Dance/USA Artist Fellows

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Round Three Dance/USA Artist Fellows:

Click on each artist’s photo for more information.

Tonya Marie Amos

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Image Description: Tonya Marie Amos is smiling warmly directly at the camera. She is a light skinned Black woman with dark brown curls that stop above the shoulder. She's wearing a red spaghetti strap top with bows at the shoulder with red lipstick to match. Photo courtesy of artist.

Arthur Avilés

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Image Description: Arthur Avilés is a Gay New York-Rican dancer from Queens, Long Island and the Bronx. He is 62 years of age and his skin is the color of maplewood. He has a shaved face and head. He is wearing a black shirt with a collar and he smiles at the camera. Photo by Eliel Perea.

Leila Awadallah

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Image Description: Leila Awadallah’s body is surrounded by a blurry green background of thick duckweed on water, head framed by a tree, blue sky above. Her body is turned to the side with a gentle hand placed on her heart. Long brown hair is wildy hanging down her back, head turned into the morning sunlight. A brown eye gazing at you. Soft smile. Wearing a soft turquoise shirt that hangs over a white tank top. A silver earring in the shape of Palestine hangs, casting a shadow on her neck. Casting a spell. Photo by Sabrina Jasmin.

Carol Bebelle aka AKUA

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Image Description: The image is a portrait of a smiling older Black woman. She is wearing a purple head wrap adorned with shells and beads, a purple top, and a patterned shawl. A silver necklace featuring the Adinkra symbol "Sankofa" is visible. A vibrant yellow and teal feather is pinned to her shawl. The background is a solid purple. The overall impression is one of warmth, wisdom, and cultural pride. Photo by Peter Nakhid.

Rashida Bumbray

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Image Description: A light-skinned black woman with wavy dark hair with brown highlights stands smiling on a Brooklyn stoop in a black lace dress under a black leather vest with a pair of black tap shoes hanging over her shoulder. Photo by Jamie Philbert.

Dakota Camacho

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Image Description: A brown skinned non-binary person with thick eyebrows and well-shaped facial hair looks intently into the camera. They are adorned in tigem (orange spiny oyster) beads around their head and neck. Guiya (they) hold their arms behind their head and in front of their body. Their front hand is inked in ancestral designs, their back hand is raised above their head and adorned in blue coral beads. Guiya stands in a patch of banana leaves, perhaps in the jungle of their homeland. Photo by Jordan Panuelo.

Yanira Castro

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Image Description: Yanira Castro is a light-skinned Puerto Rican woman. She looks over her right shoulder with her white hair pulled back and wearing black rimmed glasses, her grandmother's gold hoops, and two necklaces made by dancers: a gold chain and a single raw pearl. Photo by Josefina Santos.

Murielle Elizéon

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Image Description: Murielle Elizéon stares directly into the camera, gently smiling as if she has a playful secret. Murielle is a bi-racial woman of color with shoulder-length black hair. She is seated on concrete steps wearing a red peacoat and grey beanie. Autumn light shines to Murielle’s right, her hands softly clasped as she leans towards the camera onto her elbows, resting on her knees. Photo by Anna Mayard.

Ani / Anito Gavino

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Image Description: A Brown Filipina woman (Ani Gavino) with long silver hair holds a large woven hat on her head while standing outdoors. Photo by Malaya Ulan.

Kevin Lee-Y Green

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Image Description: The photo shows a man smiling warmly, dressed in a crisp white button-up shirt. He has a brush cut and rests his chin lightly on his hand, giving a thoughtful yet approachable pose. His body leans slightly forward, and he looks directly at the camera with a friendly, confident expression. The background is softly blurred but shows a brick wall and a hint of a window or sign, placing him outdoors. Photo by Ty Parker.

Kayla Hamilton

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Image Description: This is a headshot of Kayla Hamilton, who is a dark brown-skinned Black woman. She is posing in front of a blurred brick wall. She is wearing a long sleeve black and tan striped shirt. She has on light makeup and her gaze is towards the camera. She has black Locs with a few golden ones towards the front. It's giving goddess vibes. Photo by Travis Magee.

India Harville

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Image Description: India Harville, African American cis woman smiling with long black locs wearing a long white dress, brown belt, red nail polish, and gold bangles. She is seated on a white couch with her right hand crossed over her left forearm. Photo by A. Marie Studio.

Cal Hunt

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Image Description: Cal Hunt headshot for Les Indes Galantes 2019, at the Opera de Paris. Brown skin, sharp haircut, focused eyes. Photo by Elena Bauer, courtesy of Opera de Paris.

Umi IMAN

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Image Description: A photo of Umi IMAN. She is smiling and has deep brown skin. She’s wearing a grey hijab with her black hairline slightly showing. She has cowrie shell earrings, deep red lipstick, and a mauve pink button-up shirt with white stripes. She’s also wearing gold and white cowrie shell bracelets, gold and tan rings, and a charcoal grey skirt. Photo by Awa Mally.

Quynn Johnson

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Image Description: Quynn Johnson is a Black Woman, with brown locs, wearing a yellow motorcycle jacket, pink shirt, and gold, pink, and light blue necklace. She is standing in front of a colorful background with a large smile. Photo by JA Creative.

