Past Collaborators
Amy Lynne Barr (Performer)
Amy Lynne Barr is an independent dance performer/artist/choreographer with an MFA in choreography from The University of Iowa. Amy is an adjunct professor at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, IA and Richard Stockton College, in Galloway, NJ. She has worked with Martha Clarke, Jennifer Kayle, Doug Neilsen, Randy James, and Charlotte Adams to name a few. Her work has been shown in Illinois, Indiana, Arizona, Pennsylvania, New York, New Hampshire, Iowa, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. She currently lives in Philadelphia, PA, dances with Tori Lawrence & Co., Alie and the Brigade, teaches contemporary dance, and makes her own work.
John Raffles Durbin (Performer)
John Raffles Durbin hails from Katy, Texas. He attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, as well as graduating from the University of Arizona with degrees in both Dance and Biomedical Engineering. Additionally, Raffles was named a National Merit Scholar in 2011 and an Amgen Scholar in 2013. Pursuing his dance career in New York City, Raffles has worked with Neville Dance Theatre, TAKE Dance, and ChrisMastersDance, among others. Dance is one of the few activities that can pry him away from esoteric activities like science fiction, calculating thrust-to-weight ratios, and juggling mana production with creature summoning.
Kayla Farrish (Performer)
Kayla Farrish was born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina into a dance loving family. Local dance studios and school programs inspired her to begin choreographing early in her training, allowing her to find a creative voice at a young age. She graduated from The University of Arizona in 2013 summa cum laude. She was also granted the Gertrude Shurr Award for excellence in modern dance. During her time there, she had the opportunity to perform works by Martha Graham, Larry Keigwin, Amy Ernst, Douglas Nielsen, Sam Watson, and others. Since moving to New York, she has had the opportunity to work with wonderful choreographers including Bryn Cohn and Artists, Aszure Barton and Artists, Elena Vazintaris, Lane Gifford of LaneCo Arts, Jessica Taylor of Damagedance, Steve Vaughn of 13 Main Movement, Emily Schoen, Matthew Westerby Dance Company, Gallim Dance, BODYART, Ashley Lindsay, Bare Dance Company, CEMA Dance, Bennyroyce Dance and Artists, Helen Simoneau Danse, and Dante Brown/Warehouse Dance.
Caitlyn Johansen (Performer)
Caitlyn Johansen began her training at the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing Arts, and continued to receive a BFA in Dance from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Over the years, Caitlyn has had the opportunity to perform the work of Andrea Miller, Alex Ketley, Chuck Wilt, Take Ueyama, Paul Taylor, Jerome Robbins, Larry Keigwin, Jessica Lang, Dwight Rhoden, Robert Battle, Nathan Trice, Matthew Rushing and Christopher Vo. She is currently dancing for Ellis Wood and ChrisMastersDance, and holds a Mind Body Dancer 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Certificate.
Ross Katen (Performer)
Ross Katen is originally from Oregon, and has been trained at Westside Dance Academy, The Portland Ballet, Arts & Communication Magnet Academy, The Juilliard School, Nashville Ballet, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, and at the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance. Ross graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2013 with a BFA in Dance. After graduating, Ross joined the Limón Dance Company performing works by Jose Limón, Carla Maxwell, Seán Curran, and Rodrigo Pederneiras. Other credits include work by Alex Ketley, Mark Morris, Donald McKayle, John Magnus, Iain Rowe, Chase Brock, Chihiro Shimizu and Chuck Wilt.
Nico Li (Performer)
Nico Li’s range and adaptability stems from her global exposure as an acclaimed artistic youth performing throughout China, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the U.S., where she eventually earned her BFA from SUNY Purchase in 2009. As a collaborator, she brings her intellect and experience whole-heartedly into the creative process, immersing herself in dance, improvisation and physical theater. Currently Nico is a senior company member of SYREN Modern Dance (2009-), performer and movement collaborator of Chris Masters Dance (2013-), as well as a frequent guest artist of Maurice Fraga’s Ekilibre Dance Co. and Dance China NY, through the NY Chinese Cultural Center. Recent teaching credits include Beijing Dance Academy, University of Utah and Brigham Young University and Grosse Pointe Dance Center in Detroit. Supplemental to her research of the body, Nico is also a certified Gyrotonic trainer and invests in a daily meditation practice. In April 2015, Nico was accompanied by Chris Masters & Sven Britt on a cultural exchange with Meng Jinghui’s famous Beijing Feng Cao Theater. This daily creative and teaching residency culminated in the production of Veiled Threat, a brand new two-and-half hour immersive dance theater work that has since been performed over 80+ times. And she’s in love with lighthouses!
