SUZY MONDESIR (she/her) is a Haitian-American dancer from Queens, New York, and a senior at SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance. She received her formal training from various institutions, including Ballet Hispanico, Harlem School of the Arts, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, and the MOVE|NYC Young Professionals Program. She has continued to refi ne her craft through acclaimed intensives and residencies, including Movement Invention Project, GALLIM, Earl Mosley’s Diversity of Dance, BODYTRAFFIC, A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham, and Springboard Danse. Additionally, she has had the privilege of performing works by an influential range of choreographers, including Kyle Abraham, Dual Rivet, Trisha Brown, Rena Butler, Ethan Colangelo, Tsai Hsi Hung, Loni Landon, Doug Varone, and Yin Yue. Suzy is a guest performer with A.I.M for White Space.

ALYSIA JOHNSON (she/her), a native of Dallas, Texas, Alysia began her training at Dallas Black Dance Theatre and Booker T. Washington HSPVA under Lily Weiss. She expanded her skills through summer programs at renowned institutions like Joff rey Ballet, Alvin Ailey, LINES Ballet, and Jacob’s Pillow. Alysia launched her professional career with Bruce Wood Dance Company before attending The Juilliard School, earning her BFA. She has since taught and choreographed for institutions including Princeton University, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and Jacob’s Pillow. In 2021, Alysia received the Princess Grace Honoraria Award for Dance through Hubbard Street, where she was a company member. Known for her versatility, Alysia has been featured in campaigns with Tory Burch and Adidas. She recently joined Boom Crack Dance Company and continues producing genre-bending, community-centered events. Alysia credits her success to the support of her community and her mother, Galen Johnson. Alysia joined A.I.M in 2024.

MYKIAH GOREE (he/him), a native of Houston, Texas, received his early dance training from Houston Ballet Academy and Kinder HSPVA under the direction of Melissa Bowman and Janie Carothers, respectively. He attended summer programs with Ballet Austin, BodyTraffic, and Peridance. While at Juilliard, he performed works by Tiler Peck, Rena Butler, Jamar Roberts, Ohad Nahrin, Trisha Brown, Camille A. Brown, and Omar Román De Jesús. Mykiah’s choreographic work was selected for Juilliard’s Choreographers and Composers 2022, MOVE|NYC’s summer intensive, Juilliard’s Senior Production 2024 and Juilliard’s Choreographic Honors. He is a certified Pilates instructor and has served on the Juilliard Black Student Union board. Mykiah is very grateful to all who have built him into the human being and artist that he is today. Mykiah joined A.I.M in January 2024.

Denis Martin is an Assistant Professor of Music Technology at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on sound perception, critical listening, perceptual audio evaluation, equity, diversity, and inclusion in audio research, and education. His current teaching includes graduate courses in music production, acoustics, technical ear training and undergraduate courses in music recording. He supervises master's students in Music Technology and Digital Media and doctoral students with a music technology focus.

Chandre Iqugan Szafran is Inupiaq from Alaska. Her creative practice combines lyrical prose with visual art and design, using playfulness and color to communicate her point of view. Chandre named her creative practice qaummaq, a word from the Fish River dialect of Inupiatun meaning “daylight” or “brightness from a source.” This suggests that light comes from something, like a lightbulb, a fire, or the sun. Similarly, her creative impulse comes from a place—her roots on the tundra near the Arctic Circle. As Native storytellers, Chandre believes it is our responsibility to deconstruct contemporary “Indigenized” narratives in spaces dominated by the non-Native gaze.

Chandre holds an MFA in nonfiction from the United States’ only accredited university of Indigenous fine arts, the Institute of American Indian Arts. Chandre enjoys biking, berry picking, traveling, and immersing herself in storytelling found in all artforms.

Daisy Lavea-Timo is an Aotearoa- New Zealand born Sāmoan poet (Vailu’utai, Samatau, Lepā, Saipipi) whose work is deeply rooted in her ancestry and her role as a tulafale-orator chief. Daisy explores what it means to sustain and construct her identity as a product of the Sāmoan diaspora, being born and raised in Tamaki-Auckland and living in Kalaisitete-Christchurch, NZ.

Daisy’s poetry is the dynamic and indigenous response of her Sāmoan-ness, and her work strives to communicate ideas about the complex societal issues connected with culture and leadership. She is a proud wife to Seta, mum to Hadassah, Micahlei and Honor, keen educator, and Director of Cross-Polynate- an indigenous social change agency. Daisy navigates corporate worlds as a strategic facilitator and cultural competency coach and in the community, facilitates vā-space for Rangatahi all over Aotearoa to use their “upu” - words to pen their aspirations and truths for their families, communities, and selves.

From her vantage point at the intersections of the many worlds she navigates, Daisy wields words about culture, leadership, and collective impact.

