2020 Mentees
Adam Castaneda is a dancer, writer, and arts administrator
living in Houston, Texas. He is the Executive and Artistic Director of the
Pilot Dance Project, and his programming has been funded by the Mid-America
Arts Alliance, City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, Houston
Endowment, Texas Commission on the Arts, the Morales Foundation, HoustonFirst,
the Midtown Management District, Bunnies on the Bayou, and Dance Source
Houston. Through his non-profit, he produces a full season of professional
Modern dance as well as the annual Houston Fringe Festival. As a company member
of the Pilot Dance Project, he has performed in evening-length and repertory
work by Ashley Horn, jhon r. stronks, Jennifer Mabus, Jaime Frugé-Walne,
Heather VonReichbauer, Lori Yuill, Orlando Hunter (Brooklyn, New York), Erica
Gionfriddo (Austin, TX), Jennifer Salter, and Ty Lewis. In 2018, he was a
graduate of the second class of Artist Inc. Houston, and was selected from a
national pool of applicants to attend the Jacob's Pillow National Dance
Presenters Forum. He currently leads The Pilot Dance Project as a participant
in EmcArts' New Pathways Program. Adam was chosen as one of Dance Source
Houston's 2018-2019 Artists-in-Residence, which culminated in a finished piece
of choreography at the 2019 Barnstorm Dance Fest. Over the past season, he was
awarded a Let Creativity Happen! Grant from the Houston Arts Alliance for a
community-building dance/literary arts work, The Flower Garden Ignatius
Beltran, which premiered February 18 at Dance Source Houston's Mind the Gap
15.0. Adam is a grateful recipient of a 2020 Support for Artists and Creative
Individuals Grant from the Houston Arts Alliance to produce an original
evening-length dance work on the Heritage Society campus. Lazarus in the
Promised Land, a celebration of the Houston Mexican American community, will
premiere October 3 and 4 and will be free to the public. When not dancing with
his own company, he often appears onstage with Suchu Dance/Jennifer Wood.
Tiffany Hall is an arts administrator from New
Orleans, LA. She is the Operations & Grants Manager at the Contemporary
Arts Center, New Orleans, where she creates systematic and shared practices
that support the organization, staff, and Board of Trustees as well as
identifies and manages fundraising opportunities. Tiffany’s previous
administration experience includes being the Museum Experience Assistant
Manager at the Louisiana Children’s Museum and an alumna of the Jacob’s Pillow
Intern Program serving as the House Manager for the Ted Shawn Theatre. Passionate about the arts at an early age,
Tiffany trained in dance for fourteen years and has a background in visual
arts. She received her B.A. in painting and M.A. in Arts Administration from
the University of New Orleans. Tiffany’s mission is to provide opportunities to
artists that allow them to explore a multidisciplinary approach to New
Orleanian culture.
Marina Magalhães is a border-crosser, bridge-builder, and
dance-and-change-maker from Brazil based in Los Angeles. Her work holds a
decolonial diasporic ethos at its core, wherein ancestral, ritual, and social
practices are located as fertile sites for choreographic inquiry, pedagogic
encounters, and political possibility. Her growing national and international
recognition has earned her an LA Weekly Theater Award for Best Choreography and
critical acclaim from South Africa’s Creative Feel Magazine, calling her work,
“riveting… a physical and emotional feat.” National highlights for her
choreography include venues in Los Angeles (Ford Amphitheater, REDCAT, LACMA
Museum, The Huntington Library, and USC Visions & Voices), SanFrancisco
(CounterPulse and Dance Mission Theater’s D.I.R.T. Festival), and New York City
(performing alongside the band Las Cafeteras at The Bowery Ballroom).
