Past
Grantees

Sam Aros-Mitchell (he, him, his) is an enrolled member of the Texas Band of Yaqui Indians. As an Indigenous art-maker and scholar, Aros-Mitchell’s work spans the disciplines of choreography, performance, sound/light/scenic design, and embodied writing.  Aros- Mitchell holds a Ph.D. in Drama and Theater from the joint doctoral program at UC San Diego/UC Irvine, an MFA in Dance Theatre from UC San Diego, and a BFA from UC Santa Barbara. Since 2017,he has worked with Rosy Simas Danse (RSD) as a performer, teacher, and community engagement organizer. He has performed with RSD in Skins (2018), Weave (2019), Simas short film, yödoishëndahgwa’geh (2021), and she lives on the road to war (2022-2024). Aros-Mitchell is currently collaborating with Dante Puleio, Director of Limón Dance in New York City by restaging/reconstructing two original Limón pieces, the Indio solo from Danzas Mexicanas (1939) and “the Deer solo” from The Unsung (1970). This marks a new passage for Aros-Mitchell and for Limón Dance, in sharing the proud lineage of Yaqui ancestry. Aros-Mitchell is a 2023 McKnight Dance Fellow.

Fellowship Statement

As a Jerome Fellow, I aim to expand my interdisciplinary practice, rooted in Indigenous cosmologies, to create immersive, contemporary performances that resonate with both ancestral traditions and present-day experiences. With the Fellowship, I plan to develop new works that bridge movement, storytelling, and soundscapes, fostering collaboration with Native and BIPOC artists. Central to my vision is exploring the performance space as a sacred, transformative realm where cultural memory and innovation intersect. The Fellowship will support the creation of a new performance series inspired by Yaqui creation stories, incorporating experimental music and movement workshops with community participants. It will also enable me to refine my technical skills in sound and lighting design, further deepening the impact of my work. By engaging with local and national audiences, I hope to amplify Indigenous excellence in the arts, cultivating a shared space for healing, resistance, and celebration through performance.

Noelle Awadallah نوال )she/her) is a Palestinian-American choreographer, dancer, improviser, and farmer residing in Mni Sota Makoce (Minneapolis). She is the Co-Artistic Director of Body Watani Dance alongside Leila Awadallah. For six years (and counting), Awadallah has also been dancing with Ananya Dance Theatre. She holds a BFA from Columbia College Chicago (2018).  Awadallah’s daily pursuit of a “land-based life” emerges from sumud—a Palestinian ideology guiding steadfast perseverance and rootedness in land. Sumud drives her commitment and artistic approach to multi-directional attention, storytelling, resistance and liberation practices, grief and rage, futuristic imagination as a strategy, and tending to her reciprocal relationships with land and non-human beings. She has presented work at multiple venues such as Red Eye, University of Minnesota, MOVO, Mixed Blood Theatre, and The Southern Theater. She is the recipient of the 2020 Hinge Arts Residency, a 2023 MOVO Residency, New Works Isolated Acts through Red Eye Theater, and the 2024 Creative Individuals Grant through the Minnesota State Arts Board.

Fellowship Statement

Over the next three years, I will be in embodied research concerning the connections between Palestine and South Dakota. I am planning to research Palestinian stories of land, exile, erasure, and displacement to the stolen land I grew up on in South Dakota to where I currently reside in Mni Sota Makoce. I am questioning how these three versions of home converse in birthplace, living place, and roots of origin, while examining principles of Land Back and the Right of Return. My multidisciplinary approach includes site-specific improvisation, writing, dance, and farming explorations. This fellowship will begin my research into farming and dancing side by side, as both laborious and ancestral practices held in the container of Body Watani, with my sister and creative collaborator Leila Awadallah.

