AXIS Dance Company Announces 2024 Choreo-Lab Fellowship Recipients

AXIS Dance Company—hailed as one of the nation's most acclaimed ensembles of disabled, non-disabled, and neurodiverse performers—has announced the recipients of the 2024 AXIS Choreo-Lab Fellowship, taking place May 28–June 8, 2024 in Berkeley, CA.

Now in its sixth year, the AXIS Choreo-Lab Fellowship is an annual mentorship and creative development program designed to expand, refine, and advance the artistic skills of disabled and neurodiverse choreographers in the United States.
 
Under the mentorship of AXIS Dance Company Artistic Director Nadia Adame and Choreo-Lab Alumnus Kayla Hamilton, the 2024 Fellowship recipients have been selected from a nationwide search and represent multiple spectrums of disability. They are Brian Golden, August Grace, Joelle Santiago, and Larissa Velez-Jackson.
 
Founded by AXIS in 2018 with support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Lab was the first of its kind. The dance field has historically excluded and marginalized disabled artists –– not just performers but also the choreographers and directors who tell the stories we experience on stage and screen. The Choreo-Lab was a vital and long-overdue move to shift this inequity in our culture, in the form of a choreographic program specifically designed to nurture the talents of disabled creators. 
 
During the Choreo-Lab, participants are led through a creation process stemming from their own concept, collaborating with an integrated group of performers including AXIS dancers and professional dancers from the local community. The Lab provides studio space, dancers, and administrative support for every choreographer. This opportunity also includes ongoing mentorship and professional development support in the year following the Lab.
 
“It's extremely important to me to provide a space where disabled choreographers can experiment without having the pressure of ‘putting on a show' for the audience”, said Adame. “Having space to play and experiment is important for the development of any artist. In the process, we create community and challenge one another to become more versatile artists while celebrating what makes us unique.”
 
"The Choreo-Lab allowed me to build relationships with other Disabled choreographers and to take risks inside this context, a rare and necessary aspect of sparking creativity and innovation in community,” adds Hamilton. “As a mentor I hope to keep this legacy alive and support choreographers in their own risk taking and further articulation of their creative vision and interdependent learning."
 
The Lab has proven to be a significant home for artistic growth and discovery for disabled and neurodiverse artists in the United States. Many Choreo-Lab Fellows have gone on to start their own renowned dance companies and festivals, as well as choreograph major works for AXIS and other companies worldwide. Neve Mazique-Bianco, who choreographed the work Flora Hereafter: how flowers survive with AXIS as a Pina Bausch Fellow, is now co-producing Mouthwater Dance Festival – an arts hub by and for Black, Brown, and Indigenous disabled artist in Seattle, WA. Alum Ben Levine was also invited to set his work Tread on AXIS, and is now collaborating with the company and researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in a multi-year project exploring the possibilities of disability robotics in dance.

ABOUT AXIS DANCE COMPANY

Led by Artistic Director Nadia Adame and Managing Director Danae Rees, AXIS is one of the nation's most acclaimed ensembles of disabled, non-disabled, and neurodiverse performers. AXIS was founded in 1987 and creates world-class productions that challenge perceptions and redefine dance and disability. The Bay Area, California-based company has toured over 100 cities in the US, Israel and Palestine, United Kingdom, Europe, United Arab Emirates, and Russia, and has received nine Isadora Duncan Dance Awards. AXIS commissions new work from a host of renowned international choreographers including Marc Brew, Arthur Pita, Robin Dekkers, Bill T. Jones, Jennifer Archibald, Stephen Petronio, Amy Seiwert, and Asun Noales. In tandem with a robust performance calendar, AXIS provides unparalleled integrated dance education and outreach programs. AXIS builds paths to dance education for disabled and non-disabled people of all ages, experiences, and spectrum of disabilities.