Internationally she has shared her work in Berlin (Hamburger Bahnhof Museum and
DAAD Gallerie), Montpellier (Centre Chorégraphique National), Johannesburg (The
Wits Theatre), Gaborone, Botswana (Maitisong Festival), and Rio de Janeiro
(Center for Theater of the Oppressed and Primavera das Mulheres). In 2017
Magalhães was invited to be a Resident Choreographer with Viver Brasil Dance
Company who commissioned her to create
Cor Da Pele, a concert dance work
that premiered at the company’s 20
th Anniversary Celebration and was selected as a Top 40 Finalist by
National Endowment for the Arts’ best choreographic works of 2018. Other choreographic
residencies include University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, Keshet Makers
Space Experience in Albuquerque, Cal State Los Angeles, UCLA, and CONTRA-TIEMPO
Dance Company, with whom Magalhães worked for seven years (2007-2014) as a
Performer, Teaching Artist, Rehearsal Director, Assistant Artistic Director,
and ultimately becoming Artistic Director Interim for 6 months in 2013. In 2017
Magalhães began collaborating with internationally renowned visual artist,
Carolina Caycedo, with whom she has choreographed the widely acclaimed dance
film
Apariciones (2018)—commissioned by The Huntington Library and shown
at festivals in Los Angeles, São Paulo, London, and Bogotá—and the newer film
Thank
You For Hosting Us, We Are Healing Our Broken Bodies (2019), commissioned
by OCMA Museum. Magalhães has been a recipient of the California Arts Council’s
Artists Activating Communities grant for three consecutive years for her
growing platform Dancing Diaspora, which she founded in 2017. Dancing Diaspora
(DD) is dedicated to honoring, sharing, and reimagining dance practices of the
Latin and African diasporas in dialogue with local and global histories of
resistance. In 2018, DD held its inaugural Dancing Diaspora Festival—two days
of free programming curated and produced by Magalhães in partnership with
Pieter Performance Space—featuring over 35 local artists and serving over 300
community members. In 2020, Magalhães launched the Dancing Diaspora Collective,
a group of twelve local artists and healers invited by Magalhães to help carry
the vision and curate on-going programming for DD. Magalhães earned her B.A.
degree in World Arts & Cultures/Dance from UCLA and her M.F.A. degree in
Dance from University of the Arts. She is currently a Visiting Lecturer at Scripps
College.
Edgar L. Page is originally from Detroit, MI where he
began his dance training through the Detroit Public Schools system, proudly
graduating from Cass Technical High School. He furthered his dance studies at
the Alvin Ailey School and the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange before earning his BA
in Dance from Western Michigan University as a Wade H. McCree, Jr. Incentive
Scholar and a Martin Luther King, Jr. Diversity Scholar. Upon graduation, Mr.
Page spent a season with the Dayton Contemporary Dance Second Company before
joining the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble. Page toured domestically and
internationally as a principal member of the company for nearly a decade and
was featured in the works of Alvin Ailey, Gary Abbott, Baba Chuck Davis,
Katherine Dunham, Christopher Huggins, Donald McKayle, Ray Mercer, Milton
Myers, Eleo Pomare, David Rousseve, Nejla Yatkin and others.
With a graceful prowess, Mr. Page has since shifted his
focus to curating his own work while also enriching his community through
multiple creative offerings. Establishing Edgar L. Page: Feel the Movement
in June of 2018, he utilizes this intersectional, multigenerational arts
initiative to offer an interdisciplinary embodiment of human creativity through
movement-based mindfulness that centers the communal aspects of dance found
within the African Diaspora. A self-professed emotional integrationist, Page
interrogates phenomena to expand topical dialogues. Socially motivated, his
work interweaves dance techniques, athleticism, and the Africanist Aesthetic of
Cool to inform a lush amalgamation of contemporary movement. Intrigued by
society’s obsession with social media, Page curates nuanced physical narratives
about the pursuit of love and happiness in this era, the rapidly morphing
continuum of affection due to technology, and the collateral damage found when
these collide.
In addition to being a Mentee in the 2020 DILT Cohort, Mr. Page
has been named a City of Denver Cultural Partner, a Creativity Connects Fellow,
A Next Stage Now Artist, the inaugural recipient of the Presenting Denver Dance
Festival's Audience Favorite Award and the current Presenting Denver Dance
Festival Artist in Residence. His company was voted the 2019 Readers’ Choice
for Best Artist in the annual Top of the Town Awards presented by 5280
Magazine.
