Elyse is a professional dancer and independent choreographer from Albuquerque. She has performed with J. García Dance Company, Kelsey Paschich, Loren Fletcher, Donna Jewell, and Pilar Leto. Her choreographic work has been featured in dance festivals in Albuquerque and El Paso, and in community projects including National Water Dance and ABQ Can Dance. Elyse owns and operates Studio Sway, where she creates work, teaches dance, hosts performances, and facilitates community dance experiences. She is a core organizing member of Albuquerque Dance Connect, a networking and advocacy resource for professional dancers in the Albuquerque community. As a UETF Resiliency Residency grant recipient, Elyse is creating a new work of contemporary jazz, focused on both the preservation and evolution of her original training in jazz dance. She is honored to culminate the creation of this work through Keshet’s Makers Space Experience in early Spring 2023.

Katherine G. Moore and Kathryn Nusa Logan’s work engages somatic, often time-based processes of movement and meaning-making in relationship to environmental structures and patterns. From investigative, site-responsive improvisation practice and experiments with material and digital video, they devise performances that shift time scales and explore connections to the more-than-human.

Ramya Sundaresan Kapadia is a Knoxville-based Bharatanatyam choreographer/performer/instructor, a Carnatic vocalist and visual artist. She has written, choreographed and scored the music for several dance theater productions for Bharatanatyam dancers all over the United States and abroad. Through her studio, the Natyarpana School of Dance & Music, Ramya creates work that pushes the boundaries of her music & dance forms to reflect life and build a strong artistic community. She is the recipient of the Ella Pratt Emerging Artist Award, the Artist Support Award and the North Carolina Dance Alliance Choreography Fellowship. As a teaching artist with the Durham Arts Council and the United Arts Council in NC, she uses her training in Medical Physics, Neuroscience, and the arts to create STEAM – based learning methods for schools. Ramya believes that art can and should tell stories that compel audiences to becoming better and more compassionate human beings.

Tatiana Zamir is an interdisciplinary performance artist and trauma-informed movement facilitator who has been walking a path of evolution, transformation, and deep personal inquiry her whole life. Zamir studied and performed as a dancer and choreographer in the World Arts & Cultures Department at UCLA and developed her natural skills in the healing arts at IPSB Life Energy Institute. From her base in Los Angeles, her work has taken her to Bulgaria, Argentina, Namibia, Zambia, Senegal, Mexico, Cuba, and Bali. As both a healer and an artist, Tatiana holds a uniquely compassionate space, which catalyzes transformation and aids people around the world to embody their joy and live unapologetic, creatively-fulfilled lives — whether in her Afro-Joy Dance classes, her performance art, or movement therapy-based healing arts workshops and retreats.

Christian Denice’s professional dance experience includes Odyssey Dance Theatre, River North Dance Chicago, and BJM Danse (Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal). Christian most recently made his Broadway debut in “The Little Prince” which opened in New York in 2022. As a choreographer, he has created new works for Dance Lab New York, Chamber Dance Project, Odyssey Dance Theatre, LEVELdance Chicago, DanceWorks Chicago, Interlochen Center for the Arts, the Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Company, Visceral Dance Chicago, Missouri Contemporary Ballet, Western Michigan University, METdance Houston, Modern America Dance Company, Modas Dance, SALT II, Wylliams/Henry Contemporary Dance Company, Eisenhower Dance Detroit, Houston Contemporary Dance Company, Wright State University, Kit Modus, and AXIS Connect Los Angeles. Christian is currently dancing in a production for Andonis Foniadakis Dance Company based in Athens, Greece and is on faculty as Artist in Residence at the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

Magnolia Yang Sao Yia, dance artist and scholar, is a daughter of HMoob refugees and former undocumented immigrant living on Tongva and Kizh lands (Los Angeles, CA). As a choreographer, Magnolia works to activate dancers’ bodily histories and knowledges to craft performative sociopolitical conversations, critiques, and inquiries on stage. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Critical Dance Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Southeast Asian Studies from University of California, Riverside. She holds a BFA in Dance and Minor in Asian American Studies from University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Her dissertation examines Hmong dance as a site of HMoob identity formation in the U.S. diaspora. Working from a transnational feminist and decolonial praxis, she imagines and works to activate a cultural politic of HMoob belonging and self-determination that is critical of colonial and imperial value systems.

magnoliayangsaoyia.com

Sunny Min-Sook Hitt is a NYC-based choreographer, movement director, performer, and educator. Credits include: “Snow In Midsummer” (Classic Stage), “The Great Leap” (Portland Center Stage), “In The Green” (The New School), “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” (Florida Studio Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville), “UNTITLED DANCESHOWPARTYTHING” (Virgin Voyages), “Soft Power” by David Henry Hwang (The Public Theater), “The Tempest” (The Public Theater), and “June Rites!!!” by Lee Sunday Evans. In 2021 Sunny created “BODY OF WORK” with long time collaborator Ani Taj, as an exploration of dance + economics, which included the release of three dance NFTs. Her durational performance ON VIEW: WFH was created and presented in 2020 with support from Exponential Festival and Foundation for Contemporary Arts emergency grants. Sunny is adjunct faculty at The New School’s Mannes School of Music.

sunnyhitt.com @sunnyhitt