Christian Bardin is an interdisciplinary artist and teacher originally from Houston, Texas, whose favorite work in any discipline tends to come at the intersection of great risk, great craft, and great love. They recently composed and directed the short opera YR GOD MY GOD under Minnesota Opera’s MNiatures commission. She co-directed The Nature Crown (Theatre Forever/Guthrie Theater), and has assisted for Ten Thousand Things, Theater Mu, Jungle Theater, and others. A professional actor since 2009, they have had a long relationship with CornerHouse, a Children's Advocacy Center, assisting in forensic interview training. Other performance credits include work with the Jungle Theater, Minnesota Opera, Guthrie Theater, and Sandbox Theatre, among others. Later this year Christian is releasing her first full-length album of original music, entitled Shorts, which uses musique concrète and imaginative versus real sonic space to explore themes of personal upheaval and rebirth.

Maddie Granlund is an interdisciplinary live artist. Her work is choreographic, meshing organic and digital materials together into layered live-images. Her work expands directly from ontological theory (the study of being) to critically question liveness as a medium and explore what is present/what lies beyond presence. Maddie has a degree in Contemporary Performance Practice from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She has been an associate artist with both the Moving Company and Ultimate Dancer, presented installation work at Jupiter Artland and North East Sculpture, and devised contemporary performance works through residence in elementary schools. www.maddiegranlundart.com

Atlese Robinson is a writer, performer, director, producer, and the founding artistic director of Ambiance Theatre Company. Hailing from Saint Paul, MN by way of Chicago, IL, Atlese grew up glued to the stories of her elders. As a result, Atlese’s writing style places an emphasis on the natural flow of speech as a means to preserve the integrity of oral history. Atlese’s writing style earned her a spot as a Playwrights’ Center 2021-22 Many Voices Mentee. As a performer, Atlese thrives most when her practice merges with her spirituality, encouraging a syncretism of the mind, body, and soul. Her previous credits include ensemble in The Dutchman (Penumbra Theatre Company), The Garden (Ambiance Theatre Company), co-star in Contact by Simone Brookes LeClaire, ensemble in Rebirth of Rabbit’s Foot (Mixed Blood Minneapolis), and Atlese is a 2020 Naked Stages Fellow. Atlese’s previous directing credits include Naked I : Self Defined (20% Theatre Company), The Spectrum of Blackness (Ambiance Theatre Company), Waiting in Vain (Ambiance Theatre Company), and The Place (Lyric Opera of North). Atlese prides herself on serving as an usher to director at theatre companies around the Twin Cities as no job is too small for a leader. Atlese’s leadership earned her a Springboard for the Arts 20/20 Artist Fellowship 20-2021. Atlese’s ultimate mission with Ambiance Theatre Company is to support Black dramatic writers through script development, produce new works, and center the need for engaging Black audiences.

Judith Holo Shuǐ Xiān is an interdisciplinary choreographer, improviser, and sound artist. Her work prioritizes and centers the experiences of QTIPOC, and stands in allyship to those of other marginalized identities. She has presented works at venues including Fresh Oysters Performance Research, Walker Art Center, Bryant Lake Bowl, Tek Box, The Southern Theater, Intermedia Arts (Minneapolis, MN), Rochester Art Center, and 9 Herkimer Place (Brooklyn, NY) and has recently enjoyed collaborating with others including Dua Saleh, Emily Gastineau, Rosy Simas, HIJACK/Galia Eibenschutz, Valerie Oliveiro, Leila Awadallah, Judith Howard, Pramila Vasudevan, Megan Meyer, and Erin Drummond. She is a 2017 Q-Stage: New Works and 2019 Momentum: New Dance Works recipient.

Anat Spiegel (IL/NL/USA) is a composer and vocalist specializing in cross-platform performance. Her work stems from a vocal perspective and focuses on the endless expressions of the human voice. In the juxtaposition of jazz, theater and contemporary classical music, Spiegel's compositions consider the cultural gravity of singing itself and the connection between written language and its sounding expression. Spiegel is a member of the composer’s collective Monotak and the spoken word duo Noon and Ain. Her recent works includes the opera Medulla (La Monnaie), the electronic opera Before Present (National Dutch Opera and ADE), the online opera The Transmigration of Morton F (Holland Festival) and the chamber quartet My Four Mothers (Cedar Commissions.) Spiegel is a recipient of the 2020 McKnight composers fellowship. www.anatspiegel.com