Kwikstep aka DJ KS 360

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Image Description: Headshot: Black and white headshot of Kwikstep looking directly at the camera and smiling. He has a mustache and small hoop earring. He is wearing a cap that is grey with white pinstripes. Photo by Mario Lobo.

Kerry Lee

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Image Description: Kerry Lee, a petite American born Chinese dancer, smiles directly at the camera. She is wearing a vibrant red form-fitting top adorned with a mandarin collar and Chinese knot buttons. Her long straight black hair is in a side ponytail, and she is wearing red dangling Chinese firecracker earrings with the Chinese character “Fu” (福) which means “good fortune.” Photo by Bubba Carr.

Gesel R. Mason

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Image Description: Gesel R. Mason, a Black cis-woman with golden-brown skin and mid-length, tight springy curls touched with burgundy tones, dances in a bright studio bathed in natural light over a warm, wood-toned floor. Wearing a loose white textured blouse, she lifts her left arm skyward, her gaze following its arc, fingers softly unfurling as she melts gently backward, a calm focus on her face. Photo by Joe Frantz.

Lucy Salazar

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Image Description: This is a headshot of a woman in her seventies with shoulder length salt and pepper hair parted on the right side. She is wearing an embroidered red blouse with white sleeves. She has a purple flower behind her right ear and is wearing silver earrings. She has a braided necklace on and is against a light blue background. Photo by Andres Salazar.

Aguibou Bougobali SANOU

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Image Description: Against a backdrop of a soft, cloud-speckled sky blue, an African man with brown skin wears his hair in dreadlocks, neatly braided on the crown and cascading gracefully over his shoulders. He is Aguibou Bougobali SANOU — artist, dancer, choreographer, and dance professor. Dressed in a koko dunda shirt from Burkina Faso, featuring intricate black-and-white neuron-like patterns, he stands with his torso slightly twisted, his left shoulder subtly forward. His broad smile and joyful expression radiate warmth and approachability. Photo courtesy of Prestige Photography Company.

Kenneth Shirley

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Image Description: Kenneth, a brown-skinned man with a crooked smile, is wearing a full set of traditional Native regalia. The beadwork is detailed in bright red and turquoise patterns, and he wears a head roach made from porcupine hair with eagle feathers rising from the back. His face is painted with bold red and white designs, set against his brown skin, giving him a powerful and stoic presence. The beadwork on his headband shimmers, holding the feathers firmly in place. Photo by Atiba Jefferson.

Nadhi Thekkek

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Image Description: Nadhi Thekkek is a South Asian woman with long curly hair, wearing a black cotton cropped blouse with red patterns. She is wearing big 'jumka' earrings, and sitting on a chair. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.

Sage Ni’Ja Whitson

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Image Description: Whitson, a Black dark brown-skinned transgender person with long locs looks directly into the camera lens with a slight smirk and chin lifted. They are wearing a wide-brim fedora and an all black garment with zippers on the sleeve. One of Whitson's arms is across their torso, the other lifted in a loose fist just under their chin. Photo by Ryan Landell.

Tamara “Ṣàngóbámikẹ” Williams

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Image Description: A Black woman with long dark brown locs with small dangling red earrings, stands indoors with her eyes gently closed, appearing in a moment of movement. She wears a sleeveless white top with a sheer patterned neckline and a flowing teal bottom. The background is softly lit with blurred ceiling lights. Photo by B.T. Twitty.

Pioneer Winter

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Image Description: Close-up portrait of Pioneer Winter, a queer dancer and choreographer, wearing a maroon shirt and gold necklace with their name. They face the camera with a calm, grounded expression, dark curly hair slightly tousled, and soft light highlighting their skin. The background is a muted green-gray, drawing focus to their eyes and expression. Photo by Chantal Lawrie.

Round Two Dance/USA Artist Fellows (2021-2023):

MK Abadoo, a medium brown-skinned African American person smiles. They wear a pink buttoned up shirt against a forest green background. Her black hair is in a short, tapered cut with red highlights and slender black earrings frame their wide smile. Photo by Shaka Shot Dat.

MK Abadoo | Richmond, VA
MK Abadoo (they/she) devises intergenerational and immersive dance performance rituals that combine Africanist and post-modern movement vocabularies with place honoring community building. Moving from a spirit of joy and ease, their work amplifies the lives, stories, and wisdom of gender expansive, queer, Black cultures.
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Mesma Belsaré, an Indian classical dancer is seated against a dark blue background. She wears a green sequined shirt and earrings. Her hair is long, dark and untied, as she looks and smiles directly at the camera. Photo by Paul Herb.

Mesma Belsaré | West New York, NJ
Mesma Belsaré is a multidisciplinary dance artist. Her work speaks towards creating and occupying space for and by South Asian trans/queer artists and expanding avenues for gender-non-conforming voices in dance. Belsaré received classical training in dance and music in India, and after immigrating to the United States, worked towards disruption of gender stereotypes and advocacy for LGBTQ voices through dance, theater and the visual arts. 
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Natalie Benally, a dancer and choreographer from the Navajo Nation, stands beneath a green shade of trees. She carries a slight smirk on her face and stands determined in her stance. Photo: Morningstar Angeline.

