Arthur Avilés is a gay New York-Rican dancer/choreographer living in the Bronx. In 1996 he formed Arthur Avilés Typical Theater. He is the co-founder and Artistic Director of BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance, a member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company from (1987 to 1995). Avilés was honored with a Bessie Award, a BRIO, Bronx Recognizes its Own Award, a NYFA Fellowship, the Mayor’s Award for Art and Culture, a NEA Master’s Grant from Pregones Theatre. He received a B.A., an Arts and Letters award and honorary doctorate from Bard College.

Alethea Pace is a Bronx-based choreographer and performer. Her solo performance work, trying to sweep back the ocean with a broom, was created with support from Pepatian’s Open Call Residency and was performed at BAAD! (2016) and NYLA (2017). Her following work, Bring Me Flowers, was developed with support from NYLA’s Fresh Tracks, Dancing While Black, 92Y Harkness Dance and premiered at Pregones Theater in 2018. Alethea has performed with numerous choreographers and was a member of Arthur Aviles Typical Theatre for eight years. She received the BRIO award and CUNY Dance Initiative in 2019. She is currently in CCNY’s Digital and Interdisciplinary Arts Practice MFA program.

Photo Credit: Whitney Browne

aletheapace.com

Richard Rivera is a Bronx-based Choreographer & Photographer.

Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Milteri Tucker holds degrees in Dance, Biology and Chemistry as well as a Masters Degree in Dance Education from New York University. She is the founder
and artistic director of Bombazo Dance Co. Ms. Tucker has apprenticed and performed with Bomba elders and distinguished families in San Juan, Santurce, Loíza, Cataño, Ponce, Mayagüez and Arroyo, Puerto Rico. As an educator and master Bomba dancer, she lectures on dance technique, figure and timing across the United States and the world. Milteri has worked with dance companies and choreographers in Puerto Rico, throughout the Caribbean and the United States. She’s performed and showcased her work at City Center, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Hostos Center for the Arts and Culture, BAAD!: Bronx Academy of Arts and
Dance, Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, Thalia Spanish Theater, Castillo Theater, El Museo del Barrio, Julia de Burgos Cultural Center, the Lehman Center for the Performing Arts and STEPS. Milteri was awarded a Proclamation by Bronx Borough President Ruben Díaz Jr. at Bronx Supreme Court for her contributions to the arts, for keeping Puerto Rican heritage alive through dance, leading Bombazo Dance Co and its community outreach programs.

bombazodanceco.com

Cedric is a proud ensemble member of both Pregones/PRTT and Bombazo Dance Company. While at Pregones, Cedric has performed in NEON BABY, THE MARCHERS and BOLERO WAS MY DOWNFALL. He’s toured with RENT, MISS SAIGON and performed in CARMEN LA CUBANA at Theatre du Chatelet in Paris. Some regional credits include Colorado Springs FAC’s HANDS ON A HARDBODY, TUTS’ GUYS AND DOLLS, Goodspeed’s LA CAGE AUX FOLLES and Assistant Choreographer in Dallas Theater Center’s AS YOU LIKE IT. Television: HBO’s HIGH MAINTENANCE, Fashion One TV’s THE SWITCH. Movies: MILLIE AND THE LORD, ELLIOT LOVES. Recently he portrayed the role of “Manny” in GETS GOOD LIGHT, which was nominated by this year’s Tribeca Film Festival as Best Narrative Short. 

www.cedricleiba.com

Noele E. Phillips is a Bronx-based dancer and choreographer. In 2007, she was selected as one of the 10th Anniversary Artists for The dance now NYC festival. She is the 2010 BRIO Award Winner for Choreography. Noele embraces and celebrates various types of dance including Hip-Hop, Jazz, West African and Modern. Ms. Phillips is the former executive director assistant of Volunteers of America-Greater New York, and works temporarily administratively at the Apollo in New York City. She has over 10 years of experience in administrative duties as well as in the requirements to organize logistics for dance programs.

