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Submitted by He Sissie on
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Born and raised in Los Angeles, Bella Allen is a queer movement artist invested in work that engages individuals in connection-based movement practices. During her formative years she trained with Westside Dance Project and attended the Orange County School of the Arts. Bella graduated from the USC Kaufman School of Dance in 2022 where she organized community events in collaboration with peers, Change the Stigma, and USC Visions & Voices. Since graduating, Bella has worked with esteemed artists such as Bret Easterling, Charissa Kroeger, Genna Moroni, Sara Silkin, and Mike Tyus & Luca Renzi. Additionally, Bella has collaborated with LA based companies Volta Collective, GUM Collective, BEMOVING, and directors Claire Loudis, Curry Tian, and Joey Frank. Outside of her performance experience, Bella has continued her work in community engagement by teaching somatic classes at R&R Health to share the healing properties of communal movement. Bella is currently based in Los Angeles as a freelance artist.

Participant

Submitted by He Sissie on
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Originally from Portland, Oregon where he studied with the Jefferson Dancers, Austin went on to graduate from NYU - Tisch School of the Arts. Following university Austin became a member of Andrea Miller’s Gallim Dance, then a performer and rehearsal director for Punchdrunk’s ‘Sleep No More’ in NYC. Austin currently freelances with a home base in LA performing for choreographers such as: Micaela Taylor, Rebecca Margolick, and Bret Easterling. Austin is a frequent contributor as a performer, teacher, and creative developer for BEMOVING, a LA based non-profit uplifting queer voices in dance. Austin is also a certified Pilates instructor and studying to become an Ilan Lev Method practitioner.

Participant

Submitted by He Sissie on
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Bret Easterling is a multidisciplinary artist, director, and educator creating performance, film, and community-based projects that use movement as a tool for connection, inquiry, and collective experience. He received his BFA and the Hector Zaraspe Prize for Choreography from The Juilliard School, and became a formative member of Gallim Dance and a prominent performer and creative contributor with Ohad Naharin’s internationally renowned Batsheva Dance Company.

Easterling has created and presented work across live performance and interdisciplinary platforms at institutions including Jacob’s Pillow, Lincoln Center, REDCAT, 92NY, Opera Philadelphia, LA Dance Project, AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company), Whim W’Him, Backhausdance, b12, Dance Camera West, Dance on Camera Festival, and Hauser & Wirth. His collaborative practice includes projects with Anthony Roth Costanzo, Kesha, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, and Jurassic Spine. He also maintains an artistic partnership with Julia Eichten as EICHTERLING, spanning choreography, curation, film, and fashion.

As Founder and Artistic Director of the LGBTQ+ nonprofit BEMOVING, Easterling builds infrastructure supporting the creation, presentation, and sustainability of dance. He is on faculty at the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, co-director of Ghost Light Residency, co-founder of PAY DANCERS, and an Ilan Lev Method practitioner, grounding his work in care for artists.

Participant
Feature Image
Dancers performing on stage
Subtitle
By BEMOVING
Page Summary
Choreographer Bret Easterling and Los Angeles-based company BEMOVING unite for a mesmerizing evening of dance.

Submitted by Sonia Zyvatkau… on
English
Alisha Wormsley

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Alisha Wormsley (Pittsburgh, PA, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist, cultural producer and matriarichal revivalist. Their main concern is to transform the world to a place where people can live. Founder of Sibyls Shrine (a collective for Black artists who M/other) and visionary of There Are Black People In The Future, Cosmologyscape with collaborator Kite and the Children of NAN archive, all have been exhibited globally. Wormsley is a 2022 Guggenheim fellow, Sundance Interdisciplinary Awardee among others. Wormsley is an Assistant Professor of Art in the area of Social Practice and current Director of the MFA program at Carnegie Mellon University.

