography is highly visual and minimal in movement relying on the innate history, ancestry, cultural identity and politics inherent in the body. My body is a field for knowing that which is seen and unseen; that which lies beyond the boundaries of the mundane. My artistic endeavors use performance as a method for connecting with others at this essential level and perhaps provoking “awakeness.” I believe this expands the limits of consciousness which is a radical and subversive action.

Photo by Justin Hickman.

Pedra Pepa (they/them) is a Venezuelan, queer Latinx performance artist, as well as a teaching artist with Pillsbury House Theatre and Upstream Arts. They have performed and produced over ten Drag Story Hours at multiple Twin Cities locations, supported by a Minnesota Center for Humanities grant. Doña Pepa, Pedra’s drag/burlesque persona and choreographic lens, has graced stages locally (First Avenue Mainroom, Minneapolis Burlesque Festival, Lush, Gay 90’s, University of Minnesota) and in Puerto Rico. Noche Bomba, which incorporates Doña Pepa, was presented by 20% Theatre’s Q-STAGE and will tour to Winona State University in April 2019. Solo-versions were performed at Walker Art Center’s Choreographers’ Evening and at Galería Oro in Vieques, Puerto Rico. Pedra’s newest work, Holy Doña, will premiere at Red Eye Theatre’s 2019 New Works 4 Weeks Festival. Initial research for this project has been shared at 1er Coloquio sobre Hombres+ y Masculinidades in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Fellowship Statement

I am Pedra Pepa. I am a queer, gender-fuck, Venezuelan immigrant, Latinx, brown performance maker in Minneapolis.

My choreographic work is deeply personal, it is about my everyday experience, the coexistence of my oppressions and my identities. I create work that denounces current injustices. The work begins within me, then I transfer it to and cultivate it with other performers. I play with movement expression, singing, sound-making, draglesque, and visual media to create specific imagery, supported by costumes and props. I am interested in facilitating emotional journeys for audiences to ride with me and the performers.

“Draglesque” is my current solo research, a larger-than-life expression/explosion of gender, where my body transcends all social parameters. A space of radical freedom and self-love. This process is how I finesse and craft my skills as I mold my character(s). It is both a celebration and a transgression

Photo by Nic LaFrance.

Choreographer/Director Raja Feather Kelly (he/him) is the artistic director of New Brooklyn Theatre. In 2009 he founded the dance-theatre-media company the feath3r theory. The two companies merged in 2018. Raja has been awarded a Breakout Award from the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (2018), Dance Magazine's inaugural Harkness Promise Award (2018), the Solange MacArthur Award for New Choreography (2016), and, twice, the Princess Grace Award (2017, 2018). He was born in Fort Hood, Texas and holds a BA in Dance and English from Connecticut College. Raja has been awarded a New York Dance Performance Bessie Award, a Bessie Schonberg Fellowship at The Yard, a DanceWEB Scholarship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Choreography Fellowship, a HERE Arts Fellowship, a 2018 Creator-in-Residence at Kickstarter and a Choreography Fellowship at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University.

Fellowship Statement

I am obsessed with the development of popular culture over the last thirty years. My work unabashedly appropriates the structures, themes, and aesthetics found in reality television, celebrity culture, and social media (YouTube, Instagram, Facebook), then deconstructs it into new works which combine dance, theatre, and visual media. My aim is to challenge audiences to recognize their own implication in popular media: how media has trained and molded their desires, relationships, and identities. My movement-based performances combine fashion shows, gallery exhibitions, drag, stand-up comedy, minstrel shows, and stage-plays into a single, overwhelming, over-saturated Gesamtkunstwerk in which artists and audiences experience their shared humanity. I rehumanize our over-mediated experience of reality.

Photo by Thomas Dunn.

Jasmine Hearn (she/they) is a performer, director, choreographer, organizer, and teaching artist. A native Houstonian, she graduated magna cum laude from Point Park University with her BA in Dance. She currently collaborates with filmmaker and visual artist, Alisha B. Wormsley. Jasmine has worked and performed with David Dorfman Dance, Alesandra Seutin (UK), Solange Knowles, Kate Watson-Wallace, STAYCEE PEARL dance project, Marjani Forté-Saunders, Jenn Meridian, Helen Simoneau Danse, Lovie Olivia, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and Nick Mauss (as part of the performance cast of TRANSMISSIONS—an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art).



Jasmine is a 2018/2019 Movement Research artist-in-residence, was a 2018 Dancing While Black fellow, and was awarded a 2017 Bessie Award for Outstanding Performance as a part of Skeleton Architecture. They also received artist residencies at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Jerome@Camargo Residency in Cassis, France, and Dance Source Houston. Jasmine is a vessel and storyteller using dance and sound as materials to make, teach, and perform around the world.

Fellowship Statement

The body of my work is rooted in the belief, born of language from my work with Marjani Forté-Saunders, Tara Aisha Willis, and Staycee Pearl, that I am a vessel for ancestry and spirt to speak through. I offer work that remembers and honors past, speaks of present, and prepares community for future. As a choreographer, dancer, sound-maker, and performer, I am investigating how the body is able to use memory, sensation, and imagination as ways to enter embodied practices to articulate story, ancestry, and personal truth. I use dance and sound as materials to conjure an environment to be experienced. I ask, “How can the body and voice act as bridges that connect communities with their individual truths and how these truths live together. Working as a freelance artist, I have had many opportunities to engage with community—teaching dance and movement classes, facilitating spaces for movement/sound exploration, performing in multidisciplinary projects, and creating intimate, immersive performance experiences. I am committed to the facilitating environments that gives space for folks to connect with their fantasies and feelings.

Photo courtesy of Whitney Browne Photography.

Marjani Forté-Saunders (she/her) is a mother, choreographer, performer, a collaborative artist, community organizer and a three-time Bessie award winning choreographer and performer for her latest work, Memoirs of a... Unicorn. Marjani is an inaugural recipient of the UBW Choreographic Center Fellowship and a two-time Princess Grace Foundation awardee. Her work has been incubated in residencies at the Maggie Allesee National Choreographic Center (MANCC), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Extended Life Residency, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, CUNY Dance Initiative, 651 Arts and Movement Research. Marjani has produced seven award-winning works in steady collaboration with her partner and composer Everett Asis Saunders (New Music USA Awardee) over the last ten years. Humbly, she defines her work by its lineage stemming from culturally rich, vibrant, historic, loving and irreverent conjurers!

Fellowship Statement

My storytelling is intended to thicken the common narratives of people of the African Diaspora, and stir up visions for human liberation. What might freedom, a reality that elevates culture, look like? I commit to the work of shifting and visioning through art. I dance to tap my heart and my prolific imagination, to ignite vision or desire for ontological integrity and ascension in my audiences. In dance, I can imagine my own liberation and engage a fantasy of free-being as a plausible reality. With Memoirs of a.. Unicorn, developed in collaboration with composer Everett Saunders, I've centered on thoughtfully sharing the work such that it reflects our core values:

• To echo and affirm the work of local community organizers
• To be malleable in design for unconventional spaces and limited resources
• And to explore and affirm the complexity of blackness as a unifying, expansive, cross-cultural concept and network.

Photo by Ian Douglas.