Paul Vickers (Performer)
Paul Vickers began his dance training in the suburbs of Chicago with Forum Jazz Dance Theatre, performing both nationally and internationally. He graduated from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles with a BA in Dance and a minor in Business Administration. In 2012, the American College Dance Festival Association and Dance Magazine presented Paul with the Outstanding Student Performer Award. He has danced for Holly Johnston’s Ledges and Bones Dance Project and Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre. Paul worked intimately with Benjamin Levy and Sidra Bell while dancing with San Francisco’s LEVYdance and currently dances for Mike Esperanza's BARE Dance Company and Gallim Dance.
Kate Vincek (Performer)
Kate Vincek received her BFA in Dance from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan in 2010. Kate has performed extensively throughout her college and professional career in works by Chris Masters, Nicholas Leichter, Sean Curran, John Zullo, Faye Driscoll, Jan Van Dyke, Julie Johnson, Jeff Rebudal, Jessi Patz, Alison Woerner, Sonya Tayeh, and Lauren Adams. Kate’s work has been presented at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and continues to teach, choreograph, and dance in NYC.
cove barton (Performer)
cove barton is a trans movement artist and filmmaker currently based in Brooklyn (Lenapehoking). He graduated magna cum laude from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, WA through the Dance Department’s Advanced Degree Program, and he has worked with artists such as Beth Terwilleger, Cameo Lethem, Netta Yerushalmy, Danielle Agami, and Babette Pendleton, among others. They are currently in process with ChrisMastersDance as a dancer/choreographer, and with Ballez as a performing artist. Barton’s choreographic and film work has been shown at venues like Base: Experimental Arts + Space, Velocity Dance Center, Vashon Center for Dance, MAC Gallery and Studio Current. Barton looks for expansive qualities of connection, and collaborations that are openhearted and fostering change.
Abigail Linnemeyer (Performer)
Abigail Linnemeyer (she/they) is a Brooklyn based performer, choreographer and dance activist. She is physically invested in improvisation, partner work, and athleticism. Her queer identity inspires her research into gender in process and community outreach. She is currently working with ChrisMastersDance, Johnnie Cruise Mercer/TheREDprojectNYC, and m i c c a. In recent years, she has worked on projects with Kayla Farrish, MICHIYAYA Dance, Elizabeth Dishman, Megan Flynn, Mark Dendy, and Grounded Aerial Dance Company. Since Abigail’s relocation to NY in 2021 they have had the opportunity to perform at Dixon place, TADA Theater, House of YES, 92nd St Y, NOoSPHERE Arts, and Lincoln Center among other non-traditional spaces. In addition to Abigail’s creative efforts, she is part of Dance/NYC’s Junior Committee. Abigail is eager to continue to pursue her desire to work in environments that center collaborative values and actively work to uplift queer communities.
Sabrina Canas (Performer)
Sabrina Canas is a first-generation Argentine American artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She holds her BFA in Dance from UArts, where she performed in works by Netta Yerushalmy, Helen Simoneau, Beth Gill, and Sidra Bell, among others. In January 2018, she attended and performed at the International Association for Blacks in Dance Conference in Los Angeles, CA under the direction of Tommie-Waheed Evans and Kim Bears-Bailey; and produced/presented an immersive installation performance under the direction of Niall Jones. Since moving to Brooklyn, Sabrina has presented work at The Craft: Late Night Performances and Brews, and performed at Triskelion Arts; HATCH Performance Series; Uptown Rising Performance Series; and was a featured dancer in jazz musician Tony Glausi's music video, When It All Comes Crashing Down. She is currently a company member of ChrisMastersDance and Kinesis Project in NYC, while continuing to pursue her own work.
Marcus Sarjeant (Performer)
Marcus Sarjeant is a 22-year-old dancer from Southern California where he trained with Westside Dance Project. In 2022, he graduated Summa Cum Laude from SUNY Purchase with a BFA in dance. Marcus has performed the works of choreographers such as Annamari Keskinen, Connie Shiau, Kayla Farrish, and Johannes Wieland. He was a Spotlight Grand Prize winner for Non-Classical dance in 2018. Marcus is excited to continue performing and creating work in New York.