About Brian Golden

Brian Golden is a choreographer and movement director based in Los Angeles and New York. He obtained his BFA from Chapman University where he studied Dance and Film Production. Brian has researched improvisation in Israel with the Batsheva and Vertigo Dance Company. He has presented work at The Joyce Theater as a part of the Martha Graham Dance Companies fall season, Battery Dance Festival, Southern California Institute of Architecture, New Century Dance Project, and McCallum Choreography Festival. He has also choreographed music videos for Yung Gravy, Daddy Yankee, and Two Friends. Most recently, he completed a choreography residency at Jacob's Pillow and studied choreographic devices under the mentorship of Doug Varone. His work explores elements of conflict, expression, and sensation in order to reveal dramatic scenarios and multi-dimensional characters.

About August Grace

August Grace is a dance artist, dramaturg, and choreographer from Vermont whose work explores absurdity, opacity, and queer deviance. They graduated with a BA in Dance Theory and Criticism from Mount Holyoke College in 2023. August received grant funding from Mount Holyoke College to conduct research in Belgium and the Netherlands investigating queer, disabled opacity and grotesque performance. Their choreographic work has been presented at Three Dollar Bill, TICTAC Art Centre, The Henny Jurriens Foundation, Mount Holyoke College, The Brick Theater (NYC), Boston Ballet School, Bridge for Dance, and Urbanity Dance Company. They were a choreographer and movement director for the first all-neurodivergent workshop of The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Nighttime. They acted as dramaturg for Fashioned Creature by Sammie Murray and To Be Swept Up! by Bebe Miller and Angie Hauser. They have performed works under the direction of Sarah Lass, Barbie Diewald, Kathleen Mitchell, Tom Goldhand, Lauren Langlois, and Alaina Albertson Murphy. August is currently building work that integrates live music, Shibari, and text derived from queer anti-language.

About Joelle Santiago

Joelle Antonia Santiago (b. New York, NY) is a New York and Paris based choreographer and director. Joelle is a recipient of the Fulbright Harriet Hale-Woolley Award for the Arts. She is currently an Artist in Residence at the Fondation des États- Unis in Paris, France, where she creates choreographic projects as part of the 2023-2024 season. She has presented work at the NYU Tisch School for the Arts, The Clark Art Institute, Roulette Intermedium, Chelsea Piers, The International Studio and Curatorial Program, the Fondation des États-Unis, and with the PROMPTUS collective. She is an adjunct professor at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and has guest lectured at the Peabody Conservatory at John's Hopkins University. She frequently collaborates with Blackbox Music Ensemble, musicians, sculpture artists, theorists, visual artists, and filmmakers. Joelle graduated Cum Laude from Barnard College of Columbia University (B.A., Dance), a nominee of the Bold Award, honoring alumna Grace Lee Boggs. She has sung with The Fire Ensemble (The Shed, NY), and sang classical and contemporary American, Russian and French repertoire with the Barnard-Columbia Chamber Choir and Chorus.

About Larissa Velez-Jackson

Larissa Velez-Jackson (LVJ) (they/she) is a choreographer, interdisciplinary artist, and teacher who uses improvisation as a main tool for research and creation. They are a Boricua-Italian-American originally from Newark, New Jersey, and an ongoing cancer survivor, committed to the healing potential of art and bodymind practice. Called “an adroit physical comedian” who “seems to be questioning entrenched conventions of contemporary performance” by The New York Times, LVJ creates works that offer audiences a warm entry into contemporary art's critical and political discourse. LVJ was named a Caroline Hearst Choreographic Fellow at Princeton University ('21-'22) and was recently awarded Dance/NYC's Disability. Dance. Artistry Residency ('22). In 2011, they launched an experimental song-and-dance collaboration with their husband, Jon Velez-Jackson, called Yackez, “The World's Most Lovable Musical Duo." Yackez presented a two-act world premiere at New York Live Arts in March 2017, entitled “Give It To You Stage,” a year after LVJ received the prestigious Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Grant to Artists Award. In 2016, LVJ was also nominated for “Outstanding Emerging Choreographer” by the New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” awards. LVJ is the Artistic Director of their project-based company, LVJ Performance Co. The theme of healing of Self and Community continues in their new Yackez project that began its research at Jacob's Pillow's Pillow Lab in the spring of '23.

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