Alumni Bios
M. Liz Andrews (2011)
@BeJustArt | LetterToObama.com
M. Liz Andrews is a doctoral student in Cultural Studies at George Mason University where she also serves as the Graduate Assistant for the GMU Diversity Research Group. Liz’s academic work explores the ways art can serve as a venue and vehicle for activism and discussions about democracy and social change. In 2009, she launched LetterToObama – an artistic space for democratic engagement. As the director of the project, she curates a monthly online publication and has produced live events in Washington D.C., New York City and Chicago. Liz received her B.A. in American Studies from Wesleyan University and her M.A. from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She is originally from Denver, Colorado.
Paul Bedard (2016)
paulhbedard.com
Paul Bedard is a New York City-based theater director and activist. He is a founder and artistic director of Theater in Asylum, which strives to provide asylum to highly-charged subjects and characters. Recent directing credits include , touring stage adaptations of the Democratic Primary Debates, at The Hangar Theatre, and in the Prague International Fringe Festival. Paul is a Drama League Directing Fellow. He graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Dominic Cinnamon Bradley (2012)
Dominic Cinnamon Bradley is a Black gender non-conforming, 'crip and sick' multidisciplinary artist from the Dirty South. Dominic also holds a Master's Degree in Social Work from Columbia University. A 2012 EMERGENYC alum, Dominic continues to develop performance that illuminates the lived experience of disability. Dominic believes what is spoken can be acknowledged, what is acknowledged can be examined, and what is examined can be transformed.Dominic's approach to performance is identity-based, experimental, and frequently involves spiritual seeking. Dominic has been recognized by the SICK Collective for creating at the intersection of gender variance and disability. Dominic's work has been supported by organizations including: Fountain House, Roots and River Productions, New York University, Puffin Foundation, Healing Arts Initiative. Dominic is currently working to complete Defiance (solo performance), Bloodlines (short film) and the Exhibition Skills Apprenticeship Program.
Karina Claudio-Betancourt (2009)
derivas.net
Karina Claudio-Betancourt is a Boricua "artivist" and community organizer with a BA in Humanities—Theater and Creative Writing (UPR-RP) and an MA in Performance Studies (NYU). Born and raised in Santurce, Puerto Rico, she now lives in Brooklyn. She received a scholarship from the Hispanic Arts Foundation in 2007, a “Performance Studies” Award in 2008 and was a Hemispheric Institute EMERGENYC Fellow in 2009. While working at Make the Road NY (www.maketheroadny.org) from 2008-2014 she received the Brooklyn Lambda Award (May, 2009), a City Council Proclamation (June, 2009), a Proclamation from the Queens Borough President (2010), and a City Council Proclamation (2011) for her work with the organization’s LGBTQ Justice Project. She has also received a "Civic Advocate of the Year" award in 2013 from the NY State Legislature and a Proclamation from the Suffolk County Legislature in 2014 for her work as a community organizer in Long Island. Since March 2014, she works as the Senior Director for Community Engagement in the office of NYC Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, overseeing a team of 30 employees that engage diverse and disenfranchised communities throughout New York City in the decision-making processes of the NYC Council. In 2011 she published her first book with Atarraya Cartonera Editorial (http://atarrayacartonera.blogspot.com) in Puerto Rico titled "Monógama en Serie" Her earlier performance/writing work can be found in the website derivas.net
Vanessa Cuervo (2016)
Vanessa is a Colombian cultural worker and creative facilitator who believes in the power of art as a social transformational practice and a form of critical thinking. As a dancer, theatre producer and curator, she explores the intersection of art, education, community and social justice. She is influenced by the legacies of radical political theater in Latin America which is why her activism has lived mostly in the production and curation of theatre that talks about territory, migration, displacement, and gender. She has been a steward for Colectivo de Arte Popular / People’s Collective Arts in New York making struggles and social movements visible with the collaboration of wonderful artists. As a Laundromat Project fellow Vanessa collaborated with Latina domestic violence survivors to create art that goes beyond awareness to talk about healing, empowerment and the strength of communities in Harlem. After graduating from NYU with an MA in Arts Politics Vanessa continues to explore the role of the arts in the Colombian peace process and a post-conflict scenario. As an R&D fellow at the New Museum she is currently exploring how new generations are shifting the concept of democracy in a year where brexit was voted yes, Colombian peace referendum was voted no, Dilma Rousseff was impeached and Trump was elected president of the US.
Dennis Redmoon Darkeem (2012)
dennisredmoondarkeem.com
I am inspired to create art work based on the familiar objects that I view through my daily travels. I discover elements in existing architecture and among everyday items found within the home. I ultimately set out to express a meaningful story about events in my life and those found with the communities I work. I utilize different media in the creation of my work. This allows for great versatility and a rich viewer experience as the eye uncovers the multiple layers that often characterize mixed media art.Since my work as a professional artist has commenced in the early 2000s, it has evolved into critiquing social and political issues affecting Black American and indigenous Native American culture. Much of my art has focused on issues like institutionalized racism and classism, jarring stereotypes, and displacement of people of color. As a multi-media artist, I express these motifs through fine art, drawings, paintings, collages, photography, sculpture, and installations. Incorporating a craftwork aesthetic has connected tradition with the contemporary. This is prevalent in many of my pieces. I seek to create a discussion through color, texture, symbolism, and geometric designs. My work evokes a historical memory and questions the status quo. Art has become a conduit connecting my artistic ideas and concepts to the public realm.
Katrina De Wees (2011)
Katrina is a Brooklyn born and based interdisciplinary artist, currently working (primarily) in choreography and performance. After experimenting with her education and art at Hampshire College, she returned to NYC and presented her work at Dixon Place, Williamsburg Art Nexus and MIXnyc among others. She currently works in museum education at The Studio Museum in Harlem, and is developing a new work through the Emerge Collective to present at the 2012 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. In the summer of 2012, Katrina will begin the certificate program at Wesleyan University's Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance.