Designers
Oana Botez (Costume Designer)
Ms. Botez is a Princess Grace Recipient, NEA/TCG Career Development Program Recipient and NEA/TCG Round of Global Connections Program. Nominated for The Lucille Lortel Award, The Theatre Bay Area Awards, The Henry Hewes Design Awards, The Barrymore and Drammy Award. Oana walked away recipient of both The Barrymore and Drammy Award.
Her designs have raised critical acclaim in New York’s: BAM Next Wave, Bard SummerScape/Richard B.Fisher Center, Baryshnikov Arts Center, The David H. Koch Theater/Lincoln Center, The Glimmerglass Festival,Soho Rep, LCT3, The Public Theater, 59East59, La MaMa, The Kitchen, PS122, HERE Arts Center, The Joyce Theater, The Ontological-Hysteric Theater, BRIC Arts Media, Big Apple Circus/Lincoln Center and The Classic Stage Company.
Her collaborators in theater, opera, film and dance include: Robert Woodruff, Les Waters, Richard Foreman, Maya Beiser, Richard Schechner, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Janos Szasz, Andrei Serban, Blanka Zizka, Daniel Ezralow, Todd Eckert & Marina Abramović, Denyce Graves, Jeffrey Page, Saheem Ali, Daniel Kramer, Jay Scheib, Brian Kulick, Eric Sean Fogel, Zelda Fichlander, Annie-B Parson &Paul Lazar, Doug Elkins, Ken Rus Schmoll, Michael Sexton, Daniel Alexander Jones, Will Davis, Lee Sunday Evans, Megan Sandberg-Zakian, , Mary Birnbaum, Lileana Blain - Cruz, Awoye Tiempo, Tea Alegic, Jenna Worsham, Geoff Sobelle, Kristin Linklater, Zishan Ugurlu, Rebecca Taichman, Eric Ting, Alec Duffy, Razvan Dinca, Karin Coonrod, Kristin Marting, Evan Ziporyn, Eduardo Machado, Gus Solomon Jr.&Paradigm, Carmen DeLavallade, Jackson Gay, David Levine, Dusan Tynek, Rania Ajami, Gisela Cardenas, Pavol Liska & Kelly Copper, Igor Golyak, Matthew Neenan, Molissa Fenley, Parallel Exit, Pig Iron Company, Play Company, Charles Moulton, Ripe Time, among others.
Ms. Botez is a graduate of Bucharest Art Academy (Romania) and received an MFA in Design from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts. Ms. Botez was a major contributor for the first Romanian theater design catalogue, called Scenografica. She taught costume design at Colgate College, Brooklyn College and MIT. Ms. Botez is currently an Associate Professor Adjunct in the Design Department at David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. She resides in Manhattan, New York.
Maruti Evans (Lighting Designer)
Maruti has received the Drama Desk Award in 2013 for the designs of Tiny Dynamite and Pilo Family Circus, and Drama Desk nominations for: Deliverance, In the Heat of the Night, Slaughterhouse 5, and Blindness.
Real Enemies (BAM), Epiphany (BAM), Else Where (BAM), LEIDERABEND (BAM), Witness Uganda (ART), Big Apple Circus (2015), Big Apple Circus (2016), Cool Hand Luke (59e59), Deliverance (59e59), Café Society Swing (59e59), Alice vs Wonderland (ART), Mouth Wide Open (ART), Much Ado About Nothing (ART and McCarter Theater), Master and Margarita (Summer Scape), An Oresteia (Classic Stage Co), Crowns (Goodman Theater), Ballad of Emmett Till (Penumbra Theater), Owl Answers and the Dutchman (Penumbra Theater), Le Nozze Di Figaro (L.I.O), Ofero (L.I.O), Turn of the Screw (L.I.O), and Sweeny Todd (V.O.C).
Robert Flynt & David Fishel (Photography & Video Art)
Robert Flynt’s work has been widely exhibited in the United States and abroad since 1980. It has been shown in major museums, galleries, and alternative spaces, as well as in collaborative performance and dance projects.
In 1992 he was included in “New Photography 8” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where his work is in the permanent collection, as well as in the Metropolitan Museum, The International Center of Photography (NY), and L.A. County Museum, among many others His notable one-person exhibitions have been at Witkin Gallery, Wessel+O’Connor Gallery and ClampArt in New York, the Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica, the G. Gibson Gallery in Seattle, and the Gomez Gallery in Baltimore. He has been included in over 50 group exhibitions since 1980. He had a solo exhibition at Heartgalerie in Paris in March, 2009, followed by group exhibitions in Berlin, Tel Aviv, and Chicago, among others. In 2012, his work was featured in “Naked Before the Camera” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.
