Juliet Irving (she) aka Sonny Dee (they) is a Black, femme multimedia artist, choreographer, writer, and graphic designer hailing from Monetta, South Carolina. She is invested in cultivating radical imagination and practices of tenderness in rural BIPOC communities with a multidisciplinary practice originating from a childhood spent crafting performances with her sister for a dedicated audience of cows. This evolved into a collaborative practice of immersing audiences and performers into worlds of possibility integrating environmental installation, improvisation, and audience interaction. Sonny earned an MFA in Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis and a Master’s Certificate in African & African-American Studies from Duke University, along with a BA in Dance Studies and BFA in Graphic Design from Appalachian State University. Juliet joined Ananya Dance Theatre in 2023 as an ensemble member and presented work at the ADF Creative Healing Parade, the International Conference on Movement and Computing, and the Collegium of African Diaspora Dance.

陳璐 / Lu is a dancer, choreographer, theater artist, technician, singer, and early childhood educator residing in Mni Sota Makoce. Lu holds a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree from Macalester College, where they double majored in Psychology and Theater and Dance. At Macalester, Lu studied African Diaspora dances with Patricia Brown and Marciano Silva Dos Santos, Yorchha with Ananya Dance Theatre, modern dance with Wynn Fricke and Toni Pierce-Sands and contact improvisation with Krista Langberg. In September 2023, Lu joined the Xchange (work-study) program at Zenon Dance School, studying contemporary dance with Erin Thompson and improvisation and composition with Hijack (Kristin Van Loon and Arwen Wilder). In 2023, Lu was an artist cohort in Transformational Creative Strategies Training (TRCSTR MN), under the mentorship of Marcela Michelle. This program empowered individuals to assert their identity as artists within a vibrant and supportive community. In October 2023, Lu began a year-long mentorship program with dancer-choreographer, Alanna Morris, as a part of the I A.M. Arts Mentorship/Coaching Program, funded by the Minnesota State Arts Board. Lu is enthusiastic about embarking on a journey to develop into a seasoned professional artist, dedicated to the ongoing exploration and refinement of their artistic voice and practices. Lu engages in movement and academic research driven by their intuition, feelings, and emotions. Their recent research topics have included dance movement therapy, art history, and communication of trees. In 2021, Lu began working with Kat Purcell on Castles III, a multi-year experimental performance and research project using abstracted text and movement to explore themes such as exploitation of essential works and fights among strangers online. As a theater artist, Lu has performed with Lightning Rod and 20% Theatre Company, and Pillsbury House and Theater. Dance credits include projects with the Shawngram Institute of Social Justice, Macalester Mainstage Theater, public parks in the Twin Cities, and recently at MODArts’ Move To Change Festival, NYC. Lu has also danced in works by Minnesota choreographers, Wynn Fricke, Ashwini Ramaswamy, Kat Purcell, Marcela Michelle, Miranda Strong, Vanessa Cruz, and Tori Breen.

Photo: Bruce Silcox

Parisha Rajbhandari is a Nepali dance artist residing in Mni Sota. She explores movement through vibrations, sounds, rhythms, body memory and spinal articulation. Her choreographic process is grounded in collaboration and collective action. Parisha has been a dance artist with Ananya Dance Theatre since 2019. She trains, tours, and participates in community engagement with ADT. She has performed in three premieres in 2021, 2022 and 2023 with Ananya Dance Theatre. She also offers Yorchhā classes through Shawngram Institute for Performance & Social Justice. She performed ADT’s Nün Gherāo:Surrounded by Salt at Jacob’s Pillow in May 2023. She has performed at the Association of Performing Arts Professionals, Kennedy Center, O’Shaughnessy Auditorium, Cowles Center, American College Dance Association and Minnesota State University Productions. She received her BA in dance from Minnesota State University, Mankato in 2020 and is furthering her academic career as an MFA candidate in Dance and Choreography at MSU, Mankato.

Photo: Dan Norman

Katie Ka Vang is a Hmong American playwright and storyteller. Her work explores the complexity of cultures & communities, diaspora, dis-ease, and transformation. Her work includes AGAIN the musical, Fertile Grounds, WTF, Hmong Bollywood, 5:1 Meaning of Freedom; 6:2 Use of Sharpening, Fast FWD Motions, In Quarantine, FINAL ROUND, and Spirit Trust. Her work has been developed and presented at East West Players, Mixed Blood Theater, Pangea World Theater, Pillsbury House Theatre, Theater Mu, Leviathan Lab, Bushwick Starr, Brown University, The Royal Court Theatre, The Walker Art Center, Civic Ensemble, Out North Art House, and more. She is currently a 23/24 Constellation Fellow from the Center for Cultural Power working with Indigenous Roots. She received the 22/23 McKnight and 19/20 Many Voices fellowship at the Playwrights' Center. She's received support from Jerome Foundation, NET, Knight Foundation, NPN, MRAC, MSAB, and Coalition of Asian American Leaders. She was a member of East West Players 21-23 Playwright's Group. She holds an MFA in Playwriting from Brown University.

