Atim Opoka is a Ugandan-American songwriter, vocalist, composer, producer and teaching artist who fuses afro-pop and alternative beats while embracing the power of transformative storytelling. She is most recently a 2023 Jerome Hill Fellow, a 2021 recipient of a Waters Grant, as well as an Our Space is Spoken For Fellowship from the Twin Cities Media Alliance. Opoka has performed original works at the Stone Arch Bridge Festival and Powderhorn Park Festival. She has a BA in Vocal Performance from McNally Smith College of Music. www.atimopoka.com

As an Indigenous art-maker and scholar, Sam Aros-Mitchell's work spans the disciplines of performance, sound/light/scenic design, choreography, and embodied writing. Sam has been a core member of Rosy Simas Danse for seven years as a performer, teacher, and community engagement organizer. Sam has written and published articles in academic and art publications such as Native American Research Journal, Dance Research Journal, and Mn Artists. In 2018 Sam founded Aros and Son Publishing, dedicated to the work of Native writers. Sam holds a PhD in Drama and Theater from the joint doctoral program at UC San Diego/UC Irvine, an MFA in Dance Theatre from UC San Diego, and a BFA from UC Santa Barbara. Currently, Sam is a postdoctoral fellow at Arizona State University, at the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands, where he teaches and develops symposiums to engage Indigenous artists and community. www.samarosmitchell.com

Margaret Ogas is an emerging dance artist based in the Twin Cities. Using an interdisciplinary approach rooted in dance and informed by Chicana cultural sensibilities, her works tell surreal everyday stories through a collage of movement, text, and sound. Ogas’s choreography has been presented by the Walker Art Center, Candy Box Dance Festival, Center for Performing Arts, FD13, Mizna, Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio, and others. Margaret is a 2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow. She was awarded a 2022 Next Step Fund grant by the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council and was a 2021 Naked Stages Fellow at Pillsbury House + Theatre. Margaret has been a core collaborator and performer with the Taja Will Ensemble since 2018. She has also performed for Laurie Van Weiren, Chris Schlicting, Sequoia Hauck, and others. She is a teaching artist, and is currently a youth instructor at Young Dance. www.margaretogas.com

Photo: Bruce Silcox

Rebecca Nichloson is a playwright, creative writer, and singer/songwriter. She is the author of numerous creative works, including Dear America (libretto & vocals), Mara, Queen of the World (an acapella musical), and The Wild, Bold Enlightenment of Velvet the Mistress, among others. She holds a MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University and an MA in English Literature. She was also the recipient of a 2019 Commission from the Cedar Cultural Center for which she created Multicolored Musings: Jewels of Love, Loss, & Triumph (a three-part collection of songs exploring her Black heritage and passion for genre-eclectic music) and received a 2020 honorable mention from the McKnight Foundation (Spoken Word). In addition, she is the recipient of the Liberace Award, the Howard Stein Fellowship, The Matthew’s Fellowship, an America-in-Play Fellowship and a Many Voices Fellowship from the Minneapolis Playwrights Center (2008-2009). She is also artistic director of Nichloson + Company. Learn more at www.rebeccanichloson.com.

Emily Michaels King is a performing artist based in St. Paul, Minnesota exploring authentic expression and going really deep in there through movement, multimedia, and visual compositions. Her work has been presented at the Walker Art Center, the Guthrie Theater, Candy Box Dance Festival, and the Southern Theater, among others. Emily is known for her fearless personal work, provocative style, and collaged solo performances, including: her award winning show MAGIC GIRL, multimedia online work DIGITAL, and IN PERSON, a companion to DIGITAL. 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 technology to focus on themes of self-discovery and reclamation, womanhood, and bold expressions of personal truth. www.emilymichaelsking.com

Photo: Bill Cameron

Ricardo Beaird (any pronoun) is a Twin Cities-based theater maker originally from Nashville, Tennessee. Their work is informed by the pursuit of healing through storytelling, the unfinished business of ghosts, dis/connection through the internet, and Beyoncé. In addition to performing with Pangea World Theater, Park Square Theatre, Red Eye Theater, and Ten Thousand Things Theater, Beaird was an advisory council member with the queer-led theater collective Lightning Rod and an artist council member for the 2021 and 2022 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, 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.

D. Allen is a multidisciplinary poet, performer, and artist living in Minneapolis. Hybridity is central to D.'s creative practice. Their works typically interweave elements of text, image, movement, performance, mixed-media objects, and/or sound to explore themes of disabled embodiment, queer and trans identity, kinship beyond blood, and intimacy with place and the natural world. Their first book, A Bony Framework for the Tangible Universe, was published by The Operating System in 2019. These days, D. is writing a book-length lyric essay and making new material for their ongoing performance project, NET/WORK. www.thebodyconnected.com

Photo: Lior Allay

Zola Dee is a playwright, screenwriter, and performer whose works are deeply invested in exploring Black Americana, African diasporic religions, and imagining freer worlds for the Black collective body. Her most notable work, GUNSHOT MEDLEY: Part 1, was Ovation Award-recommended and published in Routledge’s Contemporary Plays by Women of Color. Her work has been seen and/or developed with Rogue Machine Theater, Collaborative Artists Bloc, The Playwright’s Center, Hi-Arts, CalArts Center for New Performance, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. While most of her artistic career has been based in Los Angeles, she is currently living in Minneapolis where she is a Jerome Fellow at the Playwright’s Center. Collaboration and community building is foundational to Zola’s mission as an artist. She currently works in the performance wing at the Walker Arts Center as a part-time Project Manager. She has also worked for institutions such as The Guthrie Theater and Pasadena Playhouse. For more information, visit www.zoladee.com or follow on instagram @iamzoladee.

Alys Ayumi Ogura is a storyteller through her movements, voice, and quirky humor. Growing up an only child in Japan gave her enough room to develop quite an imagination. After trading Japanese rice fields for Iowa corn fields, Ogura saw that dance and movement would the best outlets for her to share her ever-percolating stories from her life experiences. Ogura has worked since 2010 with more than 30 artists—near and far—including Hauser Dance, Emily Johnson/Catalyst, Emily Gastineau, Kata Juhasz, Pam Gleason, Pramila Vasudevan, and Laurie Van Wieren. She has toured with April Sellers’s ASDC and with Sarah LaRose-Holland’s KEDC, and she has performed her choreography at various Twin Cities venues, including the Southern Theater, Walker Art Center, and the Cedar Cultural Center. Ogura is a former Arts Organizing Institute Fellow (2017-18) and a Naked Stages Fellow (2021). She serves as a DanceMN steering committee member.

Photo: Canaan Mattson for Walker Art Center