Natalie Benally | Albuquerque, NM
Natalie Benally is a dancer, choreographer, filmmaker, writer, actor and community/language advocate from the Navajo Nation. She has directed and choreographed numerous theater productions. Likewise, Benally has also become involved in film and television productions, both as crew and in creative direction. She is the Co-Founder/Creative Director of Tse’Nato’, a mixed media storytelling company that amplifies Indigenous voices and representation. 
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Biracial White/Asian American man wearing a white button down shirt and blue and silver silk Chinese tuxedo jacket. Photo by Eli Schmidt.

Phil Chan | Brooklyn, NY
Phil Chan is a co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, and author of Final Bow for Yellowface: Dancing between Intention and Impact, and the President of the Gold Standard Arts Foundation. He was a ‘21/’22 Visiting Scholar at the A/P/A Institute at NYU (New York University), the Manhattan School of Music’s ‘21/’22 Citizen Artist, leading Boston Lyric Opera’s Butterfly Process, and was named a Next 50 Arts Leader by the Kennedy Center. 
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A Black man with hair styled in short twists and a beard. He wears a black short sleeve button up shirt and a gold cross on a chain around his neck. He and the background are drenched in yellow light. Photo by Spencer Hopkins.

Jemal “P-Top” Delacruz | Chicago, IL
Jemal “P-Top” Delacruz is recognized among the top footwork dancers in the world. He rose to prominence as a battle dancer in the footwork group, Goon Squad. In 2014, P-Top co-founded The Era Footwork Crew and began to tour internationally. He has danced at festivals such as Pitchfork and Lollapalooza. P-Top was recognized as a choreographer of the year (New City Magazine) and cultural organizer of the year (FADER Magazine) alongside The Era.
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Tyde-Courtney Edwards is wearing a white long sleeved shirt with a colorful pattern featuring tassels. There’s a white background that makes her red hair, green nails and diamond nose stud stand out and shine. She is smiling and cupping her face. Photo by Root Branch Media Group.

Tyde-Courtney Edwards | Baltimore, MD
Tyde-Courtney Edwards is a classically trained ballerina, art model, and survivor of sexual assault. Born and raised in Baltimore City, she has over 20 years of professional performance and dance education experience. Following a devastating attack, she founded Ballet After Dark: a dynamic non-profit organization that has been providing Baltimore City residents with innovative ways to heal their traumas.
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The headshot of Peter Rockford Espiritu is of a mature and handsome native Hawaiian male with black hair neatly combed back. He has brown eyes, a thin black mustache and goatee under his chin. He is wearing a traditional long sleeve, button collar, black Hawaiian print shirt in a bold geometric chevron design in a golden mustard color that resembles traditional Hawaiian Tapa or bark cloth design. Mr. Espiritu is wearing ten strands of golden brown traditional Ni’ihau shell lei that surrounds his neck and rests on the middle of his chest. He has a calm and welcoming demeanor with a slight smile on his face. Photo by Chris Rohrer.

Peter Rockford Espiritu | Honolulu, HI
Peter Rockford Espiritu manifests safe and creative spaces for “Brown Dance” culture and the arts to thrive and grow equally in the traditional and contemporary expressions. Mr. Espiritu’s focus centers on Indigenous identities and voices in a moving dialogue addressing current local issues of urbanization and globalization.| He intends to continue his journey towards articulating Pōhuli, reindiginization through the creation of his own movement modality and vocabulary reformed into the foundation of a new movement language paradigm for his dance company, Tau Dance Theater.
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Jenn Freeman | Po’Chop is a Black queer woman with an afro. Her black hair is styled asymmetrically with curls spiraling down both sides of her face. Her eyes are adorned with purple eye shadow. She is wearing gold hoops and a turquoise button up shirt that features a red art deco pattern. A ray of light illuminates her face and shoulders while a shadow streaks across her forehead and right shoulder. Photo by Anjali Pinto.

Jenn Freeman | Po’Chop | Chicago, IL
Chicago-based burlesque artist Jenn Freeman, also known as Po’Chop, uses elements of dance, storytelling, and striptease to create performances and inspire students and collaborators across the country. Po’Chop is the creator and author of the blogzine, The Brown Pages and has performed at the Brooklyn Museum in Brown Girls Burlesque’s Bodyspeak, at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance for TedxChicago 2022, as well as headlined shows in New Orleans, Minneapolis, Denver, St. Louis and New York.
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Gabriel Gutiérrez is leaning on a spray painted mural of a clouded galaxy with stars, his eyes are slightly squinted and looking toward the right of the picture. The galaxy mural is a gradient of purple, red, and orange with white dot clusters representing stars. He has dark brown hair, mustache, and somewhat curly beard and is wearing a dark brown hat, yellow shirt, black and yellowed pattern poncho hoodie. The sun is slightly shining on his slight smile, cheeks, nose and an amber necklace with obsidian dragon around his neck. His arms are going downward and slightly in frame. Photo by Leo Rivas.

Gabriel “MoFundamentals” Gutiérrez | Los Angeles, CA
Originally from Chicago, Gabriel Gutiérrez is an adult adoptee, first generation street dance artist, founder of MoFundamentals, and artivist dedicated to highlighting the resiliency of the foster and adoptee community. His work centers around disseminating his knowledge of street dance, as well as the lessons of manhood derived from his experiences in homelessness, being his own financial safety net and foster care.
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Harrison Guy, a Black man is wearing a long-sleeved brown shirt with black lines at the top around the neck, across the shoulder, and down the outer chest area. His hair is cut on the sides with some left on top. His right fist touches his chin. Photo by Taylor M Hayden.

