Past
Grantees

Ephrat Asherie is a NYC based b-girl, performer, choreographer and director, and a 2016 Bessie Award Winner for Innovative Achievement in Dance. Asherie has received numerous awards to support her work including Dance Magazine’s Inaugural Harkness Promise Award, a Jacob’s Pillow Fellowship at the Tilles Center, a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant, and a National Dance Project award. The live performance chapter of her new project UnderScored is being commissioned by Works & Process at the Guggenheim Museum and will premiere in 2021. She is honored to have been mentored by Richard Santiago (aka Break Easy) and to have worked and collaborated with Dorrance Dance, Doug Elkins, Rennie Harris, Bill Irwin, Gus Solomons Jr., and Buddha Stretch. Asherie is a co-founding member of the all-female house dance collective MAWU and is forever grateful to NYC’s underground dance community for inspiring her to pursue a life as an artist.

Fellowship Statement

My work is rooted in the complex rhythmic, physical, cultural, and spiritual lineages of New York City's underground dance community, a community I have been fortunate to be a part of for almost two decades. The performers I collaborate with are all part of the underground scene and we share, not only common movement languages (including breaking, hip hop, house, and vogue) but also an interest in exploring unconventional ways of remixing dances in various contexts, including creating for the stage. Implicit in working in these Latinx and African American vernacular forms is an ongoing conversation around the systemic racism that plagues this country, the struggles of the LGBTQIA+ community, joy as a form of resistance and resilience, and the commodification of culture as a means to make communities of color invisible. The underground dance scene and NYC’s complex labyrinth of cultural collisions inspired my hybrid approach to movement, which is integral to my work.

Vie Boheme, a Motown native who blossomed creatively in Pittsburgh and refined in Minneapolis, is a multimodal artist, choreographer, dancer, and singer. Her choreographic work has been presented at Intermedia Arts, the Guthrie Theater, the Southern Theater, the Walker Art Center, Dance Alloy Theater, and the Kauffman Center.  She received a Cultural Community Partnership Award from the Minnesota State Arts Board in support of her most recent work, CENTERPLAY, and is a former co-creative director, vocal artist, and choreographer for Stokley Williams, founding front man of Mint Condition. She was a founding member of The August Wilson Center Dance Ensemble (Top 25 to Watch, Dance Magazine, 2012) and also a former dance artist with Camille A. Brown & Dancers and TU Dance. Boheme’s recent TedxMinneapolis talk, Is Performing Art Worth the Struggle?, is available for viewing. She is a Vinyasa, Yin and fitness yoga instructor with her own signature teaching philosophy, CoreKinetics Yoga; and a Teaching Specialist in the Dance Department at the University of Minnesota.

Fellowship Statement

I am a multimodal artist; a choreographer, singer, dancer, actress, poet and a writer. I design theatrical performance experiences that weave all of these mediums. I bring athletic agility to vocal performance by singing and dancing in unison, eliminating the boundary between the visual and audio experience. I also weave sentiment and storytelling through poetry and monologues. Each performance piece is designed to give a glimpse into the sometimes dark and complex emotional spaces people experience that seem elusive and ever present.

My work is acknowledgement and expression of the experiences of African American women. Multilayered, interwoven, shining light filtered through many cultural layers.

J. Bouey is out here doing their best, damnit! Currently moving on pandemic timing and prioritizing rest, Bouey is a dance artist who daringly explores trauma and mental illnesses from their Black american, agender, and sexually queer perspective in their creative practice. Bouey’s work has been shared through live performance and film.

Living with depression and severe anxiety, Bouey is finding their way back to joy with a determination to manifest the dreams dreamt from their youth. These dreams sustained them when the sun didn’t shine or shined too bright to see.

Fellowship Statement

Yo, what's up?! This fellowship has found me knee-deep in grief research! The onset of the pandemic prompted me to study grief to equip me with the knowledge to support Black folx who've experienced death and loss due to covid-19. The research led me to reckon with my underexplored grief.

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 Bobby Rogers

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hadar Ahuvia creates performances, workshops, and rituals drawing on the multidisciplinary lineages of postmodern dance and Ashkenazi Jewish diaspora. Raised in Israel/Palestine and the US/Turtle Island, Ahuvia’s work has been supported by Movement Research, Baryshnikov Art Center, Yaddo, New Music USA, the Brooklyn Arts Council, and has been presented by NYLA/DTW, the 14th St. Y., Art Stations Foundations, Danspace Project, Gibney Dance. Her work deconstructing Zionist folk dance was recognized with a 2018 Bessie nomination for Outstanding Breakout Choreographer and a mention in Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch in 2019.” Ahuvia has shared her research at AJS, ASU, City College, Whitman College, and Yale University among others. She has collaborated with Jaffa based choreographer Shira Eviatar, is currently a performer with Reggie Wilson/ Fist and Heel Performance group, and is working with Tatyana Tenenbaum in recasting their sonic and embodied jewishness.

