Alumni Updates
Emerge Collective
Following the 2011 EMERGENYC cycle the alumni decided to continue their successful and inspiring collaboration by founding the Emerge Collective. The Emerge Collective is a non-hierarchical performance collective of interdisciplinary artists and activists from the 2011 EMERGENYC program at the Hemispheric Institute. We meet regularly in 3-month cycles to develop existing works and create new ones with a work in progress showing at the end of each cycle. Cycle one members include: Noelle Ghoussaini, Maria Schirmer, Katrina De Wees, Zavé Martohardjono, M. Liz Andrews, Shelah Marie, Lily Mengesha and Stephen Graf.
Katrina De Wees (2011)
Katrina is a Brooklyn born and based interdisciplinary artist, currently working (primarily) in choreography and performance. After experimenting with her education and art at Hampshire College, she returned to NYC and presented her work at Dixon Place, Williamsburg Art Nexus and MIXnyc among others. She currently works in museum education at The Studio Museum in Harlem, and is developing a new work through the Emerge Collective to present at the 2012 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. In the summer of 2012, Katrina will begin the certificate program at Wesleyan University's Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance.
M. Liz Andrews (2011)
@BeJustArt | LetterToObama.com
M. Liz Andrews is a doctoral student in Cultural Studies at George Mason University where she also serves as the Graduate Assistant for the GMU Diversity Research Group. Liz’s academic work explores the ways art can serve as a venue and vehicle for activism and discussions about democracy and social change. In 2009, she launched LetterToObama – an artistic space for democratic engagement. As the director of the project, she curates a monthly online publication and has produced live events in Washington D.C., New York City and Chicago. Liz received her B.A. in American Studies from Wesleyan University and her M.A. from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She is originally from Denver, Colorado.
Mieke D (2009)
Mieke is a queer mixed race femme of Asian and European descent, who seeks to investigate how a diversity of styles can or cannot co-exist in a performative space, hunting for cohesive narratives and aesthetic harmony while travelling through a vast terrain of fragmentation. The goal of her solo and collaborative work is to express the unstable nature of race, gender, nationality, and authenticity. Mieke studied at the Experimental Theater Wing at NYU and the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics as part of EMERGNENYC. She has performed with La Pocha Nostra, the Theater of a Two-Headed Calf, Target Margin Theater Company, and Taylor Mac, among others, and she has worked on numerous community-based theater projects with Cornerstone Theater Company (in California) and The Foundry Theatre Company (in New York). She has shared original work at Dance New Amsterdam, Dixon Place, NYU, the Bushwick Arts Festival, and Under St. Marks, and hopes to keep adding to that list. Mieke continues to grow as an artist and an activist, working from a place of love for all those who have shaped her and this ever-evolving culture we live in.
Claudia Sofía Garriga López (2010)
{click for Vimeo Profile}
Claudia Sofía Garriga López (a.k.a Dr. Mamamela) is currently completing her PhD in the department of Social and Cultural Analysis of NYU. After participating in EMERGE Claudia went on to be a part of the Art and Resistance course in San Cristóbal de las Casas, México. She is thrilled to be a part of the hemi family because there are always events, programs, and people, that bring politics and art together in meaningful ways.
Noelle Ghoussaini (2011)
noelleghoussaini.com
Noelle Ghoussaini is a playwright, director, performer and arts educator. She has lived, traveled, performed and taught throughout the United States, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Her work is dedicated to using arts to examine and re-imagine our society within a political, social and historical context. She has written four original plays and curated numerous devised pieces, which have been staged at theaters, site-specific locations and community gardens throughout NYC. As a director, she has worked with companies such as Culture Project, Noor Theatre, the Jenin Freedom Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, Sepia Works, Brave New World Repertory Theatre, and the Movement Theatre Company. She is currently developing a project on Phoenician mythology and a play about birds for a skateboard park.
Beatrice Glow (2008)
beatriceglow.org
austronesian-institute.org
obsesssionscollective.com
Beatrice Glow is a project-based Taiwanese-
Stephen Graf (2011)
Stephen has written and performed in three solo performances, the most recent of which was entitled About Face: Marking the Unmarked. This piece explored histories of whiteness in the US and their entanglement in Stephen’s own life. He is currently writing a fourth piece about sexual difference and what it means to be alone. He can also be seen throughout New York City performing with the indie improv group COACH.
Leslie Guyton (2008)
MovementWorkshopGroup.org
Leslie Guyton is a dance & theater director based in Brooklyn, NY. She's the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the Movement Workshop Group. Guyton is the Executive Producer and Curator for The First Layer Festival, a yearly dance, music, and theater festival in NYC, and is assistant directing Under Construction with Anne Bogart and SITI Company in April 2011. She sat in on rehearsals with Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal in Germany, Spain, Portugal, England, and the US in 2007 and 2008. Guyton was Assistant to the Executive Director at the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance from 2009-2010 and was a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab in 2009.
