Friday November 7TH
Show 1 - 7:30 pm
Meet the Artists
THE MOVEMENT PROJECT was founded in 2009 by Megan Gargano (she/her) and Rebecca Leuszler (she/her) with goals to support professional dance in Cleveland. Through the years, TMP has grown their efforts to support artists throughout NE Ohio, specifically the communities of Cleveland and Akron. In 2013 TMP launched its first full season of performances and has since then produced over 35 evening-length concerts, has created over 60 new works, produced 6 original dance films, and has performed at various venues such as Cleveland Public Theatre, The Breen Center, Dumbo Dance Fest in NYC, Baldwin Wallace University, Ohio University and Transformer Station. In 2019, TMP collaborated, performed and produced a sold-out concert with Pam Tanowitz and her NYC company Pam Tanowitz Dance. In 2013 and 2016, TMP was awarded The Fedora Award, a grant for individuals and organizations that focus on positively helping communities of Northeast Ohio. And in 2017 TMP was awarded funds by Puffin West Foundation to further support TMP's annual summer intensive, a 1-week summer intensive focused on providing affordable and accessible dance education to youth dancers. In 2015, TMP launched the Cleveland Artist Initiative, a program designed to support and fund the creation of new work by Cleveland artists. Today, over 60% of TMP's operating budget is dedicated to paying artists. In 2016, TMP launched Cleveland Dance Fest, an annual dance festival featuring Cleveland choreographers and is hosted each year in Cleveland. TMP Co-artistic director Rebecca Leuszler was awarded the 2016 Creative Workforce Fellowship funded by Community Partnership for Arts & Culture and Cuyahoga Arts & Culture (CAC) to produce the first festival. In 2019, 2021 & 2022, TMP was awarded funds by CAC to continue growing the festival, as well as in 2020 by Ohio Arts Council. Since its inaugural year, over $54,500 has gone towards paying artists. In addition to our programming in Cleveland, TMP has worked to provide resources to artists, families, and youth throughout the communities of Akron. TMP is committed to fostering the next generation of Akron artists through the development of sustainable and equitable practices for dance professionals. TMP's outreach programs have included The Akron Art Museum, Miller South School for Visual & Performing Arts, The University of Akron, and our annual year long residency at Firestone CLC. In 2023, TMP officially became a proud Pathway Partner with the College & Career Academies of Akron through Akron Public Schools. 2024 marked TMP’s first annual CDF | Akron Concert Series. Fall of 2017 TMP launched The Movement Project School of Dance for youth 2.5-18 years old, serving the neighborhoods of Cleveland. In 2022, company member Elyse Morckel was promoted to Associate Director, expanding upon her already strong commitment to community building throughout the Akron and Cleveland communities. January 2022, TMP moved its operations to Cleveland’s westside community of Fairview Park where they offer year-round weekly professional classes, summer intensives, company rehearsals, festivals and performances. Fall 2024, TMP was selected as a 2024 Knight New Work grantee—an initiative of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that supports artists and organizations in Akron, Miami, and Detroit who use technology to innovate how art is created, shared, and experienced.
ANGELINA DIFRANCO is a dance artist, writer, and choreographer. She graduated from Kent State University with honors in May 2023 and holds a BFA in dance and a BA in English with a concentration in professional writing. Throughout her tenure at Kent State, Angelina has received the May O’Donnell Memorial Dance Award, the Eugenia V. Erdmann Dance Award, and the dance faculty award for outstanding achievement as an emerging artist and dance scholar for three consecutive years. She is currently working as a dancer and teacher in her third season with the Dancing Wheels Company. Working with Dancing Wheels has given her the opportunity to earn the Dementia Friends Program Certificate and the Dancing Wheels Teacher Certification, providing her with the knowledge and certification to teach people with dementia/alzheimers and instruct in the Dancing Wheels’ method of physically integrated dance. As a choreographer, her dance for film has been commissioned by students and faculty at Kent State, nominated by KSU faculty for the American College Dance Association, presented at Cleveland Dance Festival’s Virtual Dance Film Gallery in 2022, and won best experimental film at the Highland Square Film Festival. Her concert choreography has been performed professionally at Cleveland Dance Festival, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and OhioDance Festival. Alongside her work as a dance artist, she has taken part in See Chicago Dance’s critical writing fellowship and has been published in See Chicago Dance, Luna Negra, Brainchild, Arts Air, and The Movement Project’s Blog.
