Show 3 Artists
Show 3 - Saturday November 14th
5:00 pm
KAILEY FRAER & LILY STAIB
Kailey Fraer is a student, creator, performer, and teacher from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 2025, she graduated from Slippery Rock University with a BFA in Dance. While studying at SRU, she had the opportunity to work closely with faculty, fellow students, and guest choreographers. Within her time as a student, she was cast in Teena Marie Custer’s The Shade, Cameron McKinney’s Strange Attractor, Nathan Trice’s Their Speech is Silver, Their Silence is Gold, and Martha Graham’s Steps in the Street set by Elizabeth Auclaire. Kailey had the privilege of performing at the Joyce Theater as part of the University Partners Showcase in 2023. Her intensive education includes Orsolina28, Dance Italia, and Springboard X. Currently, Kailey is a Company Member with The Movement Project(TMP), a Cleveland-based modern/contemporary dance company. With the company Kailey performs, choreographs, teaches, aids in community outreach, and manages the social media. An important factor in Kailey's dance career is that she is also a yoga teacher. After earning her RYT-200, Kailey began teaching class to the community. She believes that yoga and dance are deeply intertwined and inform her movement. Kailey also enjoys crocheting, reading, hiking, and being a cat mom - all outlets that nurture her creativity.
Lily Staib is a Pittsburgh native who is currently based in Columbus, Ohio. She grew up dancing competitively with the Thomas Dance Studio in Bridgeville, PA where she competed for 13 years in all styles of dance. She graduated from Slippery Rock University (SRU), Summa Cum Laude, with a BFA in Dance Performance and Choreography in 2025, and was awarded the 2025 Outstanding BFA Award. While at SRU, she danced in guest artist work by Teena Marie Custer, Hélène Simoneau, Nathan Trice, and Cammeron McKinney. Her intensive credits include, Orsolina28 with FLOCK, Dance Italia, Springboard Danse, Point Park University, and WhirlWind Dance. Lily currently trains with WhirlWind Dance, is a judge for Rising Star Talent Productions, and teaches ballet and contemporary at local studios.
GIANNA DOBRICH
Gianna “Gi” Dobrich (she/her) is a choreographer, performer, educator, and arts administrator from Erie, Pennsylvania. She received a BFA in Dance with a concentration in Performance and Choreography from Slippery Rock University in 2026. Gianna has performed in works by Trisha Brown, Dianne McIntyre, Cameron McKinney, Shakia “The Key” Barron, Jon Lehrer, and Carlos Jones, among other artists. During her senior year, she was awarded the Thom and Christine Cobb Award for Excellence and Promise by the SRU Dance Department faculty. Gianna has attended the 2024 American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina, and the 2023 Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Explore Summer Intensive. Her choreography has been selected for Gala performances at the American College Dance Association, presented at the ACDA National Festival in Washington, D.C., and performed at festivals including the WHITE WAVE SoloDuo Dance Festival and the Cleveland Dance Festival. This past summer, she worked at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival as a Company Management intern for the Ted Shawn Theatre. Most recently, Gianna was commissioned to create a new work for students at Bucknell University. @giannadobrich
MEAGHAN NOVOA
Meaghan Novoa (they/she) is a Contemporary Dance Choreographer based in Atlanta, GA. Their work serves as a fierce intersection of heritage and identity, weaving the complex threads of their Colombian and Jewish roots with the urgency of their queer and neurodivergent lived experiences.
Meaghan has been awarded artist residencies with Dance Canvas, Atlanta Contemporary, Decatur School of Ballet, The High Museum’s Dance Lab and more. Their practice has been supported by grants from organizations such as A&E Atlanta, South Arts, Idea Capital, and the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs, which recently honored them with the 2024–2025 Emerging Artist Award.
Meaghan’s recent highlights include premiering an evening-length work at Synchronicity Theatre (Stripped Bare Arts Incubator Initiative) and co-directing a bold durational piece at SITE 2025 with Madison Nunes at The Goat Farm Arts Center. They shared their first mixed repertoire show this past spring at Emory Performing Arts Studio and will be presenting their choreography at the upcoming Amelia Island Dance Festival and Cleveland Dance Fest. Currently an Artist-in-Residence at City Dance & Music and a 2026 Latinxtensions National Cohort member through David Hererra Performance Company, Meaghan continues to push the boundaries of the body’s storytelling potential, centering marginalized narratives with relentless passion.
