ARTISTS & PERFORMERS ARCHIVE

J. Bouey is a current member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and founder and co-host of The Dance Union Podcast with Melanie Greene. J. performed with Elisa Monte Dance as an apprentice, Christal Brown’s INSPIRIT Dance Company, AntonioBrownDance, Germaul Barnes’ Viwesic Dance, Dante Brown | Warehouse Dance, and Maria Bauman’s MBDance. As a choreographer, J. Bouey has shown their original work at The Chocolate Factory, New York Live Arts, Judson Church, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Gibney Dance, BAAD!, CPR – Center for Performance Research, La Mama Experimental Theatre and South Mountain Center for Performing Arts. J. Bouey received a BFA in Dance from Arizona State University.

Ni’Ja Whitson NY/LA, is a Creative Capital and “Bessie” Award winning, Queer Nonbinary multidisciplinary artist, wound and word worker, who has been referred to as “majestic” by The New York Times and recognized by Brooklyn Magazine as a culture influencer. Whitson engages a critical intersection of a sacred and conceptual transdiciplinarity in Black, Queer, and Trans-embodiedness, architectures, science, and spirit. Whitson is an 18th St. Artist in Residence (Los Angeles), 2020 Center for Performance Research artist in residence, 2018 MAP Fund awardee, featured choreographer of the 2018 CCA Biennial, 2018-2020 Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center Fellow Candidate, and invited presenter at the 2019 Tanzkongress international festival. Other recent awards include a 2018 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize Shortlist (The Unarrival Experiments), Jerome/Camargo Fellowship, Dance in Process (DiP) Residency, Hedgebrook Fellowship, LMCC Process Space Residency, Bogliasco Fellowship. Recent commissions include EMPAC, Danspace Project, BAM Next Wave Art, American Realness Festival, California African American Museum. They are an Assistant Professor of experimental choreography at UC Riverside and Artistic Director of The NWA Project. www.nijawhitson.com

Dante Brown (choreographer, performer) began his dance training at Wesleyan University, which led him to The Ohio State University to receive his MFA in Choreography. As a performer, Dante has worked with artists such as Esther Baker-Tarpaga, Christal Brown, David Dorfman, Kendra Portier, Nicole Stanton, Noa Zuk and at the Dance Exchange. Since its founding in 2010, Warehouse Dance has shown work at Bates Dance Festival (ME), Boston Contemporary Dance Festival and Dance Complex (MA), Columbus Dance Theater and Wexner Center for the Arts (OH), Dance Gallery Festival (NY & TX), Dixon Place, GAP Green Building, LaMaMa Moves Festival, Movement Research at Judson Church, Triskelion Arts and The Wild Project (all NYC), Sam Houston State University (TX), and YourMove Dance Festival (NJ). Dante has had the opportunity to teach a range of classes at Broadway Dance Center, Dancewave, East Village Dance Project, and Gibney Dance Center (all in NYC), and The Ohio State University. He has held collegiate positions as an Adjunct Professor at CUNY Westchester Community College, Lecturer in Dance at Bates College, and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Wesleyan University. Most recently, he was awarded the Schwartz Center for Performing Artists Fellowship at Emory University. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Amherst College.

Angelina Benitez (choreographer, performer) recently graduated from Salem State University with a B.A in Modern/Contemporary Dance and Spanish World, Language, and Culture. At Salem State University she studied under Meghan McLyman, Betsy Miller, and James Morrow. Her performance experience includes ensemble work opening for BoSoma’s The Dinner Table: Vignettes of Betrayal, performing in Salem State University’s Dance Ensemble’s concerts, and Repertory Dance Theatre’s semi-annual concerts. When she isn’t performing or choreographing, she enjoys teaching. She has taught summer dance camps at a local YMCA, assisted at Enchanted Dance Academy, and taught as a guest artist at InSync Center of the Arts. Though she enjoys these aspects of dance she most looks forward to pursuing a career in Dance Administration.