Flynt’s collaborative projects include commissions from Brooklyn Academy of Music with choreographer Bebe Miller in 1989, and the L.A. International Arts Festival with Ishmael Houston-Jones and Dennis Cooper in 1990, and with Yoshiko Chuma on The Yellow Room, Daghdha Dance Company (Ireland) in 2003. Body-Scan, a image/performance project with choreographers Benoit Lachambre and Su-Feh Lee, premiered at Le Quartz in France in March, 2008 and toured internationally in 2009. In March 2009 he collaborated with Pavel Zustiak/Palissimo on Weddings and Beheadings, premiering in New York at the Ailey Center Theater. The pair received a Baryshnikov Arts Center residency in 2010 and premiered their new collaboration, Amidst, there in June, 2011. This continues as Part 2 of Palissimo’s The Painted Bird trilogy, which premiered at the Wexner Center for the Arts in September 2012. His recent collaboration with choreographer Yoshiko Chuma, Love Story, Palestine was presented at La Mama ETC in New York in May of 2012.
Along with numerous visiting artist and residency engagements throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe, Flynt has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Light Work, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, Art Matters, the Peter S. Reed Foundation, and the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy. Most recently he was a resident at Fundacion Valparaiso in Spain.
Flynt’s work has appeared in numerous photo publications, anthologies and artist’s books. His 1996 monograph, Compound Fracture (Twin Palms Publishers) received a Best Books of the Year award from the American Institute of Graphic Arts.
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David Fishel is a filmmaker and video artist based in New York. His film and installation work (including that which he has created in collaboration with ChrisMastersDance and Robert Flynt for 2014’s Exit Strategies), has screened at numerous festivals internationally. His music videos, promos, and shorts are routinely broadcast globally.
Fishel is one of the founding members of Chapman Steamer Arts, an artist-in-residency program that operates out of a 110-year-old firehouse situated in NY's Hudson Valley.
Other Roles
Eva Yaa Asantewaa (Lead Dramaturg)
Eva Yaa Asantewaa (she/her) is a veteran writer, editor, curator and community educator. She won the 2017 Bessie Award for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance.
Since 1976, she has contributed dance criticism and journalism to Dance Magazine, The Village Voice, SoHo Weekly News, Gay City News, The Dance Enthusiast, Time Out New York, her arts blog, InfiniteBody, and other publications and podcasts (Body and Soul; Serious Moonlight).
In 2016, for Danspace Project’s Lost and Found platform, Ms. Yaa Asantewaa created the skeleton architecture, or the future of our worlds, an evening of group improvisation featuring 21 Black women and gender-nonconforming performers, a cast that won a 2017 Bessie for Outstanding Performer. In 2018, Queer|Art named one of its awards in her honor, the Eva Yaa Asantewaa Grant for Queer Women(+) Dance Artists. In 2019, Yaa Asantewaa was a recipient of a BAX Arts & Artists in Progress Award. She is Founding Director of Black Diaspora and founder of Black Curators in Dance and Performance.
From 2018-2021, Ms. Yaa Asantewaa served as Senior Director of Curation as well as Editorial Director at Gibney and now continues some of that work as an independent consultant directing and curating some of the programs she initiated for Gibney--Black Diaspora, Imagining journal, Deeper Lectures, Deeper Duets, and WORD!
She was a member of the inaugural faculty of Montclair State University’s MFA in Dance program. She has also served on the faculty for New England Foundation for the Arts' Regional Dance Development Initiative Dance Lab 2016 for emerging Chicago-area dance artists as well as the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography's inaugural Forward Dialogues Dance Lab for Emerging Choreographers.
Ms. Yaa Asantewaa was a member of the New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Awards committee for three years and has been a consultant or panelist for numerous arts funding or awards organizations including the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
As a WBAI radio broadcaster (1987-89), Ms. Yaa Asantewaa worked with the Women’s Radio Collective and the Gay and Lesbian Independent Broadcasters Collective (OUTLOOKS) and co-hosted the Tuesday Afternoon Arts Magazine with Jennifer Bernet as well as producing her own specials.
Ms. Yaa Asantewaa was born in New York of Barbadian immigrant heritage and makes her home in the East Village/Lenapehoking.