Harrison Guy | Houston, TX
As a choreographer, teacher, cultural architect and community builder, Harrison Guy uses movement to document, preserve, and honor Black history and culture. He is the founder of Urban Souls Dance Company. Harrison has captivated audiences across the nation through his inspirational and unique works of truth, beauty, and activism.
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Julie B. Johnson, a Black woman with light skin, and curly dark-brown hair pulled into an afro puff, smiles as she leans toward the camera with her arms crossed in front of her. She wears dangly earrings, a green blouse, and a black sweater. Photo by Patricia Villafañe.

Dr. Julie B. Johnson | Decatur, GA
Julie B. Johnson, PhD, is a dance artist and educator focused on participatory dance and embodied memory mapping to amplify the histories, lived experiences, and bodily knowledge of Black women as a strategy towards collective liberation for all. She does this work joyfully with community partners through her creative practice, Moving Our Stories, and at Spelman College where she serves as an Assistant Professor and Chair of the Department of Dance Performance & Choreography. 
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Petra Kuppers, a white queer cis woman of size, head tilted, smiling with twinkling eyes, with yellow glasses, shaved head, pink lipstick, purple scarf, polka-dot top, a hand caressing the handlebars of Scootie, her mobility scooter, before an urban building with colored glass windows. Photo by Tamara Wade.

Petra Kuppers | Ypsilanti, MI
Petra Kuppers (she/her) is a community performance artist, a disability culture activist, and a wheelchair dancer. She uses social somatics, performance, and speculative writing to engage audiences toward more socially just and enjoyable futures. She has been engaged in community dance and disability culture production since the late 80s and continues to lead workshops internationally. Currently, she runs weekly online disability culture movement classes, Starship Somatics, through Movement Research.
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ShanDien Sonwai LaRance stands in Traditional white Native American dress. She holds a feather in her right, hand over her chest. ShanDien is a young Native American woman. She wears her hair down, straight and black. Behind her on the wall are traditional woven rugs with many colors; dominantly in red, orange, and brown colors. ShanDien is wearing a red coral necklace and turquoise inlaid bracelet. Photo by Wes Cunningham from One Trip Media.

ShanDien Sonwai LaRance | Ohkay Owingeh, NM
ShanDien Sonwai LaRance who is Hopi, Tewa, Navajo, and Assiniboine, is a champion Native American hoop dancer, choreographer, and instructor from Ohkay Owingeh, New Mexico. Growing up immersed in the Native American arts and traditions, ShanDien dreamed of sharing her unique culture with the world. She learned to hoop dance from her older brother, Nakotah LaRance (1989-2020) at eight years old. ShanDien toured with Cirque Du Soleil as a principal dancer for nine years. 
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A headshot of a Black person of African descent with brown skin, very low hair cut, and black square earrings in their ear. Her upper body is in profile, and head is looking towards the camera. They are wearing a sweatshirt with aquamarine trimming, followed by white on the neck collar, and aquamarine color blocking on the top half of the shirt, that has quilt-like stitching. Photo by Maria J. Hackett.

cat mahari | Chicago, IL
cat mahari’s practice is built from a richly layered body history, stemming from an archive of research, physical training and intent to manifest an intellectual, material and informal legacy of Blk liberation through documentation. By examining personal marks and socio-genealogical maps, she explores inner and outer environments. Her film Sugar in the Raw, is a surrealist-inspired exploration of Blk intimacy, trust, and touch via Chicago House and Stepping. 
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Muisi-kongo Malonga, an African woman with deep brown skin and dimples. She is pictured in front of a background of green leaves and is smiling. Her hair is braided and styled into a crown. She is wearing a silver chain with a cowrie shell pendant and gold teardrop earrings with an orange stone. Her top is a multi-colored African-print blouse with midnight blue, sea green and light peach-colored motifs. Photo: Bethanie Hines.

Muisi-kongo Malonga | East Palo Alto, CA
Muisi-kongo Malonga is a dancer and culture bearer whose arts practice is steeped in a staunch Bay Area legacy of cultural preservation, social justice, and service through art. She is one of the foremost keepers of Congolese dance traditions in the U.S., and is dedicated to preserving culture and cultivating the healing power of African arts traditions. As Artistic Director of Fua Dia Congo, Muisi-kongo continues the pioneering cultural preservation work begun in 1977 by her parents, Malonga Casquelourd (Founder/Director) and Dr. Faye McNair-Knox (Dancer/Founding Member).
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A medium light-skinned woman wearing a deep rustic orange colored short sleeve top in front of a charcoal gray backdrop. She is smiling with red lipstick and her hair is styled in a medium length naturally curly fro-hawk. Her arms are crossed in front and her head is slightly tilted to the right. She is wearing small dangle pearl earrings. Photo by Melisa Cardona.