Mieke D (2009)
Mieke is a queer mixed race femme of Asian and European descent, who seeks to investigate how a diversity of styles can or cannot co-exist in a performative space, hunting for cohesive narratives and aesthetic harmony while travelling through a vast terrain of fragmentation. The goal of her solo and collaborative work is to express the unstable nature of race, gender, nationality, and authenticity. Mieke studied at the Experimental Theater Wing at NYU and the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics as part of EMERGNENYC. She has performed with La Pocha Nostra, the Theater of a Two-Headed Calf, Target Margin Theater Company, and Taylor Mac, among others, and she has worked on numerous community-based theater projects with Cornerstone Theater Company (in California) and The Foundry Theatre Company (in New York). She has shared original work at Dance New Amsterdam, Dixon Place, NYU, the Bushwick Arts Festival, and Under St. Marks, and hopes to keep adding to that list. Mieke continues to grow as an artist and an activist, working from a place of love for all those who have shaped her and this ever-evolving culture we live in.
Stephano Espinoza (2015)
www.cargocollective.com/stephanoeg
Stephano is an artist and educator from Guayaquil, Ecuador. His ideas are concerned with popular culture, the aesthetics of social movements and memories of home. He is the co-founder and director of TrueQué Residencia Artistica, an annual artist residency in the coast of Ecuador. He holds a BA in Social and Cultural Analysis with concentrations in Latinx and Metropolitan Studies from New York University. He was part of the 2015 cohort from the Hemispheric Institute’s EmergeNYC Emerging Performers Program, NYFA’s Immigrant Artists Program, and the Center for Artistic Activism’s 2016 Art Action Academy. Espinoza has worked at the Queens Museum as a Public Programs and Community Engagement Fellow, as an educator at the Museum of the Moving Image and a teaching artist at Groundswell Community Mural Project.
Patrícia Faolli (2011)
Patrícia Faolli is a interdisciplinary artist from São Paulo, Brazil. With a Brachelor's Degree in Comunicação das Artes do Corpo from PUC- SP (2009) she started her career in theater and later focused on performance art and dance using her body as the primary medium. Since 2008 with the "Ajuntamento MeninasJoão de Performance," she took part in several performances and urban interventions such as: On Sale, Mínimos Silêncios, Tinta Fresca, Lamentos Contidos em Busca de Catarse, Transparências, Ctrl + Z ou 220 Lâmpadas de 1watt.
In 2010 Patricia moved to New York focusing her work and research even more in dance, urban intervention and videoart. Currently, she is a MFA candidate in Performance and Interactive Media Arts (PIMA) at Brooklyn College. Patrícia's pieces are in constant dialogue with the city and its inhabitants evoking questions about human relations and behavior patterns in metropolitan areas, conjuring ghosts confined in concrete cracks.
Samantha Galarza (2012)
Samantha Galarza is a sassy Puerto Rican-Brazilian-French-Spanish, queer, SAG-AFTRA screen actress/writer/singer/poet/performance artist/professional ranter. Recent roles include features in Hip Hop High, A Pebble of Love in the Shoe of My Life, Dead of Night, and Law & Order SVU. In April 2014 she made her directorial debut with Eddie’s Perejil at the ONE festival and is currently developing two full length solo pieces and a screenplay. As an art-ivist, her work explores queer identity politics, fluidity, systemic and internalized racism, substance abuse, migration, the U.S. prison industrial complex and policy that disproportionately affects ethnic minorities. Ultimately a storyteller, her dream is to bridge the gap between mainstream media and progressive "anti-colonial" political art. Sam is also a fellow of Guillermo Gomez Pena’s La Pocha Nostra and EmergeLab residency at Brooklyn Arts Exchange.
Claudia Sofía Garriga López (2010)
click for Vimeo Profile
Claudia Sofía Garriga López (a.k.a Dr. Mamamela) is currently completing her PhD in the department of Social and Cultural Analysis of NYU. After participating in EMERGE Claudia went on to be a part of the Art and Resistance course in San Cristóbal de las Casas, México. She is thrilled to be a part of the hemi family because there are always events, programs, and people, that bring politics and art together in meaningful ways.
Noelle Ghoussaini (2011)
noelleghoussaini.com
Noelle Ghoussaini is a playwright, director, performer and arts educator. She has lived, traveled, performed and taught throughout the United States, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Her work is dedicated to using arts to examine and re-imagine our society within a political, social and historical context. She has written four original plays and curated numerous devised pieces, which have been staged at theaters, site-specific locations and community gardens throughout NYC. As a director, she has worked with companies such as Culture Project, Noor Theatre, the Jenin Freedom Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, Sepia Works, Brave New World Repertory Theatre, and the Movement Theatre Company. She is currently developing a project on Phoenician mythology and a play about birds for a skateboard park.
Beatrice Glow (2008—Inaugural cohort)
beatriceglow.org | floatinglibrary.org | austronesian-institute.org
Beatrice Glow is an interdisciplinary artist whose work uncovers invisible, suppressed stories that lie in the geopolitical shadows of colonialism and migration between Asia and the Americas, Diaspora and Indigeneity, and oceanic circulations. Her practice comprises of sculptural installations, trilingual publishing, participatory performances and lectures, and experiential technologies. She has been named the 2016-17 Artist-in-Residence at the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University, a 2015 Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Finalist, recipient of the 2015 Van Lier Visual Art Fellowship at Wave Hill, a 2014 Franklin Furnace Fund grantee, and a 2008 US Fulbright Scholar to Peru. Her most recent activities include Aromérica Parfumeur, a solo exhibition at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Chile (2016); Lenapeway and The Wayfinding Project at the A/P/A Institute at NYU (2016); Rhunhattan at Wave Hill (2015); a lecture performance as part of Asia Contemporary Art Week’s Field Meeting Take 2 at the Venice Biennale (2015); and a pop-up Floating Library (2014) aboard the Lilac Museum Steamship on the Hudson River.
Stephen Graf (2011)
Stephen has written and performed in three solo performances, the most recent of which was entitled About Face: Marking the Unmarked. This piece explored histories of whiteness in the US and their entanglement in Stephen’s own life. He is currently writing a fourth piece about sexual difference and what it means to be alone. He can also be seen throughout New York City performing with the indie improv group COACH.
