Artist Bios

Asha Rowland is a multi-disciplinary artist and dancer with a focus in Bharatanatyam, various African idioms of dance, Raq Sharqi (mentored by Sabah Saeed), Hip Hop, and more. A disciple of Smt. Hema Rajagopalan and Smt. Krithika Rajagopalan of Natya Dance Theatre, she has been training in Bharatanatyam since the age of 8. She taught Bharatanatyam and her own experimental movement to Chicago land area youth for over 6 years and has been a professional group and solo performer since 2014 after her arangetram. Her personal work and movement has been a guide and a by-product of exploring her multiethnic heritage; driven by curiosity of cultural intersections, ancestry and community connections. Asha performance and solo work is based in storytelling, world-creation, character development, and puzzle-making encompassed around social justice concepts and mythology with a purpose of illuminating global power dynamics and imbalances. Often drawing from her dreams has led her to explore themes on reality, time, paradoxes, illusion, and how to convey subjective perspective. More recently, Asha was a part of the Choreographer’s Evening 2023 cohort, premiering a section of her latest evening-length work and is in residence at the Cowles Center through the Generating Room program.

Antonio Duke: THE IFÈ LAB PROGRAM DIRECTOR: (He/Him/His) I am an actor, playwright, director, and griot: a solo West African oral storyteller. My goal is to provide easily accessible digital theater that motivates, inspires, and replenishes black communities. Digital theater is theater that is filmed and streamed. If black communities don't have easy access to theater that reflects back at us our humanity then we are not able to envision our artistic future. I have been a digital theater maker since 2012. Pillsbury House Theater received The Summer 612 Micro Grant and hired my brothers and I to create a theater piece centered on nonviolence in the Powderhorn Community. The culmination of the grant was a digital theater piece at the Minneapolis Central Library. I continued my relationship with Pillsbury House Theater in 2012 as part of their Late Nite Series. After graduating from The University of Minnesota/Guthrie B.F.A Actor Training Program I received the 2018 Naked Stages Fellowship with Pillsbury House Theatre where I created my first solo play called Ashes of Moons. My second solo play Tears of Moons was accepted into The Guthrie Theatre’s Solo Emerging Artist Celebration in 2019. Since then Tears of Moons has been filmed and streamed with Parksquare Theater. With these two pieces I received an inaugural Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship the same year. I created my third solo play Missing Mississippi Moons with additional support from The Minnesota State Arts Board’s Artist Initiative Grant. Missing Mississippi Moons was filmed and streamed by Combustible Theater Company, Los Vegas Theater Company, and The Guthrie Theater. I am a Wonderlust Ensemble Member.

Eshay Brantley (she/her), a multidisciplinary artist born in southside Chicago, moved to Minneapolis in 2004. Social justice advocate, teaching artist, and mother. Brantley’s artistic work commenced in a ritual-based performance. She is dedicated to nurturing the narratives of Black folks, Black womanhood, and Black maternal. Over the past ten years, she has worked with Children’s Theater Company, TruArt Speaks, Minneapolis Community Ed, Park Square Theater, Washburn High School, PBS Twin Cities Public Television, The University of Chicago, Guthrie Theater, Ambiance Theater, Exposed Brick Theatre, Tangible Collective, and Women for Political Change. She’s currently a ECI Fellow and a Spotlight Education Teaching Artist in Residence at Hennepin Theater Trust. Eshay is committed to the work she does in the Twin Cities arts community and continues to plant seeds for a better future for Black babies.