Kesha McKey | New Orleans, LA
Kesha McKey is an African American female performing artist, choreographer, and educator born and raised in New Orleans. After graduating from NOCCA, she received her B.S. in Biology pre-med from Xavier University of LA and an MFA in Dance Performance from UW-Milwaukee. She is the founding Artistic Director of KM Dance Project, an essential artistic platform for emerging Black choreographers in NOLA. 
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A dark brown skinned woman, long black hair, wearing a white shirt, khaki waistcoat and skirt, with a nose ring on the right side of her nose per the Tamil tradition, smiles. Photo by Nathan Cornetet/Fusion Photography.

Prathiba Natesan Batley | Louisville, KY
A three-time Indian National Champion of Bharatanatyam. Dr. Prathiba Natesan Batley is an international dancer with over 300 performances to her credit. She is trained in the Kalakshetra style of Bharatanatyam by Guru Preethi Menon, in Kathakali by Kalamandalam Udayakumar Ashaan, and in facial expressions by Kalamandalam Prasanthi Jayaraj. Many of her productions highlight contemporary social justice, gender, and equity issues while others underscore the intricacies of classical literature.
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Christopher leans back on his left elbow and grasps his left wrist with his right hand. He wears a full black suit, silver jewelry, and a black fedora hat. There are three columns of classical architecture behind him. He smiles shyly as he looks at the camera. Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk.

Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez | Brooklyn, NY
Born in Costa Rica, Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez is a Visually Impaired choreographer, Educator, and Disability Advocate based in New York City. Núñez was a 2022-2023 Princeton University Arts Fellow, a 2018 Leslie Lohman Museum of Art Fellow, a 2021 City Artist Corps Grant recipient, and a two-time recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ Emergency Grant in 2019 and 2021 respectively. 
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Luis Ordaz Gutiérrez wears an indigo shawl with embroidered indigenous motifs and a deep plunging V neckline that extends from one collar bone to the other. He is dramatically lit and appears to be floating out of a pitch-black background. He is a brown-skin Mexican man with a goatee beard and a styled mustache that curls up at each end. He gazes directly towards you with a slight angle of his head. Photo by TheArtist JohnnyV.

Luis Ordaz Gutiérrez | Austin, TX
Luis Ordaz Gutiérrez is an award-winning theater director, writer, dancer, producer, and an all-around Latinx performance artist based in Austin, Texas. As a U.S. immigrant who was originally born in Mexico City, his work is a triangulation of historical research, cultural investigation, and unconventional theater & dance design to explore the collective Latinx experience in the United States and abroad. 
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A bust length photograph of Nkeiruka against a solid white background. Her hair is close cropped and her hand is holding up an opi with an x on it covering one eye. She has on black lipstick, and gold and silver nose rings and earrings. She is wearing a black bra, and black and white graphic patterned sleeveless bra string top. Photo by Sasha Kelly

Nkeiruka Oruche | Oakland, CA
Nkeiruka Oruche is an Igbo multimedia creative, cultural organizer, and producer focusing on Afro-Urban culture. Since 2002, she’s been part of a group of key players ushering Afro culture onto the global stage. This includes being the Editor-in-Chief of the digital magazine Nigerian Entertainment and co-founder of One3snapshot art collective. She is a co-founder of the social justice and music organization BoomShake, as well as founder and executive artistic director of Afro Urban Society, a hub for Pan African arts and culture. 
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iele paloumpis, a white genderqueer person with dark curls and eyes, looks directly and confidently at the camera. They wear square gold-rimmed glasses, a bold, two-toned lip in red and hot pink, and a shirt emblazoned with images of clouds and wheat, created by Indigenous-American designer Noel Bennetto. In the background, iele’s textile studio displays weavings and embroidered tapestries in warm, rich tones. Photo by Lily Olsen.

iele paloumpis | Brooklyn, NY
iele paloumpis is a choreographer, herbalist, educator and textile artist. Their work is rooted in disability justice, trauma-informed griefwork and ancestral re-membrance practices. iele comes from a long line of mystics and embodies fragmented lineages across queer, trans and crip aural histories, alongside their Greek, Anatolian and Irish diasporic bloodlines.
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Image description: Bhumi B Patel, a queer, brown skinned, South Asian Gujarati, femme person with black and gray hair sits against a field of grass blurred in the background. She wears a v-neck black jumpsuit and bright red lipstick. She has brown eyes and a silver hoop nose ring. Photo by Lara Kaur.

Bhumi B Patel | Oakland, CA
Movement artist and writer Bhumi B Patel directs pateldanceworks and is a queer, desi, home-seeker, and science fiction choreographer (she/they). In its purest form, she creates performance works as a love letter to her ancestors. While Patel has trained in Western forms, she seeks to create movement outside of white models of dance at the intersection of embodied research and generating new futures, using improvisational practice for voice and body as a pursuit for liberation. 
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Image description: Potri Ranka Manis is wearing a colorful malong (Filipino dress) with a red scarf covering her hair. She is looking out with her hand gestured on a fire escape. Photo by Hamza Razuman.