Melanie Greene (2014)
Melanie Greene is a movement artist swirling along the edges of the impossible and swimming in the sea of the minority. She has presented work at Dixon Place, Movement Research at Judson Church, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, WOW Cafe, Bronx Academy of the Arts and Dance, and New York Live Arts. In 2015 Greene received a Gibney Dance boo-koo Space Grant, followed by 2015/16 New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks residency, and 2016 Actors Fund Summer Push Grant. She is a proud alumna of EmergeNYC at The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, and has worked with sheros Sydnie L. Mosley, Paloma McGregor, and Dancenoise. Currently, Greene is a contributing writer for The Dance Enthusiast, and 2016/17 Dancing While Black Fellow. As a southern belle New York transplant, Greene is delighted to leave spaces drenched in racist rhetoric masked as religious ideals, but will gladly keep biscuits, country ham, and collard greens. Stay tuned. methodsofperception.com (Photo by Larry Rosalez)
Leslie Guyton (2008)
MovementWorkshopGroup.org
Leslie Guyton is a dance & theater director based in Brooklyn, NY. She's the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the Movement Workshop Group. Guyton is the Executive Producer and Curator for The First Layer Festival, a yearly dance, music, and theater festival in NYC, and is assistant directing Under Construction with Anne Bogart and SITI Company in April 2011. She sat in on rehearsals with Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal in Germany, Spain, Portugal, England, and the US in 2007 and 2008. Guyton was Assistant to the Executive Director at the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance from 2009-2010 and was a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab in 2009.
Under Guyton's direction, the Movement Workshop Group has created four evening-length pieces inspired by an element. Her works have been presented at such institutions as Dixon Place, La MaMa ETC, John Hancock Hall, the A.R.T.'s Club Oberon, Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center, The Brecht Forum, Montauk's Sole East and Movement Research at Dance Theater Workshop. The Boston Globe chose Dust to Dust (2006) and Moontides (2008) as "Dance Pick of the Week" in 2006 and 2008 respectively.
lolo halman (2014)
lolo halman is currently a masters student at the process work institute in portland, oregon, which trains in facilitator awareness for conflict facilitation through a combination of taoist philosophy, quantum physics, jungian psychology, and psychodrama. in his creative work lolo explores the means of deep personal and social transformation through esoteric expression and community ritual performance.
Megan Hanley (2009)
meganhanley.info
Megan Hanley makes physical, political, and collaborative theater. She is a founding member of The Syndicate (wearethesyndicate.com), an ensemble theater company that devises intimate, spectacular plays from the ground up. With the Syndicate, Megan has appeared as Pentheus in Civility! and as Gertrude Stein in Well Job, Gertrude. Megan is also a core member of Man Meat Collective (www.facebook.com/mmcollective), a group that rewrites musicals to make them better, queerer, and more transformative. Megan was an invited artist at the UCSUR International Theater Festival in Peru; performed at the Hemispheric Institute's Encuentros in Brazil and Canada; worked with Jesusa Rodriguez on performance interventions in Mexico; and collaborated with Split Britches on their retrospective show, Desperate Archives, at La MaMa Galeria. Megan facilitates workshops and actions with the Yes Men in her free time and works and trains at SITI Company.
Denae Hannah (2012)
Denae Hannah, a native of Fort Worth, Texas, is a performance artist, social entrepreneur, and Artistic Director and CEO of Denae Dance Theatre. She received her B.A. in Drama from Stanford University and M.F.A. in Performance and Choreography from Florida State University. Ms. Hannah is a 2012 EMERGENYC artist and a 2012-2013 Commissioned Artist at Stanford University. She was on Stanford's campus from February 10 - March 16 2013 to teach choreography from her new dance comedy FIVE STAR CHICK. Her work was performed for Parent's Weekend and for the Dance Division's winter dance concert "Performing Past, Fast Forward: The Body in 3D". Founded in September 2012, Denae Dance Theatre is a performing arts company that seeks to spark conversations on culture through performance pieces that employ satire and the physical collision of pop culture with high art. Performances often address contemporary issues on race and gender. The company is also actively seeking new business models and practices for dance organizations through the "Dance Like a Start-up" project.
Gethsemane Herron (2016)
Gethsemane Herron-Coward is a poet-turned-playwright from Washington, D.C. She is a 2016 Semi-Finalist for Rising Circle Theater Collective’s INKtank and a Finalist for the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award. Gethsemane was also a selected playwright for the 2016 24 Hour Play Festival-Nationals with the New School and a participant in EMERGENYC, the Hemispheric New York Emerging Performers Program. In 2016, she was awarded a Playwriting grant from the Puffin Foundation, which went to supporting residency with Judson Art’s Magic Time play development hub. Previously, she was a recipient of a Dean’s Fellowship in Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies from the University of Maryland. Her writing and performance has been featured in Jaggery, Near Kin: A Collection of Words and Art Inspired by Octavia Estelle Butler, and the Washington Post. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild.
Sabina Ibarrola (2013)
Sabina is a Brooklyn-based performance artist, activist, and troublemaker: a dancer and bruja on the path towards becoming a writer and healer, too. Sabina currently apprentices with herbalist Robin Rose Bennett of Wisewoman Healing Ways. A graduate of Hunter College and the New York School of Burlesque, she collaborates with the Boston-based Femme Show and Brooklyn’s Heels on Wheels Glitter Roadshow. As a mixed-race Latina femmedyke, her work coalesces around conscious, performative femininity and camp as strategies for resisting racist heteropatriarchy.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (2008—Inaugural cohort)
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ plays include Neighbors (Public Theater), Appropriate (Signature Theater, OBIE Award for Best New Play, Outer Critics Circle nominee), An Octoroon (Soho Rep, OBIE Award for Best New Play), War (Yale Rep, forthcoming), and Gloria (Vineyard Theater, forthcoming). His work has been or will be seen at the Actors Theater of Louisville, Victory Gardens Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theater, The Matrix Theater, CompanyOne, Theater Bielefeld in Germany and the HighTide Festival in the UK. He is currently a Residency Five playwriting fellow at Julliard. Other honors include the Paula Vogel Award, a Fulbright Arts Grant, a Helen Merrill Award, the Dorothy Strelsin playwriting fellowship, and the inaugural Tennessee Williams Award. He is a Princeton alum from the Class of 2006 and holds an MFA in Performance Studies from NYU. In 2016, he became a MacArthur Fellow.