Rodney Okai Fleurimont is a vocalist/percussionist who embodies all the music of the African Diaspora. Brooklyn born with Haitian descent young Okai was beating on anything that he could get his hands on to help his imagination grow. His ears became infected with the hard boom bap drum loops of Hip Hop, and roots music from the Caribbean. Those sounds led him on a musical path to find rock, Jazz, samba, salsa, rumba and pretty much anything that involves percussion. Okai began his path of percussion on the trap set playing for various churches. He then played Congas for his High School band for several years. Once he was introduced to the West African Djembe he concentrated on that for more than 10yrs. Aside from being an achived percussionist, Okai is also an achieved Emcee that has worked with various Artists and has a couple of Solo albums. Okai's cultural background shaped him in to being the full round artist he is today. He is Currently the lead singer and percussionist of Brown Rice Family who won “The Battle of the Boroughs” in NYC in 2012 and he is part of an instrumental Horn band called Underground Horns. He is an active percussionist in New York always sharing his voice and energetic rhythms. Locally Okai has performed in the Brooklyn Museum, the legendary African art auction exhibition at Sotheby's, Madison Square Garden, Carnegie Hall and venues throughout the States. Internationally Canada, Tanzania, Australia, Japan, Haiti and Brazil have been showered with his sounds and soon the rest of the world will. Bombazo Dance Co Member since 2012.

Christina Smith aka Coco Motion is a multidisciplinary performing artist, a native New Yorker, and lover of hip hop. Coco began dancing at the age of nine at a local community center in Jamaica Queens, during High School she began taking hip hop and ballet classes at Broadway Dance Center. After attending Nassau Community College she wanted to learn more about Black dance vernacular, it was then that her love for underground street styles emerged. She began to see the connections between West African and street dance in particular the interconnections between house, afrobeats and Krump. By merging these styles she began to notice the connection between movement and oppression, each style had its own language, ethos and self awareness. In December of 2016 she received a reputable full scholarship from Lincoln Center Education, and earned her MA in Dance Education via Hunter College. While attending graduate school, she began to uncover her own family history and culture, posttraumatic slave syndrome, the nuclear family and systemic oppression.

Qu, 27, is a Litefeet dancer, who started dancing when he was at Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Manhattan. After school, he went to CityKids Foundation, a program for social services and the arts in TriBeca. This is where Qu started taking dance seriously -  litefeet and bonebreaking/contortion specifically. Other dancers taught him how to train, in the generous, sharing spirit that is part of the hip-hop community. Qu danced in battles and on the trains 20 to 30 hours a week, while studying graphic arts at the Borough of Manhattan Community College in TriBeCa for 1 ½ years. He joined Team Rocket, and the Breakfast Club, a Litefeet organization, where he met dancers he had first seen on YouTube, like Chrybaby, Esolo, Mr Jones, Swiss etc. A friend named Bad Day introduced him to It’s Showtime NYC!, and for the past five years, Qu also teaches hip-hop classes to first through fifth-graders, as part of an after-school program under New York City’s Department of Health. He also does catering, and is the father of a little girl, now 3. For Qu, dancing is a way of life.

Jason Samuels Smith, award-winning tap dancer, teacher, choreographer, and humanitarian, is a multi-talented leader and lifelong champion of tap dancing.  He received an Emmy, a Dance Magazine Award, an American Choreography Award, and the Gregory Hines Humanitarian Award—one of his most cherished honors. Television/film and choreography credits include Outkast’s “Idlewild”; “Black Nativity”; Psych; CBS’s Secret Talents of the Stars (MYA); “So You Think You Can Dance”; Dancing with The Stars; Dean Hargrove’s “Tap Heat” and “Tap World”; & Debbie Allen’s “Cool Women”. Stage Credits include Broadway’s Bring in Da’Noise, Bring in Da’Funk; Debbie Allen’s Soul Possessed; and Imagine Tap!. Samuels Smith has toured worldwide for more than 3 decades at premier venues including Award-winning collaboration co-starring the late Kathak Master Pandit Chitresh Das which was immortalized in the critically acclaimed documentary “Upaj: Improvise”. Other projects included JaJa Productions Band; A.C.G.I. Tap Company, Going The Miles, Chasin’ The Bird, and Dormeshia’s And Still You Must Swing. Jason has performed as a special guest with Grammy award artists including Lalah Hathaway and Jennifer Halladay, appeared in an internationally televised documentary on Fred Astaire and was featured in a spread with model Michelle Buswell in RED magazine (UK).