Maria Bauman is a Bessie-Award-winning multi-disciplinary artist and community organizer from Jacksonville, FL. She creates bold artworks for her company MBDance based on physical and emotional power, insistence on equity and intimacy. She is also a sought-after facilitator and speaker on leadership development and on racial equity in the arts. With her colleagues who co-founded ACRE (Artists Co-creating Real Equity), Bauman was honored with the 2018 BAX Arts and Artists in Progress Award for the work you do to undo racism in our daily lives. Currently, she's an Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center Fellow and a BRIClab resident artist. In January 2021, Bauman and MBDance are premiering her Desire: A Sankofa Dream via co-commission by BAAD! and 651 ARTS. The piece is a live online experience in choice-making in community, with Black Queer survival techniques as foundation.

Alexandra Bodnarchuk (she/her) is a Carpatho-Rusyn-American dance artist. Her works reframe, identify, and re-contextualize her programmed responses to body shaming and the intimate violence of female perpetuated sexism. She pursues the question ‘what is honesty’ as a choreographic prompt and a commitment to the physicality of weight. She frequently collaborates with sound designer Brandon Anderson Musser, most recently on Heritage Sites (2020), a dance film. Her works have been supported by the Cowles Center for Dance & the Performing Arts, Threads Dance Project (commission), Performing Institute of Minnesota (commission), Candy Box Dance Festival/Arena Dances, Catalyst Arts, Zenon Dance Zone, Future Interstates, The Kelly Strayhorn Theater, Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival, Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, and Mary Lipple Memorial Fund. She holds a B.F.A. in Dance Performance and Choreography from Ohio University and performs with Black Label Movement.

Moriah Evans works on and through forms of dance and performance. Her choreographies navigate utopic/dystopic potentials within choreography/dance/body, often approaching dance as a fleshy, matriarchal form slipping between minimalism-excess. She initiated “The Bureau for the Future of Choreography,” a collective apparatus, to create research processes and practices to investigate participatory performances and systems of choreography in 2011. Evans was an artist-in-residence at Movement Research, The New Museum, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Issue Project Room, Studio Series at Νew York Live Arts, ImPulsTanz, MoMA/PS1, MANA Contemporary, Onassis AiR. She was editor-in-chief of the Movement Research Performance Journal 2013-2020, curatorial advisor for the Tanzkongress 2019, co-artistic direction and editor of 2019.tanzkongress.de/salons (2019), and co-curator of Dance and Process (The Kitchen 2016-present).

She received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award to Artists (2017) and a Bessie Award nomination for Emerging Choreographer (2015). Notable works: BASTARDS (NYU Skirball, Νew York, 2019); Configure (The Kitchen, Νew York, 2018); Figuring (SculptureCenter, Νew York, 2018); Be my Muse (Villa Empain, Brussels, 2016; FD13, Minneapolis, 2017; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC, 2018); Social Dance 9-12: Encounter (Danspace Project, Νew York, 2015); Social Dance 1-8: Index (ISSUE Project Room, Νew York, 2015); Another Performance (Danspace Project, Νew York, 2013); and Out of and Into (8/8): STUFF (Theatre de l’Usine, Geneva, 2012). Her choreographies have been commissioned throughout Νew York and internationally at Kampnagel (Hamburg); Theatre de l’Usine (Geneva); Villa Empain (Brussels); Atelier de Paris (Paris); and Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai). She received her BA in Art History & English (honors), Wellesley College, and her MA in Art History, Theory, and Criticism (20th Century Art) from UCSD’s Visual Arts Department.

Kayla Farrish/Decent Structures Arts is an emerging company combining filmmaking, photography, and dance. Her company has been commissioned by Gibney Dance Inc (2020-2021), Danspace Project Inc (2019), Pepatian and BAAD! (2018), and beyond. Farrish has been supported by creative residencies including Gibney New Voices, Barysnikov Arts Center (2020), Keshet Makers Space Experience, BAX Space Grant (2019), Pepatian Dance Your Future (2018), and Chez Bushwick (2017). Pieces sprouted outwards including Black Bodies Sonata, The New Frontier (my dear America) live production and film, With grit From, Grace, Spectacle Film and Live Production, and anticipated Martyr's Fiction. Performed at venues like Judson Church, Danspace Project Inc, Jacob's Pillow, BAAD!, film festivals, and beyond.