Frantz Jerome (2008—Inaugural cohort)
ThePeacePoets.com | 2050Legacy.com | blacknerdproblems.com/author/truevillainy
Frantz is an interdisciplinary performing artist and critical media analyst from The Bronx, NYC. His work explores the complexity of Blackness and resistance in the United States as a member of the social justice/hip-hop theatre ensemble 2050 Legacy, co-founder of artivist collective The Peace Poets, and contributor for BlackNerdProblems.com. Frantz also holds a B.A. in Writing & Democracy and Media Studies from The New School University.
Pablillo José (2010)
diminuto.info
Pablo Varona —or Pablillo José—is an artist and puppeteer. He spends most of his time living close to the forested mountaintops of Las Marías, Puerto Rico, where he a resident artist liaison of Casa Múcaro. He is amazed by the immeasurable value of reusing discarded or “forgotten” objects in the transformation of urban contexts. His interests revolve around making these issues relevant and accessible to the general public, in the hope that someday we will all collaborate in the creative process of experimenting with the most abundant material out there: Trash. Recently, he was also a lead artist at Honey for the Heart Parade, Athens, OH (2015) and Art Director of the Loisaida Festival Parade (2016).
Marta Jovanović (2013)
Marta Jovanović (b. 1978, Belgrade, Serbia) constructs scenarios in which she interrogates politics, identity, beauty, and sexuality. Her interdisciplinary practice is an invitation to disregard conventional notions of society and embrace a more democratic vision, free from all constraints. Jovanović received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Tulane University in 2001 after attending Scuola Lorenzo de Medici, in Florence. Her works have been presented in solo and group exhibitions around the globe, in institutions such as Museo Pietro Canonica and Museo della Civiltà Romana, both in Rome; G12HUB, Belgrade; Studio Marina Abramovic at Location One, New York; and Centre Culturel de Serbie, Paris, among many others. Jovanović is a winner of the Roma Capitale Award (2012), she participated at the Bronx Museum Biennial (2013) as well as the Venice Agendas at the 55th Venice Biennial along with Joan Jonas and Hans Ulrich Obrist. Her first artist book, written by Dr. Kathy Battista was published by The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, CUNY, NY in 2013. Her works are part of important international private and public collections, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, Serbia. Her sculpture LjubavSrecalstina (LoveFortuneTruth, 2011) is permanently installed in the garden of the Museum of Yugoslav History, Belgrade.She lives and works in New York, Belgrade, and Rome.
NIC Kay (2009)
#cottondreams #lilBLK #blackpeopleontheinternet #getwellsoon
nic-kay.com | vimeo.com/nickay | IG : @ okaynickay | FB: @okaynickay
NIC Kay formerly known as Nicole K. is from the Bronx. Currently occupying several liminal spaces. They are a person who makes performances and creates/organizes performative spaces. They are obsessed with the act and process of moving the change of place, production of space, position, and the clarity/meaning gleaned from shifting of perspective. NIC’s current transdisciplinary projects explore movement as a place of reclamation of the body, history and spirituality.
Taja Lindley (2014)
tajalindley.com | @tajalindley
Taja Lindley is a writer and artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She is the founder and Managing Member of Colored Girls Hustle, and a member of Echoing Ida and Harriet's Apothecary. Lindley considers herself a healer and an activist, creating socially engaged work that reflects and transforms audiences, shifts culture and moves people to action. She uses movement, text, installation, props, ritual, burlesque, and multi-media to create performances that are concerned with freedom, healing and pleasure. She is currently developing a body of work recycling and repurposing discarded materials. Her artwork has been featured at the Movement Research at Judson Church series, Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX), the Gallatin Arts Festival at New York University, WOW Café Theater, La Mama Theater, in living rooms, classrooms, conferences and public spaces. In 2014 she was a Create Change Fellow with the Laundromat Project and a participant in EMERGENYC, an artist activist program of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at New York University. In 2015 she was a Fall space grantee at BAX. Her writing has appeared in Rewire, EBONY, Feministe and Salon.
Zoe Lukov (2009)
Zoe is an independent curator and performer born and raised in New York City. She currently works as Director of Exhibitions at Faena Art in Miami. Previously, she worked Inernational Liaison for the Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de Cartagena de Indias, Project Manager at Jeffrey Deitch, Inc. and Curatorial Coordinator the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (LA MoCA). She completed a 2010 Fulbright fellowship in Colombia where she explored the changes and continuities in both traditional and contemporary performance nationally working towards a re-imagining of cultural and political cartography. Zoe was honored to receive a 2009 EMERGENYC fellowship which allowed her to become completely imbedded in the Hemispheric family, from her beginnings as an intern to her eventual turn as Program Coordinator of the Hemispheric Institute's Encuentros. As a dancer, Zoe has worked with Venezuelan choreographer Mariangela Lopez in her company Accidental Movement. Zoe's curatorial projects focus on supporting the creation and dissemination of art that is both politically and socially relevant. Besides her work at the LA MoCA, she has organized various exhibitions in New York City at Skylight Projects gallery in Chelsea, the Abrazo Interno Gallery at the Clemente Soto Vélez Center, Keyes Art Projects and Gallery Bar.