The Boston ReneGAYdes are the official performance team for Gays for Patsy. Our goal is to promote the visibility of the GLBTQ community through dance performance. We enjoy performing at dance festivals, fundraisers, and community events.

Brother(hood) Dance! is an interdisciplinary duo that seeks to inform its audiences on the socio-political and environmental injustices from a global perspective, bringing clarity to the same-gender-loving African-American experience in the 21st century. Brother(hood) Dance! was formed in April 2014 as a duo that research, create and perform dances of freedom by Orlando Zane Hunter, Jr. and Ricarrdo Valentine. We have performed our works at FiveMyles, Center for Performance Research, B.A.A.D! (Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance), VCU-The Grace Street Theater, DraftWork at St. Marks Church, JACK, Movement Research at Judson Church, Colby College, Denmark Arts Center and other venues.

LaWhore Vagistan ( www.instagram.com/lawhorevagistan ) is everyone’s favorite desi drag auntie. She has performed at the Austin International Drag Festival, Queens Musuem, Jack Theater, and Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance. Her films have been screened at the Mississauga South Asian Film Festival, Austin OUTsider multi-arts festival, Hyderabad Queer Film Festival, and San Francisco 3rd i film festival. LaWhore is the alter ego of Kareem Khubchandani, Assistant Professor of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at Tufts University.

Toby MacNutt is a queer disabled interdisciplinary artist, author, and teacher living in Burlington, VT (USA). Their artforms and media include ground and aerial dance, textiles, bodypaint, and writing speculative fiction and poetry, and the occasional essay. They teach various of these forms, as well as teaching on gender, sexuality, and disability topics. Toby has danced with Murmurations Dance immersive site work When Women Were Birds, for Lida Winfield and Tiffany Rhynard, and with Heidi Latsky's GIMP, among others, and studied with AXIS and Candoco companies. Their independent work One, Two showed locally and internationally in 2014-15. Enter the Void premiered in 2018: an immersive performance with poetry guidebook, in the deep darkness of space.

Lilly Rose Valore was born in Boston, Massachusetts and
started her formal dance training at the age of 8. She studied with
The Boston Ballet School and was featured in their Nutcracker and spring showcase. Lilly furthered
her training at The Boston Arts Academy, Boston's only Public performing arts high school, with Billy Mclaughlin, Tatiana Obeso, Sheryl Pollard Thomas, Christopher Ramsey, and Cristobal Marquez. She performed her choreography solo at many different events such as Green Street Studio's Company performance night and the Arts Academy graduation.

J Michael Winward is an independent dance artist based in Boston. With influences in American-style ballroom, ballet, contemporary and somatic dance practices, his work places a strong focus on building connection: connection to one’s body, one’s self, one’s audience, connection between dance partners, connection within and across communities. In addition to producing Dancing Queerly, Michael is involved with several exciting dance projects. Dancing with Peter DiMuro/Public Displays of Motion (PDM), he works to advance the PDM mission of cultivating dance/arts literacy, advocacy and engagement. Through the Steps in Time program, Michael brings social ballroom dancing to senior, elder, and memory care communities throughout Greater Boston. Learn more about Michael at www.jmichaelwinward.com.

Members of the House of Escada who are currently on HBOMax's 'Legendary" Voguing for Boston Digital Pride. #BlackLivesMatter

Maria Bauman-Morales is a “Bessie” award winning multi-disciplinary artist and community organizer based in Brooklyn, NY. She is 2020 Columbia College Dance Center Practitioner-in-Residence, 2019 Gibney Dance in Process residency award winner, 2018-20 UBW Choreographic Center Fellow, 2017-19 Artist in Residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange and was the 2017 Community Action Artist in Residence at Gibney. In 2009 she founded MBDance which recently premiered (re)Source to sold-out audiences, co-commissioned by the Chocolate Factory Theater and BAAD!. She creates bold and intimate artworks for MBDance, centering non-linear stories, bodies and musings of queer people of color.