Potri Ranka Manis | New York, NY
Potri Ranka Manis is from Mindanao, the southern Philippines. She is an interdisciplinary artist-activist in diaspora, NYFA/NYSCA Folk Art Fellow, and resident artist of LaMaMa, ETC since 2000. She founded Kinding Sindaw Heritage Foundation, Inc. in 1992, a cultural non-profit organization in New York City with a mission to assert, reclaim, preserve and re-create the ancestral stories, unwritten history and living tradition of Mindanao indigenous peoples and sovereign nations. 
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Angelina Ramirez | Tucson, AZ
Angelina Ramirez is a flamenco movement artist and teaching artist living in Tucson, Arizona. Ramirez’s artistic work explores what it means to be a queer, Latinx flamenca, practicing in a traditional Roma/Gitano form of dance. As a teaching artist, she is interested in the intersections of arts and healing, focusing on work with elders of all abilities integrated flamenco with autistic individuals.
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Vershawn Sanders-Ward | Chicago, IL
Vershawn Sanders-Ward holds an MFA in Dance from New York University and is the first recipient of the B.F.A. in Dance from Columbia College Chicago (Gates Millennium Scholar). She is the Founding Artistic Director and C.E.O. of Red Clay Dance Company. Sanders-Ward is a 2019 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Awardee, a 2019 Harvard Business School Club of Chicago Scholar, a 2017 Dance/USA Leadership Fellow, a 2013 3Arts awardee, and a 2009 Choreography Award from Harlem Stage NYC. 
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Gema Sandoval looks into the distance wearing a green and yellow rebozo over her black top. She is wearing red and gold filigree earrings and is standing in front of a rack full of colorful costumes. Photo by Juan Escobedo.

Gema Sandoval | Los Angeles, CA
Gema Sandoval is devoted to illuminating her Chicano heritage through dance. She creates work that uses her art form, Mexican folk dance, as a vehicle for change in her community. In addition to the traditional regional dances of Mexico, over the past nineteen years, she has staged theme works using the creative tools of her chosen art form: foot work, skirt work, rebozos and Mexican iconography. 
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Iquail, a Black man with a buzz cut and goatee, looks directly into the camera. He is bare-chested, set against a light brown background. Photo by Rachel Neville.

Dr. Iquail Shaheed | Philadelphia, PA

Hailed in reviews as “a perfect example of his generation of male dancers… Technically superb and artistically infallible,” Dr. Iquail Shaheed is a Philadelphia-based artist, activist, and the executive artistic director of DANCE IQUAIL! through which he creates new works and programs that centers on Blackness, Justice, and Joy. Dr. Shaheed has worked with internationally acclaimed companies such as Philadanco, Compagnie Thor (Brussels), Sean Curran Company, Ronald K Brown/ Evidence, and the Fred Benjamin Dance Company. 
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The image is a close-up portrait of Shakiri, a Black woman with short curly grey hair. She is smiling and has a warm, open expression. She’s wearing large earrings that are gold and jade green and an off-white tunic with buttons at her neckline. Photo by Nano Visser.

Shakiri | Sacramento, CA
Shakiri (she/hers) is a Goldie and Izzie Award winner who has been a performer, choreographer, and arts educator in the Bay Area for over thirty years. A member of the internationally acclaimed Zaccho Dance Theater Company, she has choreographed for Berkeley Rep, and danced with Dance Brigade, her own company Shakiri/Rootworkers, and others. For the last seven years she’s worked in close collaboration with Skywatchers, a multi-disciplinary community performance ensemble in San Francisco’s Tenderloin.
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A black man from Burkina Faso stands smiling. He has a bald head and wears a silver suit and a dark flowery shirt while standing in front of trees and bush of colorful flowers. Photo by David Crow.

Olivier Tarpaga | Philadelphia, PA
Olivier Tarpaga (U.S.A. / Burkina Faso), is a Princeton University 2018-2019 Caroline Hearst artist in-residence and a Lester Horton Award–winning choreographer/director of the African Music Ensemble of Princeton University. His music and dance work have been described as “unforgettable” by the LA Times, “extraordinary” by The New York Times, and “exceptionally smart work” by Broad Street Review – Philadelphia. 
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Anna Martine Whitehead | Chicago, IL
Anna Martine Whitehead does performance. Their work considers embodied epistemologies of Black queer time and their expressions in liminal sites like prisons, attics, and churches. Their solo and collaborative work has been presented by the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art; Chicago Symphony Orchestra; the Museum of Modern Art; San José Museum of Art; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. 
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Round One Dance/USA Artist Fellows (2018-2020):

Ana Maria AlvarezAna Maria Alvarez Los Angeles, CA
Alvarez is a choreographer, dancer, educator, organizer and mother working at the intersection of dance, theater, political activism and organizing; her work embodies joy as a radical act. Salsa and other social dance forms are her primary tools to connect and reframe/reimagine narratives. She intends to begin writing a book about collective liberation and her journey as an artist from the in between.
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Holly Bass

Holly Bass Washington, DC
As a multidisciplinary teaching artist and dance maker, Bass’s practice centers on Black cultural preservation; she compels audiences to think deeply about issues vital to the existence of Black people. She intends to write about her and other artists’ perspectives of working in ways that cultivate intimacy, vulnerability and connection; to be shared with the next generation of artists.
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Charya Burt

Charya Burt Windsor, CA
Trained by Cambodia’s surviving dance masters following the Khmer Rouge Genocide, Burt emigrated in 1993; she preserves classical Cambodian dance technique for Cambodian communities across California and creates dances that are relevant for young dancers. She intends to continue connecting Cambodian communities by training teachers and apprentices and by offering dance and costume instruction that is available and accessible.
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Ananya Chatterjea