Wendell Gray II is a Brooklyn-based choreographer, dancer, and educator. Raised in Atlanta, GA, in an immersive, multidisciplinary arts environment, he studied dance, music, and theater. Since relocating to New York, Gray’s choreographic works have been showcased at venues such as Danspace Project, PAGEANT, Coffey Street Studios, Kinosaito Arts Center, Gibney Dance, and Movement Research at Judson Church, among others. Gray is a 2024-2025 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence and has additionally been supported by residency programs, including the Sightlines Dance Festival (2023), STUFFED Artist-in-Residence at Judson Church (2021), Work Up 6.0 Artist at Gibney (2020), and Chez Bushwick (2017). His artistic journey has led him to work with choreographers/ artists such as Miguel Gutierrez, Tere O’Connor, Juliana May, Joanna Kotze, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Pavel Zustiak, and Kevin Beasley, among others. He graduated from the University of the Arts with a BFA in Dance under the direction of Donna Faye Burchfield.

Fellowship Statement

I make dances that are episodic and rhythmic, and that juggle various performative and qualitative intentions. I look to highlight both the public nature of performance and the private essence of being human. I focus on movement, organizing it into different choreographic structures while layering this with theatrical elements such as props and texts. I find it radical to be many things at once, both absorbing and transcending my identity. I use my formal dance training as a springboard for experimentation, both poking at the western throughlines while also navigating the tropes and signifiers within it. My work asks you to listen and form curiosities, to move into the unknown, the unanswerable, and the felt. I’m in the early stages of a new group work. It is a continuation of my most previous piece in the port’s mouth which dealt with the fantasies around the unknown parts of my lineage.

Orlando Hernández is a choreographer, tap dancer, and theater-maker based in NYC. He has presented his work at New York Live Arts, On the Boards, Joe’s Pub, Brown University, the Judson Church, and La Casa Ruth Hernández Torres. He was a 2022-23 Fresh Tracks Artist at New York Live Arts, a 2023 Artist-in-Residence at the Center for Performance Research, and has received grants and residencies from the New England Foundation for the Arts, Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, Yaddo, the CUNY Dance Initiative, the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, and Snug Harbor. Hernández holds a B.A. in English from Yale University. He is a member of the tap dance and music companies Music From the Sole, Subject:Matter, and Michela Marino Lerman's Love Movement. His play La Broa’ (Broad Street) premiered in 2024 at Trinity Repertory Company.

Fellowship Statement

In my current work, tap dance conspires/collides with text, devised theater, mask-work, and live music to tell stories of metamorphosis and ecstasy. In particular I have been digging into Indigenous histories of the Caribbean from my perspective in the Puerto Rican diaspora. I strive to honor my tap dance teachers and the roots of this transformative Black American art form. I believe rhythm can be a guiding force and tool for understanding power, geography, and processes of cultural formation.

Alys Ayumi Ogura (オグラ アリス ア有美)(she/her) is a dance performance-maker, storyteller, dancer, and through her movements, voice, and quirky humor. A Twin Cities-based native of Japan, Ogura has been developing her own work since 2015. Ogura started her dancing with two mentors: the late Mika Kurosawa and Rob Scoggins, who each offered unconditional encouragement. She has worked with more than 40 artists—near and far—including Hauser Dance, Emily Johnson/Catalyst, ASDC, Emily Gastineau, Sandrine Harris, Kata Juhasz, Pam Gleason, Pramila Vasudevan, and Laurie Van Wieren. Ogura has created more than 20 works performed in various U.S. venues, including the Walker Art Center and Southern Theater. Recognition highlights include: Arts Organizing Institute (2017-18), Naked Stages (2021) Fellowships, An Isolated Act commission at the Red Eye Theater’s New Works 4 Festival (2023), and Keshet Makers Space Experience Residency (2024). Ogura is also a steering-committee member for DanceMN.

Fellowship Statement

When I develop and perform my work, I want to challenge the audience's acceptance of ambiguity by flipping the power dynamic and centering on my mother tongue, and Japanese views and values. My thematic foci and social concerns focus on my identity as an Asian woman who speaks English with a Japanese accent.  I wonder how I can offer my audiences—particularly those with different cultural frameworks for navigating the world—a glimpse of my worldview. This is the question I want to continue pursuing, to provide a safer, more enjoyable, and perhaps even transformative experience for my audiences. I want to use my voice to give a platform to those who have similarly marginalized voices. Rather than appropriating others’ voices, I will be a good ally and amplify their voices through my own creative work. This is a challenging, but worthwhile endeavor I am eager to continue exploring.