Ricardo Beaird is a Twin Cities-based theater maker originally from Nashville, Tennessee. In addition to performing with Pangea World Theater, Park Square Theatre, Red Eye Theater, and Ten Thousand Things Theater, Beaird is an advisory council member with the queer-led theater collective Lightning Rod and an artist council member for the 2021 Northern Spark arts festival. As a playwright and director, their work includes DOOMSCROLL with MK and Tia!, a play that follows two podcasts hosts as they fall down a rabbit hole of conspiracies involving 5G paranoia, presented at the Guthrie Theatre’s Blackness Is Festival; SPOOK, a devised ritual exploring the gifts and curses of Black ancestry created in partnership with Suzanne Cross and Umbrella Collective; and COUNTDOWN!, a dance party at the end of the world that explores weaponized nostalgia, created with Megan Burns through the Red Eye Theater’s New Works 4 Weeks Festival. Currently, Ricardo is the Community Development Director at Springboard for the Arts, whose mission is to support artists with the tools to make a living and a life and to steward just, equitable communities.

Lelis K. Brito is a Venezuelan-American theater director, choreographer, educator, performer, writer and director of the Center for Moving Cultures. As director of CMC, Brito advocates for tactile/kinaesthetic knowledge in education and cultural transmission. As an artist, Brito has performed with local and national companies and has created over 80 original works, varying from six-minute dance solos to one-hour plays and three-hour long movement-theatre works. The core of Brito’s work is the human body’s potential and activation—the work of clarifying choice-making through the knowledge gained within the direct experience of a moving sensing body. Of particular interest are the themes of relationality with all beings; recognizing how we physically code-switch; the politics of resting and nesting; how to be inclusive of a wide range of cultural bodies; and how to include our whole moving bodies in life, work, and education. www.lelisbrito.com

Ritika Ganguly, PhD., is a Minneapolis-based composer, anthropologist, and grant-writing consultant, born and raised in New Delhi, India. Her consulting practice and artistic practice both strive for an equality based on difference, rather than on the similarity of things, people, and knowledges. Ritika has trained in genres within Bengali music and contemporary Indian musical theater. She has received numerous awards for her work in the Baul (Bengali Sufi) musical style. She was recently commissioned by the Minnesota Opera to compose a mini opera in Bangla/Bengali. Xylem is an opera without notated scores, sung in a South Asian folk opera format of stylized speech and narration. Her methodology is deep listening, and in her compositions and voice lessons, she focuses on developing aural skills and deepening the aptitude to hear. Ritika is a 2021 McKnight Composer at the American Composers Forum, and is a loose, long leaf tea enthusiast. www.ritikagangulymusic.com

A.P. Looze is a white, trans interdisciplinary artist living in Minneapolis.Their performances, visual art, music, and installations are reflections of deep personal inquiry and emphasize transformation, love, and embodiment. They seek the truth and go on heartfelt and honest adventures to find it. Often they use personal stories, spiritual experience, humor, mythologies and the psyche to create work that allows themself to find a resonant belonging in their own body. Their original staged works have been produced by institutions and events such as 20% Theatre, Patrick's Cabaret, Queertopia, Pleasure Rebel, Pillsbury House + Theater and The Guthrie. They were a Jerome-funded 2018 Naked Stages Fellow (Pillsbury House + Theater), and a Jerome-funded 2019 Artist on the Verge Fellow (Northern Lights).

José A. Luis was born in Veracruz, Mexico and raised in Racine, Wisconsin. Considered a “late dancer” he began his formal training at UW-Milwaukee, graduating with a BFA in dance. He performed and created works locally before moving to dance professionally in Chicago. Collaborative, undergraduate, and post-undergraduate pieces led to festivals, residencies, as well as progress showings during this time. Now in Minneapolis, he hones his introspective, honest approach to dance making as an independent solo choreographer. The artistic and personal growth across borders formed a nine-year dream to self-produce an evening-length show. In September of 2021 this dream became reality by honoring the people who have shaped his voice. Challenged by dancing for artists again (after a seven-year hiatus) and teaching, José approaches movement in 2022 with the intent to accept, challenge, and learn as we are, human. For more: www.jose.dance.

Kate Sutton-Johnson is a theater-maker, creative director, writer, and 3D designer specializing in performative events, speculative design and immersive installations. Kate holds a BFA in set design from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and she has been recognized with numerous awards, from the Twin City’s Iveys to USA Today’s top 10 lists. She has designed dozens of shows locally and nationally, and her credits include contemporary dramas, classical theater, large-scale musicals, devised work and everything in between. Additionally, Kate works extensively in the museum world; conceptualizing experiential exhibits that focus on natural history, anthropology, science, ethnography, archaeology and conservation. www.ksjdesignstudio.com