CHRISTINE HOWE (she/her) is a dance educator, performer, and maker serving as an Associate Lecturer at The University of Akron. She holds a BFA from The University of Akron and an MFA with performance emphasis from The University of Iowa. She received the Iowa Arts Fellowship and served as a Graduate Teaching Assistant under the direction of Rebekah Kowal. As an educator, she strives to create community environments in the classroom to support spaces of exploration and experimentation to leave students with a sense of creative individuality, an investigative curiosity, and a deep passion to move. As a maker, her choreographic works have been presented by Columbus Contemporary Dance Company, The University of Akron Dance Company, The Cleveland Dance Festival, Take Up Space in Chicago, and Lindenwood University in St. Louis. She is excited to have been selected as The Movement Project's 2025 Choreographic Fellow and Suttle Dance Company (Detroit) Emerging Artist. Her choreographic research works deeply with performance techniques to dance beyond just spectacle, creating empathetic and humanistic connections.
PERENNIAL MOVEMENT GROUP (PMG) was founded in 2015 by Sarah Ramey to create more opportunities for older adults to experience dance in Columbus, Ohio. The program began with support from an Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, a national program of funding and mentorship for graduate students engaged in service projects to address the social determinants of health in their communities. In partnership with the Clintonville-Beechwold Community Resources Center, Ramey developed a free dance program that included twice-weekly dance classes and field trips to see local dance performances. In 2017, Chloe Napoletano joined PMG as a teacher and key collaborator.
CDF 2025 Show 1 Artist - Perennial Movement Group - Katherine G. Moore (Photo Credit: Tiana Kargbo)
GLADYS LAWRENCE is a Christian, wife, mother, grandmother, and veteran. She earned a degree in History and Political Science from Birmingham- Southern College. There, she got her first introduction to dance by taking several classes in beginning ballet. It was not until her involvement in a VA Whole Health movement class did her passion for dance rekindle, years after military service, homeschooling her children, and subbing in public school. She has a passion for serving others, especially kids. She teaches a kids' Sunday school class and has volunteered many hours in community service activities. Her hobbies and interests are art, music, dance, gardening, cooking, soap making, and walking.
KATHERINE G. MOORE is a movement and teaching artist whose work spans theaters, outdoor environments, galleries, and community spaces. Katherine earned a BA from Hope College and an MFA from The Ohio State University. Active professionally as a performer and choreographer across the US for over a decade, she has recently held creative residencies at The Croft (MI, 2021), Akron Soul Train (OH, 2023), Keshet Center for the Arts (NM, 2023), and Wildacres Retreat (NC, 2023). In addition to holding extensive teaching experience in studio and community settings, she was also a faculty member at the University of Southern Mississippi from 2019-2022. She currently lives in Columbus, OH where she works as an adjunct lecturer and guest artist for area schools such as the Ohio State University, Ohio University, and Ohio Wesleyan University.
TORI ZEGARELLI (she/her) is originally from Chicago and began dancing at age 14 at Dancenter North. She continued her studies at Point Park University, earning her BFA in Dance and graduating magna cum laude. Tori has also received training at Axis Connect, Movement Invention Project, ODC, and Salt Contemporary Dance. Throughout her career, Tori has had the privilege of performing as a company member with Aerial Dance Chicago, Dance in the Parks, Hedwig Dances, and most recently with GroundWorks DanceTheater. In her time with GroundWorks, she had the honor of performing works by Antonio Brown, David Shimotakahara, FLOCK: Alice Klock & Florian Lochner, Olivier Wevers, Peter Chu, Rena Butler, Sidra Bell, and Spenser Theberge. In addition to performing, Tori served as Artistic Associate and Web Designer for GroundWorks in her final seasons. Tori has taught dance in the Chicago and Cleveland areas, including at Cleveland State University. Additionally, she is a certified yoga instructor.