Benjamin Lundberg Torres Sanchez (2012)
@benjofaman | jointhebenjam.org | vimeo.com/thebenjam
Benjamin Lundberg Torres Sanchez is a Colombian performance artist, visual artist, and educator. He creates collaborative collisions between public and performer, inviting immersion and participation by creating spaces that script the way audiences engage. His recent work activates his body and archives as unmoored travelers: passing through sites of the national, medical, theological, and familial — leaving remnants in their wake. Lundberg Torres Sanchez’s work has appeared in spaces including the PHI Centre (Montreal), SP Escola de Teatro (Sao Paulo), Zona 30 (Lima), El Bunker (La Paz), Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival, Queens Museum, Panoply Performance Laboratory (Brooklyn), Silent Barn (Brooklyn), Fitness Center for Arts and Tactics (Brooklyn), Bowery Poetry Club (Manhattan), Teatro Circulo (Manhattan), La MaMa E.T.C. (Manhattan), the Morgan Library & Museum (Manhattan), Jersey City Art & Studio Tour, JC Fridays (Jersey City), The Mills Gallery (Boston), Villa Victoria Center for the Arts (Boston), IMAGO Gallery (Warren, RI), Providence International Arts Festival, PVDFest (Providence), AS220 (Providence), AURORA (Providence), and the Pigeon Hole Gallery (Providence). He is a resident artist at AS220 in Providence, and is a member of the 2012 EMERGENYC cohort at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics. Lundberg Torres Sanchez is the recipient of NEA funding through AS220’s 2017 Community Live Arts Residency and is RISCA’s 2017 Merit Fellow in New Genres.
Sara Lyons (2012)
www.sara-lyons.com
Sara Lyons makes theatre/does feminism. Primarily a director with periodic tendencies toward performance, writing, and teaching, she seeks to create work that builds bridges between the personal and the political, the body and the state, the interpersonal and the societal. Her work as a director has been presented at Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Culture Project, Primary Stages, Cherry Lane, EstroGenius, Planet Connections Theatre Festivity, and more. She has performed original work at P.S. 122, LaMaMa, and The Mobius Space (Boston), and her work as an educator has taken her to students of all ages in Mexico, South Africa, Wisconsin, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. She holds a BA in Theatre and Gender & Women's Studies from the University of Wisconsin- Madison and is a proud, grateful member of the 2012 EMERGENYC Cohort.
Ashley Marinaccio (2008)
ashley-marinaccio.com
Ashley is an activist and artist dedicated to creating theatre that challenges the status quo. She has numerous New York, Regional and National Tour directing, playwriting and performing credits. In addition to Girl Be Heard (formerly Project Girl Performance Collective), Ashley is a founder of Co-Op Theatre East (www.cooptheatreeast.org), alumna of Hemispheric Institute's EMERGENYC Fellowship, American Theatre Wing's Springboard NYC and proud member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab. Most recently, Ashley gave a TED Talk at Columbia University's Teacher's College. Visit www.ashley-marinaccio.com for more information.
Shelah Marie (2011)
shelahmarie.com
Shelah is a performer, educator and activist from Hollywood, Florida. Shelah studied theater and performance at Florida State University where she received dual BA degrees in Theater and Mass Media Studies. She recently graduated from the Performance Studies program at Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. She loves homemade popcorn, documentaries and Facebook. Currently, Shelah is in Brooklyn teaching, performing and trying to put one foot in front of the other. Visit her website for more info.
Zavé Martohardjono (2011)
zavemartohardjono.com
Zavé works across mediums as a performance artist, video artist, documentary filmmaker, writer and curator. He is currently building on a performance and video series, “autogeography,” that employs interactive oral storytelling, self-portraiture and semi-mythical characters to remix and retell History, making space for liminal identities, ancestry and dreams. Zavé’s work has shown in film festivals, galleries and on stages in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Berlin, London, Zurich, Jakarta, Canada and the Netherlands. He currently works in media at the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice.
Jonathan McCrory (2010)
Harlem-based Jonathan McCrory is an Obie Award Winning artist & Audelco Nominated, Harlem-based artist who has served as Director of Theatre Arts Program at Dr. Barbara Ann Teer's National Black Theatre since 2012. He has directed numerous productions, including Dead and Breathing, HandsUp, Hope Speaks, Blacken the Bubble, Asking for More, Last Laugh, and Enter Your Sleep. In 2013, he as awarded the Emerging Producer Award by the National Black Theatre Festival in Winston Salem, North Carolina, and the Torch Bearer Award by theatrical legend Woodie King Jr. He is a founding member of the collaborative producing organization Harlem9, Next Generational Network, and The Movement Theatre Company. McCrory sits on the National Advisory Committee for Howlround.com, was a member of the original cohort for ArtEquity, and is a proud EMERGENYC alumnus. A Washington DC native, McCrory attended Duke Ellington School of the Arts and New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. To learn more, please visit jonathanmccrory.com.
Lily Mengesha (2011)
Lily is a classroom educator and performance artist. Since joining the Emerge community in the spring of 2011, she has collaborated with Katrina De Wees in Liz Andrew's 4-year project Letter to Obama, and performed in playwright Shelah Marie's play, Ordinary Affects. Currently, she is working on a physical transformation performance surrounding the legacy of mixed raced identity in the political history of the United States. In the fall of 2012, she will begin a PhD program in the Department of Performance Studies at Brown University.
Julián Mesri (2010)
julianmesri.com
Julián J. Mesri is a New York based Argentinean-American director, writer and sound designer. He graduated Williams College with a B.A. in Philosophy having studied under Mark C. Taylor and was privileged to work with theatre figures like Tina Shepard and Carson Kreitzer. He was part of a unique exchange program with the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, and in 2010 he was part of the Hemispheric Institute's EMERGENYC program. He was recently named a 2010-2011 Van Lier Fellow at Repertorio Español where he recently directed the NYC premiere of Rafael Spregelburd's "La Estupidez." He also directed and produced his play “The King in Exile” at The Tank Theater, where he is a current artistic resident. His own work and design has also been shown at Dixon Place, New York Theatre Workshop, FringeNYC, PERFORMA ’10 and the LES Festival. He is a company member and sound designer with International WOW: “Reconstruction” (Ohio Theater) and “Auto Da Fe” (Baruch Center).
Yael Miriam (2008)
yaelmiriam.com
Yael Miriam recently received Israeli citizenship and calls Tel Aviv her home. She is the Director of Outreach for an organization running volunteer, teaching, photography and design programs for international young adults. When not helping others develop creative projects in the middle-east she is developing her own photography and poetry shown seaside.
