Pramila Vasudevan is a transdisciplinary artist trained in classical and contemporary Indian dance, interactive media, and political science. Since 2004, she has run Aniccha Arts, an experimental collaborative producing site-specific performances that examine agency, voice, and group dynamics within community histories, institutions, and systems. She has been honored by Guggenheim (2017) and McKnight (2016) Fellowships in Choreography. Vasudevan’s current practice involves gardening, conversation, and hosting community gatherings. Her work engages with physical sites, ranging from human-constructed locations (like a suburban parking ramp) to natural environments (like along the Mississippi River). In this process, she learns about the site’s history and current uses, the people that have come and gone, the embedded politics, and the materials that physically make it what it is. In responding artistically, she orients from the body while layering in other media (sound, drawings, sculptural elements, etc.) that illuminate and honor a multiplicity of perspectives.

Founded in 2014 by award-winning women artists Naomi Ko, May Lee-Yang, and Saymoukda Vongsay, Funny Asian Women Kollective (FAWK) exists to combat the invisibility and dehumanization of Asian Pacific Islander Desi American women (APIDA). As APIDA women, we are often discouraged to be ourselves, to recognize our value, and are denied opportunities to realize our potential. We live in a bind and are often denied our humanity. We use performance art, comedy, and storytelling to talk about controversial issues (ex: race, patriarchy, white supremacy, sexual health) as humor and the arts allows us to navigate these discomforts.

Emily Michaels King is a performing artist based in St. Paul, Minnesota exploring sensory and embodied engagement in live experiences through movement, multimedia, and visual art. Her work has been presented at the Walker Art Center, the Guthrie Theater, and the Southern Theater, among others. Emily is known for her collaged solo performances, including her award-winning show MAGIC GIRL and the recently premiered DIGITAL, which she performed live from her bedroom. Pairing minimalism and subtlety with cacophony and bared irreverence, Emily’s works employ the lush landscape of the inner world and the power of unapologetic vulnerability. They combine movement with text, graphics, sound, and sculpture to focus on themes of self discovery and reclamation, womanhood, and bold, or supremely delicate, expressions of personal truth. www.emilymichaelsking.com

Rhiana Yazzie is a 2021 Lanford Wilson and 2020 Steinberg Award winning playwright, a director, a filmmaker and the Artistic Director of her theatre company, New Native Theatre (Mpls/St. Paul). A Navajo Nation citizen, she’s spent the majority of her career in theater with her work seen on stages from Alaska to Mexico including but most recently on the Carnegie Hall website with American Indian Community House & Eagle Project. She has a new co-commissioned play in the works with Long Wharf Theatre and Rattlestick Theater and is developing her newest play Nancy, a Native bio-perspective on Nancy Reagan, a sequel to Queen Cleopatre and Princess Pocahontas, which was commissioned by OSF and the Public Theater for the American Revolutions cycle. Her first feature film, A Winter Love (writer/director/producer) will premiere at festivals this year.

Megan Mayer: “I am a Minneapolis-based artist working with choreography, dance, experimental video and photography. 2021 marked my 30-year anniversary as a dancemaker. I believe our bodies are resilient, tenacious, intelligent and expressive, and that our days are full of movement choices. I obsess over transposition, translation, minimalism, mimicry, tenderness, wry humor, loneliness, social anxiety, fake bad timing and exacting musicality. Drawn to the edges of the experience of performing: the anticipatory rapid heartbeat before going onstage, and the regretful relief after exiting, my work often reveals where that switch lives in the body. I make deeply personal dances that celebrate the people performing them. My work has been generously supported by McKnight Foundation Fellowships in Choreography and choreographic residencies at the National Center for Choreography (NCC) in Akron, Ohio and the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) in Tallahassee, Florida.” www.meganmayer.com

Born in Stillwater, Oklahoma, Arneshia Williams is a weaver and mover who creates with an underlying purpose of sharing experiences that help uplift and reframe the culture of today. She views her artwork as snapshots into the social, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of life. Often referencing history as a distanced conceptual backdrop, her work explores contemporary relationships through performance. She is interested in dance, vocality, sound, and media and is particularly invested in African Diasporic and Black American forms of expression. Arneshia has been awarded residencies and scholarships to support her choreography and danced works by communal and nationally known artists. Recent residencies and support include Dea Studios, Momentum: New Dance Works, 331 Studios - Rosy Simas Danse, and MRAC Next Step Fund. Her written publication record include topics within the areas of dance, the African diaspora, and spirituality, with a focus on bodied spiritual expression, dance education, and community.

Alys Ayumi Ogura is a storyteller through movement, voice, and her quirky humor. Her performances have been described as “compelling” and “fierce” by the Star Tribune. Ogura has performed her choreographies since 2010 at the Walker Art Center, Southern Theater, and other venues around the Twin Cities. She has also worked with artists nationally and internationally, and most recently with Laurie Van Wieren, April Sellers Dance Collective, and MotionArt. Ogura is a former Arts Organizing Institute (2017-18) fellow through Pangea World Theater, and she is a 2021 Naked Stages fellow at the Pillsbury House Theatre. To give back to Minnesota’s dance community, she serves on the DanceMN steering committee.

Morgan Thorson creates dances informed by experimental research and development. Working from and against a background in ballet, improvisation, and Skinner Releasing Technique, her focus in material-making is to wild through the oppressive patterns that live in her body and surface the assumptions and privileges that arise from intimately knowing those pathways. Dancing her body, now, within the bewilderment of feeling, sensation, and presence, she aspires to hold the complexity of space as an active material and collaborator. Sometimes, this work happens alone at night, in the dark. Morgan’s most recent solo work, Group Choreography, 2021, was exhibited in TEHOM, a group show at SIM Gallery. Public Love, created with and performed by Alanna Morris-Van Tassel, Allie Hankins, Jessica Cressey, Non Edwards, Sam Johnson, and Valerie Oliveiro, was presented at the Walker Art Center in 2018. In 2016, she received the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, and from 2012-2016, she was a Creative Campus Fellow at Wesleyan University. Morgan started making dances in 2000.

As a Radical Healing Artist and Organizer, Nicole M Smith has experience and expertise in using artistic methods to address trauma, difficult experiences and injustice, to unravel dynamics of disempowerment, oppression, and systemic methods of control. Nicole has crafted her aesthetic by fusing Theatre of the Oppressed, Art of Hosting, Mindfulness, Supportive Listening, and the Amplification of Muted Voice(s). She does this through lecture, performance, teachings, and workshop/residency design and partnership.

Nicole's work has been experienced at the International Federation of Settlement Houses in Berlin, GER, the Youth Services of America Conference in Houston, TX, the Evangelical Lutheran Churches of America Conference in New Orleans, LA, and more. In Fall 2016, Nicole was honored to have been invited to the White House (under Obama’s Administration) for her work in the Bisexual/Queer Community.