Artist Bios – Capacity Group
Antonio Ramos
(Antonio Ramos and the Gang Bangers)
Antonio Ramos was born and raised in Puerto Rico where he trained in jazz, salsa and African dance. He later received a B.F.A. in Dance from Purchase College/SUNY. Antonio began his career performing with Ballet Theatre of Puerto Rico, Ballet Hispanico of New York, Ballet Concierto and Ballet Municipal (Puerto Rico). More recently, Antonio has performed with choreographers Mark Dendy, Neil Greenberg, Kari Hooas, Luis Lara Malvacias, Jeremy Nelson, Stephen Petronio, Merian Soto, Kevin Wynn, Ori Flomin and Donna Uchizono, among others. Antonio has taught at the University of Puerto Rico, Ballet de San Juan; Ballet Teatro de Puerto Rico; Ballet Municipal of Puerto Rico; Ballet Concierto; Danza Jazz of Puerto Rico; Dance Space Center; BAAD!/Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance; Latin Dance Festival in New York City; Princeton, Cornell, Wesleyan and Marymount Universities; Barnard College; SUNY/Purchase; The New School; NYU; The International School of Bangkok; Den Norsken Ballett Hoyskole in Oslo, Norway; and The Paluca Shule in Dresden, Germany. https://www.antoniodance.com/
Davalois Fearon
(Davalois Fearon Dance)
Bessie awardee, Davalois Fearon, is a 2019 recipient of the prestigious MAP Fund Grant and one of Dance Magazine’s “7 Up-and-Coming Black Dance Artists Who Should Be On Your Radar.” Fearon is a critically acclaimed choreographer, dancer, and educator born in Jamaica and raised in the Bronx. She danced with Stephen Petronio from 2005-2017 and founded Davalois Fearon Dance in 2016 with the mission to push artistic and social boundaries. Her choreography said to reflect a “tenacious virtuosity,” has been presented nationally and internationally, including at renowned New York City venues such as the Joyce Theatre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the New Victory Theatre. Among others, Fearon has completed commissions for the Bronx Museum, Harlem Stage, and Barnard College, and has received an Alvin Ailey New Dance Direction Choreography Lab residency and continued support from the Bronx Council on the Arts. She is a professor at Purchase College. http://www.davaloisfearon.com/
Francesca Harper
(The Francesca Harper Project)
Founded in 2005 by Francesca Harper, The Francesca Harper Project is a not-for-profit company dedicated to creating groundbreaking dance, music, and theater works. Francesca Harper’s direction and choreographic work serves as the artistic foundation for the company, but it is the innovation and commitment to humanity and diversity that is fundamental to The Francesca Harper Project. The company aspires to create a unique style – classical dance forms, deconstructed and fused with cutting-edge text, music, and film. The content of the pieces are rooted in the most fundamental themes of creation, imperfection, love, humanity, race, sexuality, politics, and identity. The company debuted with a sold out premiere of Modo Fusion at the Ailey Citigroup Theater in August 2005. Since then, FHP has been presented by The 92nd Street Y, Harkness Dance Festival, the Makor/Steinhardt Center and Solstice: Dancing at the Crossroad in Times Square sponsored by Dancer’s Repsonding to AIDS. More recently the company has been featured at the Holland Dance Festival, Harlem Stage, The Bloomberg Culture Series, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Joyce Theater, New Jersey Performing Arts Center (with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra), New York City Center, Central Park SummerStage, ITE Contemporary Dance Festival, and The Venice Biennale. http://thefrancescaharperproject.org/
Jeremy McQueen
(The Black Iris Project)
Founded in 2016 by choreographer Jeremy McQueen, The Black Iris Project (BIP) is a ballet collaborative and education vehicle which creates new, relevant classical & contemporary ballet works that celebrate diversity and Black history. Based in New York City, the project hosts a team of predominantly artists of color delivering cross-discipline and wholly original works. Championing individuality, the collaborative harnesses the Black community’s inherent creative spirit to encourage and inspire youth of color to pursue art, movement and music as an expressive outlet and a means for collective healing. Since its inception, The BIP has been awarded generous support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Ford Foundation, New Music USA, BET, Shea Moisture, Radio City Rockettes, CUNY Dance Initiative, and has been featured in the New York Times, Elle Magazine, Village Voice, Out Magazine, amongst other publications. To date, The BIP has brought together over a dozen artistic collaborators and 70 performers to create 9 original ballets for over 20 performances around the country, and has served as a catalyst to new ideas on diversifying the dialogue within classical ballet. www.blackirisproject.org/
Kimberly Bartosik
(daela)