Azure D. Osborne-Lee (2014)
azureosbornelee.com
Azure D. Osborne-Lee is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist and theatre maker. He currently serves as Grants Associate at Brooklyn Arts Council and Producing Consultant at The Billie Holiday Theatre. Azure recently published an article on HowlRound on queerness and theatrical canon. Azure's writing was presented as part of The Fire This Time Festival and National Black Theatre's Keep Soul Alive Mondays. In the summer of 2015, he will receive a reading at 2econd Stage Theatre. Azure was recently a member of Rising Circle Theater Collective‘s 2014 INKtank, and has also been selected as a finalist for National Black Theatre's I AM SOUL residency and Soho Rep's Writer/Director Lab, as well as a semifinalist for Ars Nova's Play Group and New York Theatre Workshop's Emerging Artist Fellowship. Learn more at azureosbornelee.com
José Pérez IV (2009)
josepereziv.com
José is a fight choreographer, actor combatant, teaching artist, and theatre maker specializing in site-specific work. He creates original works of theatre that focus on unconventional theatre spaces, audience participation, and an innovative use of stage combat. For example, recent work includes “The Ride-Along” which put three audience members at a time in the back seat of a moving car, experiencing a night-in-the-life of two eccentric bounty hunters (featuring samurai duels, windshield wipers as weapons, and a person in the trunk). As a teacher, José specializes in Stage Combat, Creating Original Work, and the Athletic Actor. He has taught at the University of Pittsburgh, NYU Summer High, Downtown Art NYC, and University of Central Florida. His company, Fight Theatre, strives to make theatre that is accessible, engaging, innovative, and just a really good time for everyone. Favorite projects include: audience-of-one noir mystery on the streets of Greenwich village featuring audience participatory fights; a fake audio tour of the Met Museum of Art NYC; an MP3 action show in Manhattan’s Upper West Side; a show in a shower; and an alien invasion jogging project. He is author of “Fight Theatre: Experiments in Site-Specific Fights and Audience Combatants” in The Fight Master, bi-annual publication of the Society of American Fight Directors, Spring 2015 issue. José has also participated in the workshops “Stage Combat: Telekinetic Powers Fighting” and “Creating Site-Specific Theatre” at the 2015 Southeastern Theatre Conference (SETC), Chattanooga, TN. He holds a BFA in Drama from New York University and will receive his MFA in Performance Pedagogy from the University of Pittsburgh, anticipated 2017.
Jesse Phillips-Fein (2012)
Polina Porras Sibolovoba (2012)
polinaporras.com | Twitter @Polina_Porras | FB @Polina.P.Sibolovoba | Instagram @polinapsibolovoba
Polina Porras Sivolobova is a Russian-Mexican multidisciplinary artist. Her artwork includes drawing, artist books, video, photography and performance. In 2015, sponsored by the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs Polina traveled to the UK, Russia and Kuwait to exhibit her artwork. In 2014, she created two major works: Viva la Vida and Santa Agua-Modificada. These performances explored Mexican iconography, rites of passage, indigenous and catholic syncretism, gender iconography, faith and nature. In 2013 Polina performed fifteen original works including One and Not the Same Skin, a twenty-four hour long performance, exploring the passing of time and personal transformation using clothing as a metaphor. In 2010 Polina directed and produced her first documentary Mi Abuela, Моя Бабушка (My Grandmother, My Grandmother) about her bicultural grandmothers. In 2009, El Museo del Barrio commissioned her to create The Three Taino Kings Puppets for their annual Three Kings Parade. Polina’s deep interest in education and relational aesthetics has taken her to explore public interventions as a pedagogical tool such as in “A Mad-Proper Tea Party,” ¿Dónde están Piecitos Azul? and Queens of Love. Her artwork has been supported by the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, El Museo del Barrio, The Smithsonian Institute, The Queens Museum of Art, Grace Exhibition Space and Glasshouse in New York City and the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Oaxaca in Mexico. She received a Master in Fine Arts and Art and Design Education from Pratt Institute, New York.
Jeca Rodríguez-Colón (2013)
www.jecarodriguezcolon.com
Jeca Rodríguez Colón is a Puerto Rican multi-disciplinary artist philosopher with a dance and choreography background. Rodríguez Colón began her contemporary dance training with choreographers Petra Bravo and Viveca Vázquez at the University of Puerto Rico. In 2002, she moved to New York City where she completed her B.A. at Hunter College with a double major in Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS), and Dance. She was the recipient of Hunter College 2005 Choreography Departmental Award. In 2014 she obtained her MFA in Creative Practices from Transart Institute with Plymouth University. She is currently a PhD candidate at IDSVA (Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts).Her multi-disciplinary artistic practice ranges from dance and performance arts to video art and object manipulation. Rodríguez Colón's work is connected to diverse aspects of the maternal kinesthetic language and the politics that surround it. She is an alumni of the EmergeNYC 2013 cohort of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, and is a former member of the EmergeLab at Brooklyn Arts Exchange. Her latest work: Sneak into My Maternal Chaos and Desde Adentro, which are part of the Alternative Maternals group exhibit, were presented in 2014 in Berlin, Germany, and in 2015 in London, UK. Rodríguez Colón is also an emerging scholar whose research focuses on the maternal aesthetics, politics, media representation and performance in the Americas..
Anthony Rosado (2015)
www.anthonywashrosado.com
As an AfroBoricua multidisciplinary artist and educator I am here to ensure resources for marginalized artists, platforms for inter-community conflict resolution, and be an example of a strong Revolutionary Queer man of Taino and African descent for youth who need one. Born in Bushwick and bred between here, East New York, Brownsville, and Jamaica-Queens I am Anthony Rosado, a creator and curator committed to producing events for the sake of community, city, state, country, and earth wide conversations that aim to organize and mobilize against the many faces of neocolonialism.