Ananya Chatterjea Minneapolis, MN
In her contemporary practice, Chatterjea draws from Indian performance traditions, activist street theater, and community to create workshops, staged and interactive public art performances and to train emerging indigenous and artists of color. She intends to deepen her healing movement practices based on yogic and ayurvedic principles and build community relationships near her space, Shawngram Institute, in St. Paul.
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Sarah Crowell

Sarah Crowell Oakland, CA
Crowell practices social change primarily within Destiny Arts Youth Company, which she founded, and which explores issues of interest to young people, including identity, race and sexual orientation. She intends to expand her time investment in a new project to ritualize and memorialize youth who have been killed in Oakland by working with their families.
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Mama Naomi Diouf

Mama Naomi Diouf Castro Valley, CA
As an immigrant from Liberia who arrived during the Black Power Movement, Diouf has been an artist, educator and activist who shares the diverse narratives of people of African Descent. She intends to take a sabbatical to develop the next generation of African dance leaders, both within her company and locally, and train African artists to teach and to advocate.
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Sean Dorsey

Sean Dorsey San Francisco, CA
As a transgender modern dance choreographer, writer and activist, Dorsey creates dances in and with community; creates opportunities for trans and gender-nonconforming (gnc) people to experience supported creative expression and cultural leadership; and challenges the exclusion, silencing and harm of trans/gnc people in Dance. He intends to travel and meet current and former trans/gnc dancers and provide himself open-ended creative time.
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Tony Duncan

Tony Duncan Mesa, AZ
As a champion Hoop Dancer, Duncan uses the traditional concepts of Hoop Dance to bring youth closer to an understanding of themselves and their communities. He intends to travel to Taos Pueblo, the source of Hoop Dance, to meet with elders and dancers and learn oral histories; and to support his own practice at home by making hoops and working with youth.
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Marjani Fortè-SaundersMarjani Fortè-Saunders Pasadena, CA
As a facilitator, educator, choreographer and performer, Fortè-Saunders uses the medium of art in pursuit of liberation, committed to black narratives, black stories, and black wellness as an an indelible commitment to this nation’s dreams.  She intends to use time to focus on creative practice, research and experimentation, and hire executive partners.
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Robert Gilliam

Robert Gilliam Woodland Hills, CA
Gilliam is an Urban Contemporary Dancemaker who, with his Krump Crew, co-creates movement experiences for communities to eliminate lines of division in a variety of settings, including parking lots and juvenile halls. He intends to create a summer artist training and mentorship program that will pair master teaching artists with local emerging artists.
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Naomi Goldberg Haas

Naomi Goldberg Haas New York, NY
Through her practice called Movement Speaks®, Goldberg Haas inspires low and fixed income older adults to move and create dances, and mentors teaching artists to do the same. She intends to deepen her partnership in the South Bronx, with the William Hodson Senior Center and BronxCare, by presenting performances of participants from her program with professionally trained dancers.
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Jennifer Harge

Jennifer Harge Highland Park, MI
Harge’s practice actualizes the somatics of thriving in black flesh, looking to the organizing and corporeal possibilities within Black liturgical and Black social dance forms.  She intends to continue pursuing artmaking and infrastructural building within Detroit’s Black dance community.
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Antoine Hunter

Antoine Hunter Oakland, CA
Hunter is a Deaf African American choreographer, dancer, instructor, speaker, and Deaf advocate who creates opportunities for Deaf artists and produces Deaf-friendly events; he founded the Urban Jazz Dance Company and Bay Area International Deaf Dance Festival. This artist intends to continue working with schools, and provide more free workshops for marginalized families, Deaf institutes, community centers, public schools and senior centers.
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Assane Konte

Assane Konte Washington, DC
Konte advances the mission of his company Kankouran, which fosters connections between his native Senegalese community and his African American community, in DC and around the country. He intends to pay for materials for school programs in NE and SE Washington, costumes, and drum repairs for his company, and to organize a roundtable in Senegal between African and US-based dancers who are social change practitioners.
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Laurel Lawson

Laurel Lawson Tucker, GA
As an artist, activist, and product designer & engineer, Lawson explores technique and choreography that is authentic to disabled embodiments. She intends to expand frontiers in technique and choreography, study pedagogy, explore ways to expand access to the field via technological platforms, and create work.
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Patrick Makuakane

Patrick Makuakane San Francisco, CA
As a Kumu Hula, a tradition bearer and shaper, Makuakane is obliged to keep traditional dances and chants intact and pass transgenerational knowledge onto students and has been given permission to create work that reflects those traditions. He intends to continue working with San Quentin State Prison, creating a transitional space within his company for men leaving prison and to elevate the value of ancient cultural practices.
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Paloma McGregor

Paloma McGregor New York, NY
Within her practice, McGregor visions with Black and POC communities and aims to center their voices and create pathways for exchange across generation and geography. She intends to deepen her practice on her home island, St. Croix, by working with local and mainland collaborators, exploring ideas such as activating “abandoned” spaces and embodying vanishing traditions across the island, and to document this process.
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Murda Mommy