Cristina Rodriguez was born and raised in the city of Chicago, IL. She is a multidisciplinary artist: filmmaker, composer, actor, and writer based in Chicago. She majored in Musical Theatre and minored in Latino Studies at Columbia College of Chicago. She is a part of Actors Equity Association and Maestra Music Organization.

Her work blends magical realism, experimental sound, and Chicano cultural identity, creating immersive and emotionally resonant storytelling across film and performance.

She is the writer, director, composer, and lead actress of her own short film Mexica(n), and has composed original music for dance films. As a teaching artist, she has developed movement based curricula combining dance, mindfulness, and storytelling for young learners. 

Her films, performances and illustrations have been featured at Pilsen Community Arts Center, Map O Rama Interactive Exhibit at Free Street Theatre, Revive Arts Collective, PCCC Arts, Stage 773, Chicago Women’s Funny Festival, Second City, Short Stack Film Festival, Healthy Hood Chicago and Choreo Kick off at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts. She also has been mentored by Andrew Cutler at Black Box Acting Academy, Resita Cox in the Indie & Impact Film Program at Duke University. Her artistry has been recognized with supported from DCASE Individual Artist Grant.

KYLE ABRAHAM (Founder and Artistic Director, A.I.M by Kyle Abraham; He/Him) is a dancer and choreographer, widely celebrated as a visionary voice in American modern dance. As the Founder and Artistic Director of A.I.M by Kyle Abraham, a company recognized as “one of the most consistently excellent troupes working today” by The New York Times, his work embraces the full richness of human experience while honoring the communities that shape it.

A Pittsburgh native, Abraham trained at Civic Light Opera Academy and the Creative and Performing Arts High School before earning a BFA from SUNY Purchase and an MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. He later received an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Washington Jefferson College and in 2026, he received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from his alma mater SUNY Purchase.

Abraham has premiered work to acclaim for decades. He is the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship (2026), the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2013), the Doris Duke Foundation Artist Award (2016), the Princess Grace Foundation-USA Statue Award (2018), and the Dance Magazine Award (2022). His choreography for “Are You in Your Feelings” earned a National Dance Award for Best Modern Choreography (2024), while “An Untitled Love” received nominations for the Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production (2025), the Rose Prize for International Dance (2025), and the National Dance Award for Best Modern Choreography (2026). He has been profiled in Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, Kinfolk, Vogue, and British Vogue, among many other publications.

In addition to performing and developing new works for his company, Abraham has been commissioned by some of the world’s most prestigious companies, including American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the National Ballet of Cuba, New York City Ballet, Paul Taylor Dance Company, and the Royal Ballet. He also choreographed Misty Copeland in Cynthia Erivo’s short-form film “No Good Deed” in promotion of Wicked: For Good.

A dedicated educator and cultural leader, Abraham has served as the Claude and Alfred Mann Endowed Professor in Dance at USC’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance and as a visiting professor at UCLA. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has contributed to advisory and leadership initiatives with Lincoln Center, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, the Prada Group, and Rebuild Foundation. In 2020, Abraham served as the first-ever guest editor for Dance Magazine.

Named a Kennedy Center Next 50 Leader, Abraham continues to expand the possibilities of contemporary dance through work that blends formal experimentation with cultural resonance. As Vogue noted, he brings “an avant-garde aesthetic, an original and politically minded downtown sensibility that doesn’t distinguish between genres but freely draws on a vocabulary that is as much Merce [Cunningham] and Martha [Graham] as it is Eadweard Muybridge and Michael Jackson.”

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Solomon Kim was generously supported by the Marshall M. Williams Endowment.

Solomon Kim is an improviser, composer, and cellist whose work is grounded in the traditions of creative music and new music. Solomon’s approach to composition is one which creates a system or world to be explored, harnessing the social, energetic, and otherwise intangible and emergent qualities of these complex systems to navigate the porosity found within practices of composition and improvisation. Recent and upcoming works include Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth for chorus and creative ensemble (commissioned by the Atlanta Improvisers Orchestra) explore social relations within improvisation as a route to creating emergent, dynamic performances. Solomon has worked with ensembles and artists such as Aleksander Gabrys, Marie Carroll, Kevin Ramsay, Carl Testa, Timuçin Sahin’s Recalibrators, Hypercube, Atlanta Improvisers Orchestra, Tacet(i) Ensemble, Atlanta Contemporary Music Collective, etc. and has received residencies and other honors from the K2 Contemporary Art Center (Türkiye), GITLER&___ (USA), College Music Society (USA), and the Association for the Promotion of New Music (USA) among others. Solomon is a recipient of the 2024-2025 Fulbright Creative Arts grant in the Republic of Türkiye and a current graduate student at Wesleyan University, studying towards a MA in Experimental Music with Darius Jones.