Under Guyton's direction, the Movement Workshop Group has created four evening-length pieces inspired by an element. Her works have been presented at such institutions as Dixon Place, La MaMa ETC, John Hancock Hall, the A.R.T.'s Club Oberon, Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center, The Brecht Forum, Montauk's Sole East and Movement Research at Dance Theater Workshop. The Boston Globe chose Dust to Dust (2006) and Moontides (2008) as "Dance Pick of the Week" in 2006 and 2008 respectively.
Megan Hanley (2009)
meganhanley.weebly.com
Megan Hanley is an actor, activist, and teaching artist who is into collaborative, physical, and political performance. Several months after Emerging in 2009, she moved to Lima, Perú, where she studied with Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani and worked with two community-based organizations, using collaborative theatre to plan a variety show with the youth-run group Jovenes de Buena Voluntad and to allow teenagers at La Casa de Panchita to discuss sexual and reproductive rights with their peers. As a performer, she devised Tranformarte with Jorge Baldeón and Liliana Albornoz at elgalpon.espacio and appeared as an invited artist in Cuaderno de Anatomía’s Cuestión de Fé, part of the 5th Annual UCSUR Festival Internacional de Teatro. Megan will return to New York in 2011 and looks forward to connecting with other artists/activists to train, brainstorm, and stage public work… Want to collaborate? Contact her through her website at meganhanley.weebly.com.
Denae Hannah (2012)
Denae Hannah, a native of Fort Worth, Texas, is a performance artist, social entrepreneur, and Artistic Director and CEO of Denae Dance Theatre. She received her B.A. in Drama from Stanford University and M.F.A. in Performance and Choreography from Florida State University. Ms. Hannah is a 2012 EMERGENYC artist and a 2012-2013 Commissioned Artist at Stanford University. She was on Stanford's campus from February 10 - March 16 2013 to teach choreography from her new dance comedy FIVE STAR CHICK. Her work was performed for Parent's Weekend and for the Dance Division's winter dance concert "Performing Past, Fast Forward: The Body in 3D". Founded in September 2012, Denae Dance Theatre is a performing arts company that seeks to spark conversations on culture through performance pieces that employ satire and the physical collision of pop culture with high art. Performances often address contemporary issues on race and gender. The company is also actively seeking new business models and practices for dance organizations through the "Dance Like a Start-up" project.
Zoe Lukov (2009)
Zoe is an independent curator and performer born and raised in New York City. She currently works as Curatorial Coordinator at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (LA MoCA). She completed a 2010 Fulbright fellowship in Colombia where she explored the changes and continuities in both traditional and contemporary performance nationally working towards a re-imagining of cultural and political cartography. Zoe was honored to receive a 2009 EMERGENYC fellowship which allowed her to become completely imbedded in the Hemispheric family. Beginning as an intern three years ago, she is now Program Coordinator of the Hemispheric Institute's Encuentro. As a dancer, Zoe has worked with Venezuelan choreographer Mariangela Lopez in her company Accidental Movement. Zoe's curatorial projects focus on supporting the creation and dissemination of art that is both politically and socially relevant. Besides her work at the LA MoCA, she has organized various exhibitions in New York City at Skylight Projects gallery in chelsea, the Abrazo Interno Gallery at the Clemente Soto Vélez Center, Keyes Art Projects and Gallery Bar.
Benjamin Lundberg (2012)
jointhebenjam.org
Sara Lyons (2012)
www.sara-lyons.com
Sara Lyons makes theatre/does feminism. Primarily a director with periodic tendencies toward performance, writing, and teaching, she seeks to create work that builds bridges between the personal and the political, the body and the state, the interpersonal and the societal. Her work as a director has been presented at Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Culture Project, Primary Stages, Cherry Lane, EstroGenius, Planet Connections Theatre Festivity, and more. She has performed original work at P.S. 122, LaMaMa, and The Mobius Space (Boston), and her work as an educator has taken her to students of all ages in Mexico, South Africa, Wisconsin, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. She holds a BA in Theatre and Gender & Women's Studies from the University of Wisconsin- Madison and is a proud, grateful member of the 2012 EMERGENYC Cohort.
Ashley Marinaccio (2008)
ashley-marinaccio.com
Ashley is an activist and artist dedicated to creating theatre that challenges the status quo. She has numerous New York, Regional and National Tour directing, playwriting and performing credits. In addition to Project Girl Performance Collective, Ashley is a founder of Co-Op Theatre East (www.cooptheatreeast.org), alumna of Hemispheric Institute's EMERGENYC Fellowship, American Theatre Wing's Springboard NYC and proud member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab. Most recently, Ashley gave a TED Talk at Columbia University's Teacher's College. Visit www.ashley-marinaccio.com for more information.
Shelah Marie (2011)
shelahmarie.com
Shelah is a performer, educator and activist from Hollywood, Florida. Shelah studied theater and performance at Florida State University where she received dual BA degrees in Theater and Mass Media Studies. She recently graduated from the Performance Studies program at Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. She loves homemade popcorn, documentaries and Facebook. Currently, Shelah is in Brooklyn teaching, performing and trying to put one foot in front of the other. Visit www.ShelahMarie.com for more info.
shelahmarie.com
Zavé Martohardjono (2011)
zavemartohardjono.