Kimberly Bartosik is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow in Choreography. She is a 2017-20 New York Live Arts Live Feed Residency Artist where her new work will premiere in March 2020. In NYC her work has also been presented by BAM Next Wave 2018, American Realness, FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival, Abrons Art Center, Gibney, Danspace, The Kitchen, and La Mama. Kimberly has toured to Supersense: Festival of the Ecstatic (Melbourne, Australia), LUMBERYARD, Dance Place, Wexner Arts Center, American Dance Festival, The Yard, MASS MoCA/Jacob’s Pillow, Flynnspace, Bates Dance Festival, CHURCH, Columbia College (2020), Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (2020), Mount Tremper Arts, Festival Rencontres Chorégraphique Internationales, and others. Kimberly is a 2019-20 Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU Virginia B. Toulmin Women Leaders in Dance Fellow; a 2019-20 Harkness Dance Center AIR @ the 92nd St Y; and a 2019 Exploring the Metropolis (EtM) recipient. She has received support from National Dance Project Production & Touring Grant and Community Engagement Fund awards; MAP Fund; Jerome Foundation; FUSED (French-US Exchange in Dance); Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, USArtists International; American Dance Abroad; New Music USA; and Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Grants to Artists and Emergency Grants. Kimberly was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance company for 9 years and received a Bessie Award for Exceptional Artistry in his work. https://www.daela.org/
Raja Feather Kelly
(The Feath3r Theory)
Choreographer/Director Raja Feather Kelly is the artistic director of New Brooklyn Theatre. In 2009, he founded the dance-theatre-media company the feath3r theory. The two companies merged in 2018. Raja has been awarded a Creative Capital Award (2019), a National Dance Project Production Grant (2019), a Breakout Award from the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (2018), Dance Magazine’s inaugural Harkness Promise Award (2018), the Solange MacArthur Award for New Choreography (2016), and is a three-time Princess Grace Award winner (2017-19). Raja has been named as the 2019–2020 Randjelovic/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist at New York Live Arts and is an inaugural Jerome Hill Artist Fellow. Over the past decade he has created fifteen evening-length works with his company the feath3r theory to critical acclaim; most recently, UGLY (Black Queer Zoo) at The Bushwick Starr, and We May Never Dance Again® at The Invisible Dog in Brooklyn. Since 2016, Raja has choreographed extensively for Off-Broadway theatre in New York City, most notably for Signature Theatre, Soho Rep, and New York Theatre Workshop and Playwrights Horizons. http://thefeath3rtheory.com/
Stefanie Batten Bland
(Company SBB)
A Jerome Robbins awardee, Stefanie Batten Bland’s interdisciplinary practice interrogates contemporary and historical culture. She situates her work at the intersection of installation and dance-theatre. Based in New York City, she founded Company SBB in France in 2008 while head choreographer at the Paris Opera Comique. In New York City since 2011 SBB and her collaborating artists are in permanent residence at University Settlement, the Company is regularly produced by La MaMa Experimental Theater, which co-presented her new work “Look Who’s Coming to Dinner” with FIAF’s 2019 Crossing the Line Festival. She has been commissioned by Ailey II, Gina Gibney Dance, Spoleto Festival Italy, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Singapore Frontier Danceland, Brooklyn Museum and others globally. SBB directs dance cinema films that have been shown internationally and creates for fashion and lifestyle partners including Louis Vuitton, VanCleef & Arpels and Hermes. Known for her unique movement aesthetic, she served as movement director for “Eve’s Song” at the Public Theater. An inaugural Women’s Movement Initiative Choreographer for ABT, SBB designed a performance installation for the EU at the United Nations highlighting the role the performing arts plays in climate change awareness, and choreographed for Juilliard New Dances. A 2019 fellow for New York University’s Center for the Ballet Arts, SBB has been featured in global media including New York Times, Dance Europe Magazine, Brooklyn Rail, Marie Claire, TV 5 Monde and Dance Teacher Magazine. She received her MFA in interdisciplinary arts from Goddard College and lives in SoHo with her family, where she grew up as the daughter of artists. www.companysbb.org
Will Rawls
Will Rawls is a performer, independent choreographer and curator based in New York City. His work has appeared at Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, Dixon Place, The Brooklyn Museum, ISE Cultural Foundation and Mount Tremper Arts. Since 2006, Rawls has collaborated with Kennis Hawkins as the performance art duo, Dance Gang. He has performed with Shen Wei Dance Arts, Noemie LaFrance, nicholasleichterdance, Katie Workum, Neal Medlyn and David Neumann / advanced beginner group. In 2010, Rawls was an interpreter in Tino Sehgal’s “This Progress” at the The Guggenheim Museum, New York, and re-performed works by Marina Abramovic at the Museum of Modern Art. Rawls is a guest artist at Bard College and a student mentor for Colorado College’s Department of Drama and Dance. Rawls will present a new solo, Collected Fictions, at Danspace Project in February 2012 and will appear in Alain Buffard’s Baron Samedi, premiering April 2012.