She is an active member of our dance community outside of choreography and performance. Bauman-Morales is a Core Trainer with The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, helping arts organizations and university dance programs understand and undo racism. In 2014, she co-founded a grassroots organization, Artists Co-creating Real Equity, which won the 2018 BAX Arts and Artists in Progress Award for working to undo racism in our daily lives. She is also a mentor to early career artists through Queer Art Mentorship.

Jo Troll (teacher, choreographer, performer, consultant)is a trans choreographer and art-maker with a Graduate Diploma in Dance Studies from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. They have recently presented work as part of a residency at OnStage Dance Company and the Dance Complex's aMaSSiT mentoring and choreography lab. Over the years, they have created work for amateur queer dance performance and as one of the first DUCKiE upstarts at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in London. Originally an Irish dancer, Jo explores the intersection between different forms of percussive and contemporary dance. They engage with challenging questions of tradition and identity in dance spaces in order to find an unapologetically queer, honest, and accessible means to present their work.

April Sellers (teacher, choreographer, performer) is an independent choreographer, dancer and performance curator who for 18 years has created over 60 original works. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of the April Sellers Dance Collective which is renowned for its complex expressions of gender and identity in highly crafted performances. Her most recent and transgressive performance, Animal Corridor prompted the award “Artist of the Year” by City Pages in 2017. Other awards include the Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grants (2015, 2002), the McKnight Fellowship for Choreography (2011) and the Sage Award (2006). Over the past decade, Sellers has been invited to participate in a number of residencies like the Djerassi Resident Artists Program (Santa Cruz, California) and the Maggie Allessee National Center for Choreography (Tallahassee, Florida). Sellers holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

TruDee began her dance training at the age of five in ballet, tap and aerobics under the tutelage of Miss Belinda in the local parks and recreation department. Her love of theater emerged later on through the coveted role of the Virgin Mary in the church nativity play. In her senior high school drama class she wrote and performed in her first one woman play as the prima ballerina Margot Fonteyn. TruDee, an elusive genre straddler, has gone on to share her dance stories at Joe’s Pub, American Dance Festival, Chicago Contemporary Circus Festival, and the beloved Stonewall Inn. SILO and Marble House Project and Djerassi Artist Residency have hosted her musings and creative exercises. TruDee would like you to also note that she is an award winning lip sync artist and ribboned competitive speed walking champion. Come say hello @yourstrudee

Peter DiMuro/Public Displays of Motion is an intergenerational dance/theatre company that specializes in unique performances that push the range of the traditional, from who's dancing the work to what they dance about. Their work has appeared on-site in fountains at Rose Kennedy Greenway and on the campus of Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, as well as on table tops, on film and in traditional theatre spaces. Artistic Director Peter DiMuro leads the company’s current project, Stones to Rainbows, a documenting of dialogue among generations and intersections of the LGBTQ+ community: stonestorainbows.com; publicdisplaysofmotion.com

Sofia Engelman and Em Papineau are dance artists based in Western Massachusetts. Their first collaborative work, Where the air is light and clear, was presented at the National College Dance Festival at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Since then, they have held choreographic residencies at The Living Room, Ponderosa (Germany), the Dance Complex, and School for Contemporary Dance and Thought. In addition to presenting their work at these spaces, the pair have performed at festivals including FRESH Festival, EstroGenius Festival, AS220's Providence Movement Festival, and Dancing Queerly Boston; music/DIY venues such as 10 Forward and Flywheel; and other spaces they love dearly including Judson Church, Green Street Studios, and Smith College. Collectively, performance credits include work by Kathleen Hermesdorf, Michael Figueroa, Alice Gosti, Tyler Rai, Jenna Riegel, Alex Springer and Xan Burley, Chris Aiken and Angie Hauser, and David Dorfman. Learn more on www.engelmanpapineaudance.com and on Instagram at @fake_choreogra_queers!