Sriya Sarkar (2015)
sriyasarkar.com
Sriya Sarkar is a digital media producer, comedian, and filmmaker working at the intersection of digital media, comedy, and activism. She has worked with artist Maya Lin for the What Is Missing? Foundation as well as the feminist sleeper cell of riotously funny reproductive rights advocates at Lady Parts Justice. She is the producer of Speakout Laughout, a comedic storytelling show about abortion, as well as lolvote, a comedy variety show and accompanying Twitterbot encouraging youth voter turnout. She has performed at numerous shows in a variety of bar basements and stages of all sizes. She most recently was the deputy digital content director in North Carolina for the Hillary Clinton campaign. Currently, she's the Digital Content Producer for Priorities USA. You can find what she's getting jiggy with at any given moment at sriyasarkar.com.
Maria Schirmer (2011)
Maria Schirmer is an interdisciplinary theatre artist and arts educator who completed her Master’s at New York University where she researched the intersection of performance and politics and how art can be used as a tool for social justice. While at NYU, she was awarded a grant from the Center for Multicultural Education and Programs to explore Ableism as related to Multiple Sclerosis in a multi-media theatre piece, as well as a Gallatin Global Human Rights Fellowship, which culminated in an eight-week internship with the Jana Sanskriti Center for Theatre of the Oppressed in Kolkata, India. She also holds a BA in Theatre with a performance concentration from Marymount Manhattan Collage. For nine years she was involved with the politically conscious theatre company Stone Soup, performing in seven shows, co-authoring two and managing educational programming. She is an alumnus of the EMERGENYC arts activism training at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics and was a founding member of the EmergeLAB@BAX a partnership between the Hemispheric Institute, Brooklyn Arts Exchange and EMERGENYC alumni, culminating in a showcase of original performances. Maria is an Assistant Curator at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics as well as a theater and creative writing teaching artist serving New York City Public schools. She is a member of the Literary Wing at the Lark Play Development Center and was a 2016 Fellow-in-Residence with the Women’s International Study Center in Santa Fe New Mexico. She can currently be seen in the movement instillation ON DISPLAY with Heidi Latsky Dance, which has been performed at Lincoln Center, the High Line and the United Nations as part of their International Day of Persons with Disabilities.
Ariel Speedwagon (2010)
arielspeedwagon.com
Ariel Speedwagon’s work has been seen extensively on Broadway, Lafayette, Fulton, Chrystie, Avenue A, Leonard, and many other fine streets and avenues throughout New York City. Trained as a modern dancer, Ariel’s inherently interdisciplinary work has taken many forms — interactive sculpture, modern dance and dance theater, drag performance and burlesque, collective mapmaking, clowning, and video art. Most interested in the intersections of storytelling, participatory environments, magic, and democratizing knowledge, Ariel has tap danced about limericks, lectured about unicorns, made slapstick about apartheid, and built telephones that tell secrets. For video and upcoming events: www.arielspeedwagon.com (photo: Jeep Wheat)
Parker Allen Stanley
@ParkerAllenStanley
Parker Allen Stanley is the embodiment of social media and the product of seeing reality television as a fine art. On media as @ParkerAllenStanley, there’s always a line between what’s real and what’s the art of reality in the work constantly being made. Having studied devised theatre in the International Performance Ensemble at Pace University, this Class of 2017 graduate now performs original work all around the world and sometimes even in the comfort of your home… that is if you’ve seen Parker on your screen. Obsessed with fame, horror, and deconstructing privilege, in or out of drag, Parker is a queer performance artist creating abstracted autobiographical musical pieces completely delusional about their own stardom.
Carolina Victoria Tapias Guzmán (2011)
Carolina is a theatre teaching artist and cultural worker whose practice of theater and performance focuses on collective artistic creation that links the personal with its context. She proposes an exploration of the body and its personal and historical memory. Play and dialogue are starting points for building engaged communities. Using an eclectic mix of techniques and methodologies from the visual, literary, and theatrical arts, Victoria designs and facilitates processes of collective creation with diverse communities. Victoria holds a Fine Arts degree from the National University of Colombia, and an MA in Applied Theatre and Performance from Goldsmiths College, University of London. She has led educational programs at the Cartoon National School, the National Museum and the Children and Development Corporation in Colombia. In NYC, Victoria has continued her learning and practice with artistic organizations like Monarch Theatre, The Cross Border Project, and The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, also with NGOs such as Alvin Ailey Educational Programs, FalconWorks Artist Group, ArteRed and LitWorld. Currently, Victoria is a collaborator of Madalenas Teatro das Oprimidas, an initiative that has given life to female theatre groups that explore women's oppressions and promote gender equality in countries like Brazil, Argentina, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, Germany, Austria and Portugal.
Kirya Traber (2012)
facebook.com/kiryatraber | twitter.com/kiryatraber | kiryayvonne.wordpress.com
Kirya Traber is an actress, playwright, and cultural worker. She is currently an Artist in Residence at Lincoln Center Education, and is on faculty at the School of Drama at the New School. Kirya received her MFA in Acting from the School of Drama, is the recipient of the California Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, Robert Redford's Sundance foundation award for Activism in the Arts, an Astrea Lesbian Writers Fund award for Poetry, and is a former judge for the LAMBDA Literary Awards in LGBT Drama. Kirya is an alumnus of the 2010 VONA/Voices retreat for writers of color, the 2012 EmergeNYC intensive at the Hemispheric Institute, was a 2014 Space Grantee at Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and is an alumnus of Urban Bush Women's Summer Leadership Institute. Kirya writes and performs for the stage, and facilitates collaborative art making in local communities, and within the juvenile justice system. More at kiryatraber.com
[photo credit Arianne Benford]
Édgar Javier Ulloa Luján (2015)
mijuaritos.wordpress.com
Édgar J. Ulloa Luján is a performance artist and poet from Ciudad Juárez, México. He founded a pioneer multimedia poetry blog Mi Juaritos when his hometown was the most dangerous city of the world. His performances negotiate border politics, cultural memory, trauma, immigration, and violence in addition to instigating audience and public participation Ulloa received his BA in Literature at UTEP and his MFA in Creative Writing at New York University. He is pursuing a Ph.D. in Spanish Literature at Georgetown University. He has performed in PEN World Voices Festival–PEN America and México Now Festival in NYC and The Poetry Festival in México City. He participated in the 31st Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts in Slovenia and SALTS in Switzerland at Work Off Paper exhibit, an art exhibition about how text function. Ulloa’s work was included by CONACULTA in the first national anthology of visual poetry in México. He was the 2016 Emerge-Surface-Be Poetry Fellow from the Poetry Project in NYC. He has participated virtually with Colombia and Spain reading poems online for audiences. Ulloa’s work was included by CONACULTA in the first national anthology of visual poetry in México Ulloa is currently the 2016 Emerge-Surface-Be Poetry Fellow from the Poetry Project in NYC.