Guest Faculty

Submitted by Sonia Zyvatkau… on
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Emily Jan

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Emily Jan (b. 1977, Los Angeles) is an artist, writer, and educator currently based in Amiskwaciwâskahikan/Edmonton, AB, Treaty 6 territory.  Her practice spans sculpture, textile, and installation, and she is guided in her work by the spirit of exploration, kinship, and curiousity. Jan has exhibited nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at the Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto, The Rooms, St Johns, the Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, Contemporary Calgary, the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, Brandon and the 10e Biennale Nationale de Sculpture Contemporaine, Trois-Rivières, Quebec. Her 2022 collaboration with Catherine Blackburn, Ancestor Dreamin’, was acquired by the MacKenzie Art Gallery in 2023 through the generous support of the York Wilson Endowment Award (CCA). Jan teaches sculpture at the University of Alberta and sits on the Board of Directors for Union House Arts, Port Union, NL, and Latitude 53, Edmonton, AB.

Faculty

Submitted by He Sissie on
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Lisa Davies has been working in the professional dance field for over 30 years, in Quebec and internationally. Throughout her career, she danced on international stages as a performer (Les Grands Ballets, Édouard Lock/La La La Human Steps, Crystal Pite, Ohad Naharin, William Forsythe etc.), as a guest teacher and rehearsal director for over 15 different companies (Emily Molnar/Ballet BC, RUBBERBANDance Group, BJM Danse, Akram Khan Company, National Ballet of Canada, Ballet Zurich, Czech National Ballet etc.), and founded Danse à la Carte where she was general and artistic director for nearly a decade. Sought after for her expertise and renowned for her integrity, passion and her dedication to exploring and advancing the practice, she took over artistic direction of École de danse contemporaine de Montréal in 2023.

Faculty

Submitted by He Sissie on
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WYATT CODAY is intersex and autistic. She lives in Los Angeles, where she founded NOR RESEARCH STUDIO with Evan Kleekamp in 2017. She named herself its sole Research Director in 2023 and absorbed the DBA entity as one of her several aliases. Her work spans legal interventions, essays and contemporary folk tales, unorthodox disability accommodations, lecture-performances, and photography. In 2020, Coday was named as a columnist-in-residence at Open Space, SFMOMA's online writing platform. Nightboat Books anthologized another excerpt in WE WANT IT ALL: AN ANTHOLOGY OF RADICAL TRANS POETICS (2021). Her research interests include: disability, psychoanalysis, common law, transitive painting, the lecture-performance, and kitty cats.

Faculty Dramaturg

Submitted by He Sissie on
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MAXWELL TRANSUE is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, DJ, and sound designer known for creating immersive, thematic work that blends organic and synthetic elements, intricate rhythms, and finely detailed textures. His music spans film, live theater, dance, commercial projects, and artist recordings, and has been recognized internationally with multiple awards for original scoring, including First Place and Audience Choice honors at dance film festivals.

His compositions and sound design are featured in works by dance companies BEMOVING, LA Moves, and the Kaufman School of Dance, as well as in collaborations with choreographers and filmmakers Bret Easterling, Robert Bruce Hope, The Kusanagi Sisters, Anindo Marshall, Jermaine Spivey, and Spenser Theberge.

As a performing artist, Maxwell produces and performs house and electronic music under the moniker Jurassic Spine, sharing stages with artists such as Slow Magic, Low Leaf, and Monster Rally.

Faculty Sound Designer

Submitted by He Sissie on
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RS BUCK is an international producer, designer, and manager for live experiences. Their work focuses on fostering safe-spaces for whimsy and reflection. Recent collaborators include: Meow Wolf, The Broad, The Resonance Collective, The LA LGBT Center, California Institute of the Arts, Sunweaver Creative, Electric Workshop, Universal Studios, WB Studios, Estrella TV, BE Moving, Woolf and the Wondershow, Center Theater Group, Deaf West. They have also designed, mentored, and taught at many universities, including CalArts, CSUN, Pomona, USC, UCLA, and more. Buck holds their MFA in Experience Design and Production from CalArts. They are currently based in Los Angeles and Santa Fe, and are the head of Lighting at Meow Wolf.

Faculty Lighting Designer
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