Murda Mommy Chicago, IL
As a lesbian teen who experienced homelessness and was exonerated, Mommy brings her life experiences into mentoring, and teaches Chicago footwork to people who face similar adversities on the South and West sides of Chicago. She intends to mentor young people, extend partnerships with numerous local organizations, and work on a new video game.
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Yvonne Montoya

Yvonne Montoya Tucson, AZ
Montoya co-creates works with community, building relationships among Latinx in the Southwest. She intends to expand her community work, growing Dance in the Desert: A Gathering of Latinx Dancemakers, traveling to research Latinx movement aesthetics unique to the Southwest, and working with collaborators to create art focusing on positive self-representations of border communities.
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Christopher K. Morgan

Christopher K. Morgan San Diego, CA
Within his work, Morgan is investigating the intersection of western dance practices, native Hawaiian cultural values and hula, as well as storytelling and interdisciplinary collaboration. He intends to continue this ongoing investigation, pay collaborators and Hawaiian cultural consultants, and strengthen his connection to a growing network of contemporary Hawaiian performing arts professionals.
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José Navarrete

José Navarrete  Oakland, CA
Navarrete collaborates with San Francisco Bay Area communities severely impacted by systems of oppression, in partnership with organizations that offer parallel professional support. He intends to use unstructured time to work with the women of Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA) and travel to Mexico to research a new work based on forced disappearance.
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Prumsodun Ok

Prumsodun Ok Long Beach, CA
As a Khmer American classical dancer, Ok established a practice that includes founding the first openly gay dance company in Cambodia, training the next generation of Khmer dance artists, and layering Khmer classical dance with contemporary elements shared on social media. He intends to strengthen relationships with Khmer American groups, conduct research in a Buddhist center in Japan, and experiment in the studio.
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Allison Orr

Allison Orr Austin, TX
Orr creates dances that highlight the beauty and skill in the virtuosic movement of work. Collaborating primarily with working class people—frequently city employees or other institutional staff—Orr and her team at Forklift Danceworks use performance as a catalyst for long term community-led action.She intends to connect with fellow dance artists committed to community-based social justice work and to finish a book about her practice.
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Alleluia Panis

Alleluia Panis San Francisco, CA
As a choreographer and culture bearer, Panis embraces the sometimes contradictory dynamics of Pilipinx Diasporic life, combining modern Western dance and indigenous cultural ceremony. Her practice involves research in Pilipinx arts, community storytelling, relationship building, and mentoring of next-generation artists, particularly in the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco. She intends to continue building relationships, mentoring and researching Pilipinx stories.
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Danys "La Mora" Pérez

Danys “La Mora” Pérez New York, NY
As a choreographer of Afro-Cuban folkloric dance, an art form born of resistance to oppression, Pérez strives to preserve the traditions of Afro-Cuban culture and folklore by using these traditions to educate, uplift, and unite people. She intends to rehearse, and pay musicians, without relying solely on personal sacrifices from family and dancers, who have offset her expenses in the past.
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Pamela Quinn

Pamela Quinn New York, NY
After a 20-year dance career, followed by a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease (PD), Quinn developed techniques to retrieve many of the functions that the disease takes away, utilizing visual and auditory cuing to teach and create dances for people with PD. She intends to codify and record her techniques to make them accessible to local and international communities of patients, artists, and medical professionals.
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Deneane Richburg

Deneane Richburg Saint Paul, MN
Richburg expands the boundaries of ice skating from a Black perspective, using facilitated conversations and the wisdom of the moving body on and off ice to heal the wounds caused by racial trauma. She intends to spend time on a new work about 17th-19th century Black social dance and explore new formats for post-show discussion.
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Vanessa Sanchez

Vanessa Sanchez San Francisco, CA
As a Chicana dancer, choreographer, and educator, Sanchez focuses on community arts and traditional dance forms to provide a platform for Latinx communities, emphasizing the voices and experiences of Latina and Chicana women and youth. She intends to deepen her relationships in the Bay Area, create a new piece about farm and domestic workers and laborers, and reduce her teaching and administrative work.
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Rosy Simas

Rosy Simas Minneapolis, MN
Rosy Simas’ (Seneca) choreographic work centers Native cultural/political persistence, weaving themes of personal/familial/collective identity with matriarchy, sovereignty, equality, and healing. During the fellowship period she will foster new and strengthen existing relationships with urban and rural Native communities, work with Native writers on the contextualization and visibility of writing on Native contemporary dance, focus on documenting her work, and strengthening her tribally based leadership skills.
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Amara Tabor-Smith

Amara Tabor-Smith Oakland, CA
In her practice, called Conjure Art, Tabor-Smith utilizes Yorùbá Lukumi ritual to address issues of social and environmental justice, race, gender identity and belonging; and to cultivate meaningful and lasting relationships in Oakland, CA. She desires time to research and experiment with Yorùbá ritual in collaboration with Black women/Femmes and girls, leading to a neo-folklore ritual performance society in Oakland based on the Egungun masquerade.
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Qacung Yufrican

Qacung Yufrican Anchorage, AK
Yufrican works in Yuraq, the dance practice of the Yup’ik people of Alaska, and creates traditional dances with contemporary masks and movement for communities in Alaska. He intends to connect with rural communities around Alaska and create original work with masks and dance regalia.

Photo credits here. 

Read about the article series of the Round One Artist Fellows.

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