ALFONSO ABRAHAM CERVERA Alfonso Cervera is a Queer first-generation Mexican American choreographer, performer, and educator born in San Bernardino, CA, and currently based between Los Angeles and Columbus, OH. His work centers the complexities of Mexican American identity through a radical reimagining of Mexican Ballet Folklorico, merging it with contemporary and Afro-Latin dance aesthetics. As the founder of the Poc-Chuc technique, a hybrid choreographic practice that fuses Folklorico and Modern dance, Cervera challenges dominant dance pedagogies and expands the possibilities of queer and Latine movement practices in higher education and performance. Cervera is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Dance at The Ohio State University and a co-founder of Primera Generación Dance Collective, recently named one of Dance Magazine’s 25 to Watch in 2025. His work has been supported by the NEA, California Arts Council, and multiple national grants, and his performances have toured nationally across festivals, universities, and community spaces. His current project, Café Con Pan, is a collaborative, interdisciplinary dance work that archives and reimagines the stories of Queer Mexican Folklorico maestros through choreography, sound, and media design. Through community-engaged workshops, Cervera builds intergenerational bridges and imagines Queer Folkloric Futurism rooted in joy, resistance, and visibility. Grounded in collective creation and social change, Cervera’s practice honors tradition while radically reshaping it, offering space for queer hybrid bodies to thrive, remember, and dream.
CDF 2025 Show 1 Artist - Elliot Reza Emadian and Paul Leary (Photo Credit: Elvis Njomo)
ELLIOT REZA EMADIAN AND PAUL LEARY
ELLIOT REZA EMADIAN has presented their choreographic work all through the Midwest and East Coast including at the Ailey Citigroup Theater and Abrons Arts Center in Manhattan, NY, the Center for Performance Research and Triskelion Center for the Arts in Brookyln, NY, and the Boston Center for the Arts. Most recently, they have shared solos with artists from Illinois in various settings as part of their long-term open source choreography project. Additionally, their choreography for live theatre has been seen at the Dick Van Dyke Auditorium, Agecroft Hall, and soon in an English/ASL production of A Chorus Line at RIT with director Christopher Ryan and DASL JW Guido. In addition to extensively performing their own work, Elliot has performed and toured including as part of works by Sara Hook, Jenefer Davies, and Rachel Rizzuto. Video mediation has been a consistent choreographic tool for Elliot since they began making work. They move reflexively between live and recorded material as a method for eluding or elucidating the failures of either. They have created video works in several genres including lyric videos, music videos, screen dances, and video art studies. Most recently, they were commissioned by Links Hall in Chicago, IL to create MASCCHAOS as part of the 2021 Co-MISSION festival of new works, which has been programmed by other festivals since its premiere. Elliot releases pop music under the moniker Elliot Reza, and additionally creates original sound scores for dance. Recently, they created the sound score for Jennifer Monson’s heap loose – in collaboration with Dr. Joy Yang, for Roxane D’Orleans Juste’s aux sources, with Lucia Gagliardone for her evening-length piece, while we were homegrowing. Since 2024, Elliot has been collaborating with Anna Sapozhnikov on the original sound for Good House Keep. They have an active photography practice that includes portraiture and dance photography. Elliot‘s written research also appears in publications including Integers, Electronic Journal of Combinatorial Number Theory and PARtake, The Journal of Performance as Research (V.3 I.1) as well as on their website: elliotreza.com. Elliot sits at the intersection of disability, neurodivergence, and queerness. They hold a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Washington and Lee University and a Master of Fine Arts in Dance from the University of Illinois, where they studied with Dr. Cynthia Oliver, Jennifer Monson, Sara Hook, Tere O’Connor, and other esteemed faculty in and outside of dance.