Jason utilizes his art form as a vehicle for growth and change and has created several mediums to support these efforts. He is Director of the annual L.A. Tap Festival & National Tap Dance Day in NYC. As a humanitarian, he supports Dancers Responding to Aids, Tied to Greatness, Career Transitions for Dancers, Tap Into A Cure, Groove with Me, AHF, & Move The World. professional tap shoe sold exclusively by BLOCH. 

Donald Lee is a disabled artist based in Brooklyn and a company dancer with Heidi Latsky Dance. In his transgressive artistic practice, he prides amateurism as an approach to create varied work that challenges and delights all audiences which provokes response and questions conventions in aesthetics and instructures. He is process-oriented and advocates for disability artistry and inclusivity in the arts for which he has been quoted in ARTNews, Fjord Review, and The New York Times. He has performed at UnitedNations, The Whitney, National Portrait Gallery, and at Perry Farrell’s Kind Heaven Orchestra Tour.

Jeremy McQueen is an Emmy® Award-nominated choreographer dedicated to story-telling rooted in experience and social engagement. His work aims to create spaces of comfort, solace, and connection through reflection—a sharing of observations of what is going on around him. Born and raised in San Diego, California, McQueen is the founding artistic director & choreographer of The Black Iris Project, a ballet collaborative and education vehicle which creates new, relevant classical and contemporary ballet works that celebrate diversity and Black history. Based in New York City, the project hosts a team of predominantly artists of color delivering cross-discipline and wholly original works. Championing individuality, the collaborative harnesses the Black community's inherent creative spirit to encourage and inspire youth of color to pursue art, movement and music as an expressive outlet and a means for collective healing. Since its inception in 2016, The Black Iris Project has been committed to telling Black narratives through ballet, using art as a mirror to reflect the times. McQueen, a 2020 Soros Justice Fellow, is a graduate of The Ailey School/ Fordham University, B.F.A. in dance program and has performed in Broadway's Wicked and The Color Purple, the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, and numerous Metropolitan Opera productions.

Photo courtesy Jeremy McQueen

www.blackirisproject.org

Derick McKoy, Jr. (Miami, Florida) is a graduate Glorya Kaufman BFA Scholar of the Ailey/Fordham BFA Program in Dance. Currently in his second season as a dancer for Nimbus Dance, Derick has performed with The Black Iris Project and on the hit tv show POSE on FX. He started his official training under Luctricia Welters and after a year, joined her dance company, Jubilee Dance Theater, as an apprentice. He furthered his training at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Arts Umbrella, BalletX, Ballet Hispanico, Springboard Danse Montreal, under scholarships, as well as NW Dance Project’s LAUNCH. Derick has

Performed works by Alvin Ailey, Matthew Rushing, Crystal Pite, Jiri Kylian, Nacho Duato, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Sharon Eyal, Alejandro Cerrudo, and others. Also, a choreographer, Mr. McKoy has presented work around New York City and the tri-state area. He recently started his own project dance company based in Brooklyn and the NYC area called McKoy Dance Project. @dmckoyy

Eijah Lancaster (Bentonville, AR) was born in Port Au Prince, Haiti. He began his formal dance training at the age of seven at Aspire Dance in Arkansas. He has trained on scholarship at The Ailey School and graduated from the Certificate Program. Mr. Lancaster attended summer intensives at Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Gelsey Kirkland Academy of Classical Ballet, and the Joffrey Ballet School. He has worked with choreographers Travis Wall, Fredrick Earl Mosley, Amy Hall Garner, Robert Battle, Winston Dynamite Brown, Darrell Grand Moultrie, and Troy Powell, and appeared in Alvin Ailey’s Memoria during Ailey’s2016 and 2017 New York City Center seasons. Mr. Lancaster was also a part of the Nutcracker cast for the Houston Ballet. This is his first season with Ailey II. He’s also the principal role in Jeremy McQueens’s Black Iris Project, WILD Act: 1.