Bessie awardee, Davalois Fearon, was named one of Dance Magazine’s “7 Up-and-Coming Black Dance Artists Who Should Be On Your Radar” in 2018. Fearon is a critically acclaimed choreographer, dancer, and educator born in Jamaica and raised in the Bronx. She danced with Stephen Petronio from 2005-2017 and founded Davalois Fearon Dance in 2016 with the mission to push artistic and social boundaries. Her choreography is said to reflect a “tenacious virtuosity,” which has been presented nationally and internationally, including at renowned New York City venues such as the Joyce Theatre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the New Victory Theatre. Among others, Fearon has completed commissions for the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Harlem Stage, and Barnard College and is a recipient of numerous awards, including New Music USA Project Grant, Map Fund Grant, Dance NYC Dance Advancement Fund Award, and the Alvin Ailey New Dance Direction Choreography Lab residency.

Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith have been making dances since 2006. Their process recontextualizes sexual trauma through body-based methods of abstraction, filtration through each other, imaginative landscape building, and dissociation. Works: Body Comes Apart (New York Live Arts 2019, Documented by The New York Public Library for Performing Arts Jerome Robbins Dance Division); Basketball (PS122 and Baryshnikov Arts Center for COIL 2017); Rude World (PS122 and The Chocolate Factory Theater for COIL 2015); Tulip (Roulette, 2013; Judson Now at Danspace Project, 2012); Beautiful Bone (The Chocolate Factory Theater, 2012).

Residencies/awards: 2021 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence; 2020 AIRSpace Residency at Abrons Arts Center; 2019 Baryshnikov Arts Center BACSpace Residency; 2018 Bessie Schonberg Fellows at The Yard; 2018 DiP Residency Artists at Gibney, featured as one of Alastair Macaulay’s “Best Dance of 2017” in The New York Times for Basketball; 2013 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award Nominee for Emerging Choreographer.

Malcolm Low, from Chicago, danced with Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, Ballet British Columbia, Zvi Gotheiner, Crystal Pite/Kidd Pivot, & 5 years with Bill T. Jones. Malcolm has worked with Ralph Lemon, David Thomson, Patricia Hoffbauer, and has begun working with Jodi Melnick - a duet for the WPA Virtual Commissions at The Guggenheim. Malcolm choreographed One Forgotten Moment on Alvin Ailey 2 (2012). Showing his work since 1999, Malcolm’s awards include Fund for New Work/Harlem Stage Gatehouse Grant (2009), BAX Passing It Down Award (2011), MCAF from LMCC (2012, 2014, 2015), MCAF/LMCC Process Space Grant (2014), and LIFT/OFF residency at New Dance Alliance (2014). Malcolm was Artist in Residence at Queensborough Community College (2014), was awarded a MAP Fund grant for In The Thrust... (2014), was Princeton University Guest Artist (2017) and on faculty (2019). Malcolm is currently working on dance videos and stories at malBEC in upstate New York.

Kaleena Miller is a tap dancer and choreographer based in Minneapolis and New York. She is Co-Director of the Twin Cities Tap Festival in Minneapolis and an Artist in Residence at the American Tap Dance Foundation in New York. Kaleena is a 2015 McKnight Dance Fellow, recipient of grants from the Jerome Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board and was named one of DANCE Magazine’s “25 to Watch” in 2016. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at Air Le Parc (France), Everwood Farmstead Foundation (WI) and the Southern Theater as part of their ARTshare programming.

She was a founding member of Rhythmic Circus and toured extensively with the group from 2009-2017, highlights including performances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Scotland), the Kennedy Center (DC) and the New Victory Theater (NY). She has a BFA in Dance from the University of MN- Twin Cities.

Led by Brazilian dancer/ choreographer Leonardo Sandoval and composer Gregory Richardson, Music From The Sole is a tap dance and live music company that celebrates tap's Afro-diasporic roots, particularly its connections to Afro-Brazilian dance and music, and lineage to forms like house dance and passinho (Brazilian funk). Their work embraces tap’s unique nature as a blend of sound and movement, incorporating wide-ranging influences like samba, passinho, Afro-Cuban, jazz, and house.

As part of their mission to bring tap dance to new audiences, they have appeared at both music and dance venues, including Lincoln Center, Jacob’s Pillow, Caramoor Jazz Festival, Kaatsbaan, and The Yard. They were recently commissioned new pieces by Works And Process at the Guggenheim.

They are committed to creating more opportunities for fellow BIPOC and immigrant artists, and through partnerships with organizations like the National Dance Institute and Lincoln Center Education, to inclusive, impactful, and lasting community engagement.