In addition to her work in the arts, Ms. Yaa Asantewaa maintains a private practice in Tarot counseling. From January 2001 to January 2005, Eva published DancingWorld, a monthly email newsletter devoted to Tarot, psychic and spiritual development, and creativity. She is an ordained minister (ULC, Modesto, CA) and legally registered with the City of New York as a marriage officiant with special interest in neo-pagan and secular-humanist ceremony.
While studying at Fordham University--where she received her B.A. in Communications in 1974--Ms. Yaa Asantewaa was introduced to Jungian psychology and the "mind games" techniques created by Robert Masters and Jean Houston. She also studied Community Health Education at Hunter College School of Health Sciences and received the Hunter College President's Award for HIV/AIDS Creative and Scholarly Work, First Prize, 1992.
Through Radical Magick (which she founded in 1992), Ms. Yaa Asantewaa produced and facilitated workshops and special events sponsored by over sixty health and social service, spiritual, feminist, people of color, and LGBTQ+ organizations in the New York metropolitan area. Among these are the New York Open Center’s Womanspirit Journey program, New York Theosophical Society, College of New Rochelle, Healing Works, New York State Conference on Women’s Health, Riverside Church Wellness Center, Women’s Health Education Project, and Women’s Rites Center.
Her poetry appears in The Zenith of Desire: Contemporary Lesbian Poems about Sex (ed., Gerry Gomez Pearlberg, Crown, 1996), Does Your Mama Know? An Anthology of Black Lesbian Coming Out Stories (ed., Lisa C. Moore, RedBone Press, 1997), Queer Dog: Homo Pup Poetry (ed., Gerry Gomez Pearlberg, Cleis, 1997), Isis Rising: The Goddess in the New Aeon (ed., Denise Dumars, 2000), Brooklyn Review, Kuumba, Starfish, WV, Tempus, The Isis Papers, and the Pegasus Dreaming, Star Leaper, and Pedestal Magazine Web sites. She was also published in An Eye for An Eye Makes the Whole World Blind: Poets on 9/11 (Regent Press). She has read her work at numerous venues including the Brooklyn Museum, the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, A Different Light Bookstore, Bowery Poetry Club, and Cornelia Street Cafe.
Jayson P. Smith (Writer)
Jayson P. Smith (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, & curator, currently living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Primarily working within language, sound, and movement, their work is interested in Black performance/interiority, collaboration, & somatic practices.
Jayson has received support from New York Foundation for the Arts (Poetry, 2017), The Poetry Project, Poetry Foundation, Callaloo, and The Conversation Literary Festival. Their writing appears in html.review, West Branch, boundary2, The Poetry Project’s Recluse, Gulf Coast, & The Offing, among others.
Jayson’s performance work has been featured in numerous venues throughout the U.S., such as Guggenheim Museum, MOMAPS1, Loft Literary Center, The Home School, & Ace Hotel NYC.
J founded & curates NOMAD Reading Series in Brooklyn, & elsewhere.
Vidya Ravilochan (Dramaturg)
Vidya Ravilochan is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at The New School for Social Research in New York who specializes in Heidegger, Ancient Greek philosophy, classical American pragmatism, and the practical philosophy of Kant & Hegel. Her dissertation offers a Heideggerian approach to understanding musicality, and her undergraduate thesis (“The Song Itself: The Musical Legality of the Cosmos in Plato’s Timaeus”) explores the indomitable irrationality—the music—behind every rational attempt to order the universe.
Her multifaceted musical background spans the early (especially baroque) music, jazz, musical theatre, and Carnatic (South Indian classical) genres. She has performed operatic roles including Casilda in Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Gondoliers at Indiana University, Cherubino in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro at the Narnia Festival, and Novizia/Conversa in Puccini’s Suor Angelica at the Tuscia Opera Festival. Among her accolades are First Prize in both the classical and musical theatre divisions at the Colorado-Wyoming NATS Competition and Outstanding Soloist at the UNC Greeley Jazz Festival. She holds a Certificate in General Music Studies from the Berklee College of Music, where she studied jazz theory.
Vidya is a recipient of The Onassis Foundation Fellowship in Ancient Greek Studies (2021–4), and has had her work has been published in the Women in Philosophy Annual Journal of Papers, and accepted to the 52nd North Texas Philosophical Association Conference and the 25th Annual Philosophy Conference in Pennsylvania. She will be teaching at Iona University and The New School for Social Research in Fall 2022.