Noelle Awadallah نوال (she/her) is a Palestinian-American dancer, improviser, choreographer, and farmer residing in Mni Sota Makoce (Minneapolis). Her work as the Co-Artistic Director of Body Watani Dance is underscored by five years (and counting) of dancing with Ananya Dance Theatre, a BFA from Columbia College Chicago (2018), and her daily pursuit of a “land-based life,” which emerges from sumud—a Palestinian ideology guiding steadfast perseverance and rootedness in land. For Noelle, sumud drives her commitment and approach to multidirectional attention, storytelling, resistance and liberation practices, futuristic imagination as a strategy, and tending to her reciprocal relationships with land and non-human beings.

Photo: Sarah Ashley Dovolos

Masanari Kawahara 川原正也 (he/him/his) is a Butoh doer, theatre artist, puppeteer, and arts educator. In connection to Red Eye Theater, he has performed in Lelis K. Brito’s A Binding Strangeness (2022) as part of Isolated Acts and Valerie Oliveiro’s SOFT FREEDOMS at the Cowles Center (2022). His solo piece 8’46” (movement for healing), featuring a soundscape by Sho Nikaido is, was performed as part of Offerings: BareBones 2020. Previously Masanari was a member of the Butoh group Nenkin Butoh Dan, which received a 2015 Sage Award for outstanding dance ensemble for Fu.Ku.Shi.Ma. Other dance projects including Anthea Hamilton’s Cabbage Four Ways (2021) as part of Paradox of Stillness at Walker Art Center; Throw Open the Heavy Curtain (2018) by Sharon Picasso Projects; prairie/concrete (2023), Census (2016), Every Other (2015) and Fold (2014) by Aniccha Arts. Masanari is a Playwrights’ Center McKnight Theater Artist Fellow 2018-2019 and 2010-2011.

Or (Laura) Levinson (they/them), is a Minneapolis-based dancer and performance artist blending elements of original choreography with live music, participatory ritual and song. Their most recent project, DOIKAYT: gedenktentz, was an interactive outdoor performance featuring klezmer music, Yiddish folk dance, and themes of Ashkenazi Jewish diaspora and the search for home, belonging, and solidarity on Dakota land. Past workshops and performances have included DUMPSTER FIRE: An Evening of Queer and Trans Performance at Franconia Sculpture Park; DOIKAYT: a performance-ritual of the diaspora at Minnehaha Creek; and Swimming Home, a workshop co-created with Palestinian-American choreographer Leila Awadallah and following the threads of diaspora, ancestry, and body-as-homeland.

Photo: Carlisle Evans Peck

Marcela Michelle is a transdisciplinary artist, educator, and producer living and working in the Twin Cities. With a diverse background in the arts, her work often deals with questions of simultaneity, im/mutability, euphemism, and the platonic ideal host. She is a 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow in the inaugural Cross Disciplinary field, a 2019 mentee of the National Institute for Directing and Ensemble Creation, and has had residencies with Rosy Simas Dance, Hennepin Theatre Trust, and Tofte Lake Center. In addition to her freelance work, Marcela was the Artistic Director of 20% Theatre Company from 2019-2021 and is currently the artistic director of Lightning Rod, a queer arts organism serving the QTGNC artist community living and working on Mni Sota Makoce. When she’s not onstage or in a rehearsal room, Marcela enjoys cooking, eating, watching video essays, and spending time on the couch with her Wife and dogter.

Photo: Loco f/x

Benny Olk (he/him) is a performing artist based in Minneapolis with an interest in contemporizing and contextualizing American modern and post-modern dance. As a member of Lucinda Childs Dance Company, he performed reconstructions of pieces such as Dance and Available Light. He performed in reconstructions of Crises and Suite for Five among others by Merce Cunningham, and has premiered works by Moriah Evans and Anthea Hamilton. His current collaboration series with Tristan Koepke exploring queer longing, desire, and speculative masculinities has been presented at SPACE in Portland, ME and Canydbox in Minneapolis, MN. Benny holds a BFA in Dance from NYU and an MA in New Performative Practices from Stockholm University of the Arts.

Photo: Isabel Fajardo

Dameun Strange is a sound artist, multi-instrumentalist, and award-winning composer of conceptual electronic and improvised electro-acoustic works focusing on the African diaspora's stories and themes, often exploring surrealist and afro-futurist ideas. Dameun aims to express through sound and poetry, the beauty and resilience of the Black experience, digging into a pantheon of ancestors to tell stories of triumph while connecting the past, present, and future. Dameun has composed music with such artists as Leslie Parker, Ananya Chatterjea, Joanna Lees, Pramila Vasudevan and has been a featured performer in concerts celebrating the work of George Lewis, Thurston Moore, and Henry Threadgill. He is a 2018 recipient of the ACF | Create Award and 2019 Jerome Hill Fellowship. Most recently, his work was commissioned by BMI Foundation for renowned flutist Adam Sadberry, _not running. (The Life of L. Alex Wilson) for flute and electronics was premiered at Merkin Hall, Kaufman Music Center in March 2023. Dameun lives in Saint Paul, MN with his wife, Corina, and their daughter, Ezra. Like any good nerd, he enjoys a good sci-fi story and has a soft spot for anything related to cosmology.

Photo: Drew Arrieta