Amelia Uzátegui Bonilla (2009)
ameliauzategui.com
Born in Lima, Peru, and raised as a young immigrant in Los Angeles, Amelia grew up bi-lingual and bi-cultural. She is now a professional dancer, director, and educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2007, she graduated from The Juilliard School's Dance Department (NY) with Scholastic Distinction and received the Inter-Arts Award for leading interdisciplinary outreach projects. In NYC, she worked as a free-lance dancer working with Adam Barruch and the Metropolitan Opera Ballet and taught in the NYC public schools with Mark DeGarmo/Dynamic Forms. She interpreted the works of Tino Sehgal and Marina Abramović in renowned NYC museums such as the Guggenheim and the MoMA. In Europe, she danced with Sodaberg in Germany and Croatia. In 2009, she had the pleasure of reclaiming her Peruvian-American artist-identity at the EMERGE NYC fellowship program, leading her to move to Peru in 2010, delving into her cultural heritage and collaborating with Peruvian artists in Lima and Cusco from the ballet, contemporary, folklore, urban dance, theater, visual arts and performance art scenes as well as producing her own artistic ventures. She taught dance passionately in private and public universities and studios, as well as volunteering her time with numerous community art projects in under-served neighborhoods. She co-founded Rio Danza Comunitaria in 2013, a collective focused on deepening environmental conscientiousness through community dance workshops and performance rituals in Lima and Cusco. In the fall of 2014, she moved to San Francisco and is currently a Tamalpa Institute training program student, co-founded by Daria and Anna Halprin.
Mette Loulou von Kohl (2013)
metteloulouvonkohl.com
Mette Loulou is a performer and a wanderer. Currently based in New York City, Mette Loulou is a mixed-race queer femme, born to a Lebanese/Palestinian mother and Danish father. She has lived in New York, Romania, Morocco and Denmark. Mette Loulou is fascinated by the intersection between her personal identities as a jumping off point to reveal, dismantle and rebuild realities and dreams. She grapples with her past to complicate and better understand her present. Mette Loulou weaves movement, words, and her love for the unexpected into the exploration of her embodied histories. She uses performance as her first step to understanding and surviving generational trauma and as a key tool in her fight to end the occupation of Palestine.
Sacred Walker (2012)
Sacred is the Founder and Executive Director of Kuumba Health LLC. Through her company, Kuumba Health LLC, Sacred developed “Soulcare” a model to train care takers, & prepare practitioners to use therapeutic drama alongside other holistic methods, grounded in art and ritual, to provide positive impacts on ailments rooted in internalized oppression. Particularly, professional development training participants create original self-revelatory creative pieces, with specializations in serving families of African descent, women, young rising professionals, seekers, survivors, and LGBT communities. Sacred earned her Masters of Divinity (MDiv) from Union Theological Seminary's, with a specialization in Holistic Psychology, while training as a Drama Therapist. She has written, directed, performed, and co-produced several plays, theater movement pieces, choreo-poems, and stage plays for over 15 years. Sacred has over 10 years’ experience, on and off stage, advocating for culturally affirming conditions that promote optimal health, sacred sensuality, and/ ancestral healing. Learn more here: http://www.khhp.org/founders-corner
Kiyan Williams (2014)
kiyanwilliams.com
Kiyan Williams (gender pronouns they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores Black queer subjectivity. They use their body, installation, storytelling, video, sound, and movement to investigate culture, history, and identity. In the belly of the stories they tell are rituals of remembering, resistance, and healing. Currently Williams' is developing a multimedia project Reflections / Refracrions in BlaQ at Stanford University.
Emerge Collective
Following the 2011 EMERGENYC cycle the alumni decided to continue their successful and inspiring collaboration by founding the Emerge Collective. The Emerge Collective was a non-hierarchical performance collective of interdisciplinary artists and activists from the 2011 EMERGENYC program at the Hemispheric Institute. From 2011 to 2012, we met regularly in 3-month cycles to develop existing works and create new ones with a work in progress showing at the end of each cycle. Members included: Noelle Ghoussaini, Maria Schirmer, Katrina De Wees, Zavé Martohardjono, M. Liz Andrews, Shelah Marie, Lily Mengesha and Stephen Graf.
EmergeLAB@BAX (2014)
Hemi and BAX are delighted to join forces in 2014 for The EmergeLAB@BAX, which is comprised of alumni of the EmergeNYC program at the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics and takes place at BAX. The goal of the LAB is to provide a non-curated, non-hierarchical space for artistic development, where the artists determine their own frameworks and processes for experimentation and growth. Building upon both the skills and community generated in EMERGENYC, the LAB will deepen the conversation on the relationship between art & activism while forming new modes of practice in a format that balances the collective and the individual. Over 10 months, artists will meet bi-monthly to workshop their pieces together, and once a month in an open studio format for shared rehearsal time. The LAB will culminate a shared showcase performance in October 2014. The artists in the inaugural cohort are: Sabina Ibarrola (2013), Jeca Rodríguez Colón (2013), Mette LouLou von Kohl (2013), Guy Yedwab (2013), Dominic Bradley (2012), Samantha Galarza (2012), Benjamin Lundberg (2012), Jesse Phillips-Fein (2012), Katrina De Wees (2011), Mary Notari (2011), Maria Schirmer (2011), Mieke D (2009), and Megan Hanley (2009).