Barkha Patel is a kathak dancer, choreographer, educator and the
Artistic Director of Barkha Dance Company (BDC). BDC intends to create artistic
experiences that connect contemporary themes and Kathak dance, to help guide audiences
to a better understanding of Indian culture and art. Barkha’s artistic practice
consists of both rhythmic dance and creative storytelling.
For two decades, Barkha has trained under great Guru Rachna Sarang
and has experienced workshop intensives with other kathak masters such as Birju
Maharaj and Rajendra Gangani. Barkha continues to deepen her understanding in
intricate musical rhythms with Pandit Divyang Vakil and complex bhavas
(emotional states) a dancer emotes in classical dance with Deepak Mazumdar. Barkha is a touring artist who has performed at dance festivals
and fashion shows in India to Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out series. She completed a
choreographic fellowship with Jersey Moves/New Jersey Performing Arts Center.
Currently, Barkha is working on her first, full evening ensemble work called
Mukta, A Woman Liberated. Passionate about teaching and raising awareness of kathak, Barkha
conducts classes and workshops in New York City and New Jersey for young and
adult students. Her classes emphasize building strength and grace, along with a
deeper understanding of kathak’s history, rhythmic patterns and facial
expressivity. Barkha is a 2020 Fellowship recipient from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Mark Travis Rivera is an award-winning activist, author,
choreographer, speaker, and writer. A graduate of William Paterson University of New Jersey, Rivera
earned a bachelor’s in women’s & gender studies with a minor in public
relations. He is a member of the Gamma Zeta Chapter of Iota Iota Iota (Triota)
National Honor Society for Women’s & Gender Studies. He was also inducted
into Chi Alpha Epsilon, the Educational Opportunity Fund National Honor
Society. In 2013, Rivera received the Student Government Association’s Lifetime
Achievement Award for his commitment to the William Paterson community. In the
same year, he was honored with the Campus Pride Voice & Action Award
for his work with the LGBTQ community. More recently, he won the Audre Lorde
Award for Social Justice from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY.
Off-campus, Rivera formerly served as the Chairperson for the Youth Community
Advisory Board for Project: Living Out Loud, a Hyacinth AIDS Foundation program
dedicated to serving young men of color who are same gender loving in the
Hudson County area. He also served as a trainer for the Passaic County’s
Women’s Center, where he provided aspiring advocates training on the LGBTQ
community as it relates to sexual assault and domestic violence.
An innovative choreographer, Rivera is the youngest person to
found a physically integrated dance company in the United States. marked dance
project, a contemporary company for dancers with and without disabilities,
established in March 2009, made its debut at Rutgers University. The
company has also performed at the Silk City Summer Arts Festival, the Painted
Bride Art Center, the Mandell Theater, the Actor’s Fund Arts Center in
Brooklyn, NY and New York University. Through MDP, Rivera has worked with
choreographers such as Caitlin Trainor, Stacey Tookey, Todrick Hall, Tyce
Diorio, and Marinda Davis. After ten years, Rivera decided to dissolve the
marked dance project and continue working as a disabled independent
choreographer and joined AXIS Dance Company as their Community Engagement
Manager in April of 2019.
Rivera had been featured at various speaking engagements
throughout the US, speaking to audiences at Harvard University, New York
University, and San Francisco State University. His talk “Embracing Yourself,
Embracing Your Potential” was a hit at the TEDxTalk event at Bergen Community
College in Paramus, New Jersey in March of 2014. As a storyteller, Rivera has long used writing as a form of
expression. Rivera’s writing has been published in The Bergen Record, Herald
News, The Star Ledger, Fox News Latino, and The Huffington Post. His debut
collection, Drafts: An Imperfect Collection of Writing was published in
August of 2017 through Amazon. He currently lives in Oakland, CA.