Zavé works across mediums as a performance artist, video artist, documentary filmmaker, writer and curator. He is currently building on a performance and video series, “autogeography,” that employs interactive oral storytelling, self-portraiture and semi-mythical characters to remix and retell History, making space for liminal identities, ancestry and dreams. Zavé’s work has shown in film festivals, galleries and on stages in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Berlin, London, Zurich, Jakarta, Canada and the Netherlands. He currently works in media at the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice.
Jonathan McCrory (2010)
themovementtheatrecompany.
www.harlem9.org
Harlem-based Jonathan McCrory has worked professionally for the past seven years as a director, producer and actor throughout the East Coast (New York, Washington, DC, Baltimore, and Winston-Salem, NC). A Washington, DC native, he attended Duke Ellington School of the Arts, where he trained in musical theater and theater production. He earned a BFA degree in Acting and Africana Studies from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Jonathan is proud to say that in 2012 he officially became a published journalist through Howlround.com and within that same year was asked to serve as a Howlround trustee. He is a founding member of TMTC and holds the title as a Producing Artistic Leader. Jonathan is also the founder and producer of Harlem9 and through this organization Jonathan produced the sold-out festival called 48 Hours in Harlem. As a director, Jonathan has had the privilege to both direct and assistant direct amazing productions. As a director, Jonathan's credits include: Blacken the Bubble, The Sad, Secret (Sex) Life of Steve Urkel, Enter Your Sleep,Hope Speaks, Wake, Last Laugh, and Asking For More. Outside of his own directorial work, he has been able to work as an assistant director under both established and emerging directors such as Talvin Wilks: Anne & Emmet, One Quarter, and Banana Beer Bath; Charles Randalph-Wright: Motown Project; and Jesca Prudenco: Black Boy & The War. He recently curated the lobby of National Black Theatre for their production of Lyrics from Lockdown. The lobby was curated to help highlight the issues around Juvenile Justice in America with support by the Correctional Association of New York and Center for Nuleadership.
Lily Mengesha (2011)
Lily is a classroom educator and performance artist. Since joining the Emerge community in the spring of 2011, she has collaborated with Katrina De Wees in Liz Andrew's 4-year project Letter to Obama, and performed in playwright Shelah Marie's play, Ordinary Affects. Currently, she is working on a physical transformation performance surrounding the legacy of mixed raced identity in the political history of the United States. In the fall of 2012, she will begin a PhD program in the Department of Performance Studies at Brown University.
Julián Mesri (2010)
julianmesri.com
Julián J. Mesri is a New York based Argentinean-American director, writer and sound designer. He graduated Williams College with a B.A. in Philosophy having studied under Mark C. Taylor and was privileged to work with theatre figures like Tina Shepard and Carson Kreitzer. He was part of a unique exchange program with the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, and in 2010 he was part of the Hemispheric Institute's EMERGENYC program. He was recently named a 2010-2011 Van Lier Fellow at Repertorio Español where he recently directed the NYC premiere of Rafael Spregelburd's "La Estupidez." He also directed and produced his play “The King in Exile” at The Tank Theater, where he is a current artistic resident. His own work and design has also been shown at Dixon Place, New York Theatre Workshop, FringeNYC, PERFORMA ’10 and the LES Festival. He is a company member and sound designer with International WOW: “Reconstruction” (Ohio Theater) and “Auto Da Fe” (Baruch Center).
Yael Miriam (2008)
yaelmiriam.com
Yael Miriam recently received Israeli
Maria Schirmer (2011)
Since participating in the 2011 EmergeNYC program Maria completed her interdisciplinary Master’s in Performance and Politics at NYU. Her thesis, Performing Cultural Sovereignty: Home, Harvest and the Threat of Genetic Engineering, included a solo performance who will speak for nature? for which she designed and created a series of puppets and had a lively dialogue with a mailbox. She is currently working at a teaching artist with Community Word Project and as a project assistant in Digital Video Library (HIDVL) at the Hemispheric Institute.
Ariel Speedwagon (2010)
arielspeedwagon.com
Ariel Speedwagon’s work has been seen extensively on Broadway, Lafayette, Fulton, Chrystie, Avenue A, Leonard, and many other fine streets and avenues throughout New York City. Trained as a modern dancer, Ariel’s inherently interdisciplinary work has taken many forms — interactive sculpture, modern dance and dance theater, drag performance and burlesque, collective mapmaking, clowning, and video art. Most interested in the intersections of storytelling, participatory environments, magic, and democratizing knowledge, Ariel has tap danced about limericks, lectured about unicorns, made slapstick about apartheid, and built telephones that tell secrets. For video and upcoming events: www.arielspeedwagon.com (photo: Jeep Wheat)
Carolina Victoria Tapias Guzmán (2011)