PAUL LEARY - After earning degrees in music composition at the University of Michigan and the Cleveland Institute of Music, Dr. Leary completed a PhD in composition from Duke University in 2012. His recent video project with CCP Games’ EVE Online has been viewed 350,000 times on youtube. His choral music has been performed widely and his electronic music has been featured at over forty concerts and festivals over the last few years including SEAMUS, The Florida State New Music Festival, the New York City Electro Acoustic Music Festival, The Electro Acoustic Barn Dance Festival, and Electronic Music Midwest. His musical interests connect several creative areas; musical composition, video production/animation, instrument design and construction, software design, and performance. His recent EDM EP ‘Artificially Intelligent’ is available on all streaming platforms. In addition to composing and teaching, Paul was a professional orchestrator and arranger and was principle orchestrator of the ASCAP award-winning Contemporary Youth Orchestra for ten years, orchestrating over a hundred works of jazz, hip-hop, popular, Broadway, and classical music. He has orchestrated and arranged for various pop artists including Pat Benatar, Graham Nash, and Jon Anderson, as well as music by percussionist Valerie Naranjo and pianist Michael Garson. Some of these orchestrations have been featured on VH1, PBS, and HDNet internationally as well as released on CD and DVD. His works are published by Bachovich Music Publications. Paul’s works often include hand built instruments that bring kinetic motion his electronic works through sensors. Recent works have included a 9 foot wooden pendulum and a bike wheel rig that utilize magnetometers and accelerometers. Paul’s other interests include cycling, woodworking, and arts and crafts. Paul builds midi controllers in his wood shop and plays the Shakuhachi flute.
CDF 2025 Show 1 Artist: Kora Radella
KORA RADELLA is a choreographer, movement teacher, and performer. Radella’s choreography has been performed in New York City at venues including Judson Church, Danspace Project, 92Y, CPR, Pioneer Works, and Roulette and in many other locations including Barcelona, Berlin, Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Mexico City, and Paris." Noted for her use of "awkward grace," Radella researches being on the edge of control, pushing both physical and psychological balances. She was a recipient of artist residencies at Yaddo and Watermill in 2016 and at Lake Studios Berlin in 2015, and was a 2019 Bogliasco Fellow. She received Ohio Arts Excellence Awards in 2014 and 2018. Radella has been a dance professor at Kenyon College since Fall 2004. She teaches contemporary dance practices, contact improvisation, movement for performance, choreography, and screendance. She is a certified yoga teacher (500RYT).
CDF 2025 Show 1 Artist - Teagan Reed
TEAGAN REED (she/her) hails from St. Petersburg, Florida, and began Scottish Highland dance at age 12. She trained at the Patricia Ann Dance Studio and the Pinellas County Center for the Arts before earning her B.F.A. in 2020 from the Boston Conservatory at Berklee College of Music and completing Hubbard Street's professional training in the same year. Tea has performed with various companies, including Fukudance, Dance in the Parks Chicago, Little Fire Artist Collective, Aerial Dance Chicago, and Groundworks DanceTheatre. In 2016, she launched Ballet Naked and founded the Pro.noun Dance Project in 2021 to increase visibility of queer and trans artists.
CDF 2025 Show 1 Artist - RESILIENCE Dance Company
RESILIENCE DANCE COMPANY (RDC) is a non-profit, contemporary modern dance company with a mission to create exceptional dance experiences that fuel human connection. Founded in 2019 by Artistic and Executive Director Emily Haussler, RDC’s work is rooted in building healthy, sustainable dance spaces that put artists first and enable curiosity, play, and creative risk taking.
VICTORIA LYNN AWKARD is a multi-hyphenate creator, administrator, educator and the Director of VLA DANCE. She pursued her multiple interests at Goucher College and graduated with high honors in Dance, Visual Art and Secondary Education. As the Director of VLA DANCE she is researching how to lead with joy, pleasure, and breath in and outside of art making practices. This work is guided through the lineage of Black and queer liberation practitioners. Alongside directing VLA DANCE, Victoria is a freelance artist, who most recently choreographed for Huntington Theater, Company One Theatre, Boston Lyric Opera, and Commonwealth Shakespeare. Victoria is also an educator having worked at Salem State University, Brown University, West End House, Middlesex School, and Urbanity Dance. She continues to deepen her teaching practices as a mentee with Midday Movement Series. Victoria is currently a Brother Thomas Fellow, and recipient of the Next Steps for Boston Grant Dance Program as well as a recipient of the Queer (Re)public Theater Offensive Residency. Through her work she aims to inspire people to pause and reflect on their actions towards themselves, their community and their environment.