Learn more about Meaghan and their work: www.novoadances.com / Instagram - @novoadances
Photo Credit: SJRPhotography
WHITNEY BLEICK
Whitney Bleick is a current senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying dance, elementary education, and dance education. Throughout her time at UW, Whitney has performed in works by professors Jin-Wen Yu, Li Chiao-Ping, and Chell Parkins. Whitney has also performed in works at the 2025 and 2026 North-Central American College Dance Association (ACDA) Conferences. Her collaborative duet "Tenderness and Rot" performed at ACDA in 2025. Whitney is passionate about dance education, and in 2026 she presented her research on social-emotional learning within dance education at ACDA. In the Summer of 2024, was a recipient of the Arnhold Summer Fellowship, in which she had the opportunity to attend the Dance Education Laboratory (DEL) at the 92nd St. Y in New York City. This past September, Whitney presented at the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO) Conference about her experiences studying and working in dance education at UW. Whitney is excited to share her first choreographed group work "Forth and Back" with you today.
Photo Credit: Maureen Janson Heintz
AJAYI DANCE
Melissa Ajayi received a BFA in dance performance and BS in Therapeutic Recreation from Kent State University. Living in New York City then Lexington Kentucky before returning to Ohio in 2015, she has performed in works by Antaeus Dance, Travesty Dance Group, Marquez Dance Project, Annika Sheaff, Elizabeth Pollert, Emily Jeffries, Sarah Holmes-Villanueva, Leanne Schmidt and Company, MWest and Company, and Blackbird Dance Theatre. Locally, she has been a guest lecturer at CSU, and guest artist at Cleveland School of the Arts and Bard High School Early College. Since founding Ajayi Dance in 2021, Melissa has created more than a dozen original works including 3 self-produced site-specific immersive experiences as well as a commissioned work with No Exit New Music Ensemble. Additional works have been presented at Playhouse Square, TMPS’s Cleveland Dance Fest and SummerWorks, CPT’s DanceWorks, Blackbird Dance Theatre, Tridea Dance, Maelstrom Collaborative Arts, CDP Company Community Collab, Borderlight Festival, Ingenuity Fest, Pandemonium, and MicroTheater CLE. As a Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialist, Melissa worked in a variety of settings utilizing dance as an intervention to bring about physical, cognitive, social, emotional and behavioral change. Her writing has been published in the National Therapeutic Recreation Journal, and she has presented at the National Dance Education Organization Conference and multiple therapeutic recreation conferences. While she no longer works in a clinical setting, she draws on this experience to consider the impact and outcome of her educational and choreographic work on an individual, collective, and societal level.
Photo Credit: Matt DeGrand
ORGANI CITY
Jonathan "JayWAN" Pattiwael is an Indonesian-American choreographer from the global Hip-Hop civilization—a bohemian adventurer weaving an ancestral tapestry of movement. Their artistic destiny merges a celebrated Indonesian performance lineage with the raw power of Hip-Hop discovered in Jakarta, where groove-based knowledge resonated deeply with the Sundanese traditions of their heritage.
Organi City is a dance-theatre collective founded by JayWAN that fosters visual sociopolitical and cultural dialogues through the human body to challenge societal hierarchies. By creatively merging choreographic practice with theatrical elements, Organi City seeks to deepen our understanding of humanity through movement and expression, creating performances that highlight the complexities of identity and community. The collective emphasizes authenticity, emotional resonance, and lived experiences, allowing audiences to engage with deeper themes through interdisciplinary performances.
Organi City's practice "remixes" breaking, house, and indigenous forms with contemporary theatre, transforming the stage into a ritual ground for physical excavation and emotional endurance. Works like a void of mournings—presented at St. Louis Contemporary, YES! Dance Richmond, and FinFringe Finland—employ sand as a living archive, recording every trace of movement. The collective's ongoing collaboration with Gamelan Lipi Awan honors traditional forms while allowing them to evolve. JayWAN's choreography has been presented across seven U.S. states and more than a dozen countries, including Finland, Portugal, Belgium, Austria, Germany, and Poland.