Born in Puerto Rico and growing up in Southeastern MA, Gabriel has always been on the go. Dancing since 2005, Gabriel now co-leads QWAM; an all male hip hop dance crew that champions for self confidence. By day, he works in Human Resources for a craft beer company!

Considered a pioneer in the Pittsburgh dance scene, Nick M. Daniels is the founding Artistic Director of the D.A.N.A. Movement Ensemble (Dancers Against Normal Actions) which he started in 1991. With over 30 years of dance and choreography experience, he considers himself a reemerging choreographer after taking a 20+year hiatus. Since returning in 2016 his choreographic style has developed into contemporary modern, based on pure raw emotion and musicality.

Olivia Blaisdell was born in Connecticut, but raised in Los Angeles, where she grew up studying dance at The Vonder Haar Center for the Performing Arts. She returned to the East Coast to attend high school at Walnut Hill School for the Arts where she studied ballet, modern, and choreography. Olivia has also trained with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Joffrey Ballet School, and Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet. Currently she dances with KAIROS Dance Theater and Kristin Wagner, and trains in pole fitness on the side. Olivia is a freelance photographer in the Boston area. She has been mentored by artists such as Whitney Browne and has studied photography at Jacob’s Pillow and the Art Center College of Design. Olivia graduated this May with her degree in Health Science at Boston University.

Chris Suharlim (teacher, choreographer, performer) is a researcher at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who has been dancing to upbeat pop and k-pop songs since 2006. He is a faculty teaching artist at the Dance Complex in Central Square, where his fem style diva-esque Sassy Hip-Hop class received “Boston’s Best” award by Improper Bostonian in 2017. His mission is to provide dance classes that are inclusive (of individuals of all dance levels and socio-economic backgrounds), fun (not about mastering choreography, but about letting loose), and charitable (his class proceeds are non-deductible donations for his public health foundation). His mission and work is recently covered by Emerson College on a body-positive documentary, ‘Overtures’. In addition, performing as Miss Diagnosis, his Sassy Hip-Hop team won the the first place at the Race for the Tiara charity competition, contributed to over $7,000 fundraising for Aids Action.

Rebecca Lang (choreographer, performer) is a Senior at Salem State University studying Social Work and Dance. She previously trained at In Sync Center of the Arts in Quincy, MA. She is currently studying dance under Meghan McLyman and Betsy Miller. As an artist, she approaches her work with an experimental mindset and is always looking for ways to collaborate. Her performance experience includes opening for BoSoma’s The Dinner Table: Vignettes of Betrayal, Salem Dance Ensembles and Repertory Dance Theatre’s semi-annual concerts, American College Dance Associations adjudicated concert and performing as a member of Kaleidoscope Dance Company. Rebecca teaches contemporary, ballet, tap, and jazz at In Sync Center of the Arts. For the past four years, Rebecca has choreographed for Salem Dance Ensemble, Repertory Dance Theatre, and Insync Center of the Arts. She would like to combine the aspects of empowerment utilized in Social Work practice with her love of dance teaching, performing, and choreographing. Rebecca combines her two areas of study by fostering expressive atmospheres that respect diversity of experiences and capabilities. She believes that dance should be available to all bodies and communities.