Sahasra's knowledge in bharatanatyam started at 9 from guru Ramya Ramnarayan, and she currently trains in kathak under Prashant Shah. With her main training in these two styles, she also trains in odissi, kuchipudi, and kalaripayattu when the opportunity arises.

From a young age, Sahasra knew she wanted to be a dancer and an arts administrator.. Sahasra consequently began Navatman, Inc and joined forces with Sridhar Shanmugam to co-found the organization as it currently stands. She is currently CEO of Navatman and has created well over 50 choreographies, directed a full feature film featuring Indian arts choreography, and original music on the Mahabharata, is co-curator of the global Indian arts festival Drive East, and has worked with the NEA in evaluating grants.

Sahasra is the recipient of various awards, including the New Jersey State Council of the Arts Folk Arts Apprenticeship, and has been called by reporters as a "young trailblazer...on the crest of the wave leading us towards a new understanding of South Asian arts in the United States."

Photo credit: Radha Ganesan

www.navatman.org

Meghana (Meg) Murthy began her dance career at the age of 5 training under her first Guru, Smt. Vidhya Subramanian. Meg trained for 13 years in the Vazhuvoor style and gained performance experience by participating in over 5 stage productions and several Bay Area local performances. In 2009, at the age of 15, she completed her solo debut performance, an Arangetram, where she performed 7 pieces over 2.5 hours.  

After college, Meg resumed her training Bharatanatyam under the guidance of Sahasra Sambamoorthi, where she grew both in technique, performance and teaching capability. As a member of the Dance Company, Meg trains with her cohort for 12 hours a week, practicing technique and execution, building stamina, developing choreography and delving into storytelling and character development.  In 2019, Meg played a lead role, Arjuna, in the stage production of The Mahabharata, and was a dance captain of the team. As a teacher, she instructs children and beginner adult classes in Bharatanatyam, teaching the foundation, basic positions, technique, and basic repertoire pieces.

Meg is also a member of Project Convergence, a Tap and Bharatanatyam performance group. As a dancer, Meg has performed at Lincoln Center twice, Symphony Space, Holi Hai NYC, We are India Gala, and several local NYC gigs.

Uditha Thiagarajan, born in India and raised in Dubai, started learning Bharatanatyam at the age of 7 with Smt. Lakshmi Venkatesh and completed her Arangetram under the guidance of Smt. Annapoorna Murali in 2013. She graduated with a Finance degree from Bangalore, where she continued training in Bharatanatyam under Smt. B Bhanumati. She completed her master's degree in Performing Arts Administration from New York University and currently works full-time with Navatman as a Bharatanatyam teacher, a Dance Company member and an Events Associate, and continues to train under Smt. Sahasra Sambamoorthi and Smt. Sri Thina Subramaniam. 

As an active member of her university dance team, Uditha helped choreograph and performed for various competitions, dance productions and festivals in the dance styles Indian Contemporary, Indian Classical and Bollywood. Her passion for dance has had her perform for the Indian Consulate in the Middle East, for the World Dance Day event organized by UNESCO’s World Dance Council, on an Indian Reality TV show and for the inauguration of the Indian Premier League (IPL) in 2016. Some of the productions she has been a part of are Sambhavaami Yuge Yuge, a dance drama choreographed by Smt. Bhuvaneshwari Ratnam, Cinderella, a fairytale depicted through Asian styles of dance choreographed by Sir Zakir Hussain, and The Mahabharata: Part 1-Of Vengeance and Promises, a Broadway-style production choreographed by Sahasra Sambamoorthi. She has also freelanced with a number of dance companies in UAE and India. Shifting from a career in finance to the arts, Uditha truly believes that art has the power to change the world and aims to spread awareness on the importance of the arts in everyday life.