ms. z tye is a Brooklyn-based artist who is interested in physical investigations, including but not limited to movement, voice, sculpture, and theater. tye explores concepts through ancestral praise. She is intrigued with somatic relations and how they associate with emotional connectivity. She has been included in exhibitions with Bronx Museum of Arts, Volta/Armory Art Fair, Swivel Gallery, Untitled Art Fair, Cierra Britton Gallery, The Living Gallery, Long Gallery Harlem, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, Postmasters Gallery, Fridman Gallery, Art in Buildings, and Participant INC. Choreographic work has been commissioned by The Kitchen, BMW, The Shed, Danspace, Lotto Royale, MQBMBQ, BOFFO, Jack, Gibney, Movement Research, and Dance Canvas ATL.

Fellowship Statement

My work recognizes that with any act of public sharing lies precarity. In this space of vulnerability and perilousness, I hope to bring forth softness in the gaze of spectators through nostalgic imagery designed to spark dialogue and raise consciousness. Rooted in memory, my work reclaims rituals from the Pentecostal church as ceremonial acts. My reclamation rituals invite audiences to question phrases such as,  “Come as you are” and, “The land of the free.” These prompts are not uplifiting for queer and trans folx like myself, which is revealed through the audience responses. My practice embraces attributes of faith, spirit, and the performance of patriotism to ritualize clarity and redemption for me and my community.

* intentional use of lowercase

Ogemdi Ude is a dance and interdisciplinary artist and educator based in Brooklyn. Her performance work focuses on Black femme legacies and futures, grief, and memory. Her work has been presented at The Kitchen, Gibney, Harlem Stage, Danspace Project, Abrons Arts Center, BRIC, ISSUE Project Room, Recess Art, Center for Performance Research, and for BAM's DanceAfrica festival. She is a 2024/2025 BAX Artist-in-Residence. Ude has been a 2022-2024 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, 2021 danceWEB Scholar, 2021 Laundromat Project Create Change Artist-in-Residence, and a 2019-2020 Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU Resident Fellow. In January 2022, she appeared on the cover of Dance Magazine for their annual “25 to Watch” issue. Most recently, she has published a book, Watch Me, in a collection edited by Thomas DeFrantz and Annie-B Parson: Dance History(s): Imagination as a Form of Study published by Dancing Foxes Press and Wesleyan University Press.

Fellowship Statement

During the Fellowship I will further my investigations into Black mourning and memory through two practices. The first is an improvisation practice I call: “forgotten body.” Forgotten body asks: Can I talk back to the dead? Can I befriend grief? Can my relationships to what I have lost grow stronger in the wake of loss? Forgotten body asks you to move sensitively not sensibly, encouraging your subconscious to lead. It is built on an anticolonial approach that strengthens our connections to Black ancestry and embodied history. The second is a performance/archival project: Major. In Major, a team of Black Southern femmes embody the movement of our girlhood to answer the questions of our present. Major follows the intimate journey of returning to a body you think is lost. How can you reorganize your body to dance in the ways you were born to, but have been trained out of?

Leslie Parker is a dance artist, director, improviser, educator, and performer born in the traditional homeland of the Dakhóta people also known as Twin Cities, MN. Her multiple home/art-bases mainly include the lands of the Lenape peoples (Brooklyn, NY), and Saint Paul, MN. Leslie holds a BFA from Esther Boyer College of Music and Dance at 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. As a dance creative, Leslie highlights unique individual contributions, digs into collective memory to engage with the world more imaginatively, and embodies an aesthetic that encompasses an organic form influenced by the Black and African Diaspora: Traditional West African, Black/African American vernacular/social dance, Improvisation, and Contemporary/Modern techniques derived from multiple continents. She received a 2017 Bessie award for Outstanding performer, a 2022 McKnight Fellowship for Choreographers, and a 2021 NDP Production grant. Leslie received a 2019-2021 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in dance. For more details, go to www.leslieparkerdance.com.

While at Camargo, Leslie will explore more deeply the practice of Black Dance Improvisation. As an opportunity to participate in a collective of international artists specializing in various forms of art and whose lived experiences reflect multicultural lives, her practice will include workshops stemming from collective learning to cultivate generative processes inspired by personal narratives. Leslie’s exploration prioritizes the futurity of Blackness and dance through collective remembrance as an embodied experience.