Alexander Davis (choreographer, performer) is a Boston based perform, choreographer, fiber artist. He is graduate of Keene State College where he received a BA in English: Writing, and a BA in Theatre and Dance: Choreography and Performance. Alex has worked, performed and presented with organizations across Boston including Ryan Landry's Gold Dust Orphans, Boston Lyric Opera, Boston Children's Chorus, World Music/CRASHarts and Improv Asylum/Laugh Boston. Alex is currently a company member with Urbanity Dance, where he is also the director of the their Summer Choreographer Intensive Program. As a choreographer and fiber artist Alex has received grant and residency support from The Studios at Mass MoCA, The Boston Foundation, Urbanity Dance, and The Theatre Offensive. Alex and collaborator Joy Davis (The Davis Sisters) were recently awarded a 2018 Schoenberg (Boston) Fellowship Residency at The Yard to develop and perform a new work in September. Alex is a passionate arts administrator, a published memoirist, a college professor, an exhibited visual artist, a sexual consent educator, and an okay comedian. www.alexanderdavis.dance @AlexanderDavisDance

Zavé Martohardjono is interested in weaving together political education, improvised dance, and physical healing practices to contribute to de-colonial and de-assimilationist projects. Their art-making practices contend with the political histories our bodies carry. Zavé has performed at the 92Y, The Kennedy Center, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, BAAD!, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Boston Center for the Arts, Center for Performance Research, El Museo del Barrio, Gibney Dance, HERE Arts, Issue Project Room, Storm King Art Center, the Wild Project, and elsewhere. They are currently a 2019 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence and 2019-20 Gibney Dance in Process artist in residence.

Eva Yaa Asantewaa (pronouns: she/her) is Senior Director of Artist Development and Curation as well as Editorial Director at Gibney, New York’s acclaimed center for dance and social activism. She won the 2017 Bessie Award for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance as a veteran writer, curator and community educator. Since 1976, she has contributed writing on dance to Dance Magazine, The Village Voice, SoHo Weekly News, Gay City News, The Dance Enthusiast, Time Out New York and other publications and interviewed dance artists and advocates as host of two podcasts, Body and Soul and Serious Moonlight. She blogs on the arts, with dance as a specialty, for InfiniteBody and will serve as Editorial Director of Imagining: A Gibney Journal, an online publication devoted to writing on dance and performance, to be launched in Fall 2020.



Ms. Yaa Asantewaa joined the curatorial team for Danspace Project’s Platform 2016: Lost and Found and created the skeleton architecture, or the future of our worlds, an evening of group improvisation featuring 21 Black women and gender-nonconforming performers. Her cast was awarded a 2017 Bessie for Outstanding Performer. In 2018, Queer|Art named one of its awards in her honor, and Detroit-based choreographer Jennifer Harge won the first Eva Yaa Asantewaa Grant for Queer Women(+) Dance Artists. In 2019, Yaa Asantewaa was a recipient of a BAX Arts & Artists in Progress Award.



A native New Yorker of Black Caribbean heritage, Eva makes her home in the East Village with her wife, Deborah, and cat, Crystal.

Pampi is founder of In Divine Company, an activist multimedia contemporary temple dance theater collective. A 20+ year newcomer-settler-resident of Massachuset and Wompanoag land, Pampi is a darker-skinned nonbinary second-genx casteD-Bengali culture worker who flourishes the intersection of healing and education and develops community-centered art that releases creative potential and drives collective change-making. Please get in touch with them to learn more about AbunDANCE, a meditative movement and song initiative for wellness in community! Instagram @ thirdeyefell #ne0natak #fauxKathak #t3mpl3dance #meditativedancesong

Established in 2016, QWAM champions for self-confidence across the Boston Dance Scene and the greater LGTBQ+ community. As a diverse all male dance crew, we are a family who wants to express and experience dance in a colorful variety of genres. We encourage everyone to embrace their royalty across the East Coast including in our very own showcase Reignbow.

Maggie Cee is founder and director of“The Femme Show”, a variety show featuring dance, spoken word, performance art, and drag exploring queer femininity. “The Femme Show” has been a staple of LGBTQ entertainment in Boston since 2007. Maggie is the 2011 recipient of the History Project’s Lavender Rhino Award for an emerging LGBT history maker. Her solo project, "Ladies at a Gay Girl's Bar, 1938-1969," received a New England Dance Foundation grant and premieres this summer. www.inthestreetsproductions.com