Friday November 3rd
Show 1 - 7:30 pm
Meet the Artists
HIXON DANCE is a professional modern dance performing ensemble founded in 2007 by Sarah Hixon (she/her). The company is active in the performing arts community throughout central Ohio and beyond. The company is known for presenting impactful and finely crafted works that are accessible to audiences with a strong commitment to a multidisciplinary creative process. Past collaborators include The Columbus Ohio Discovery Ensemble, Opera Project Columbus, The McConnell Arts Center Chamber Orchestra, Groundshare Arts Alliance, Shove Gently Dance, and others. They have recently worked with composers Jennifer Merkowitz, Jacob Reed, and Lauren Spavelko, award-winning poet Maggie Smith, award-winning dramaturg Chris Leyva, and astrophysicist Dr. Gregory Mack.
Over the years, Hixon Dance has been a mainstay of the independent dance community in Columbus, participating in a wide array of community-centered performances including the Columbus Dances series, GCAC's New Choreography Project, Columbus Summer Dance Festival hosted by The Ohio State University, the Dance Compassion Project, Vox Novus, OhioDance Festival, Ten Tiny Dances, and others.
Education and outreach are a central component of the company’s mission. They strongly believe that the performing arts are one of the most powerful ways to enrich the community. Hixon Dance offers residencies, assemblies, interactive performances, and more for a wide range of educational institutions including K-12 schools, colleges, and universities. They provide educational outreach to the Wexner Center for the Arts, Worthington City Schools, Upper Arlington City Schools, The Wellington School, CATCO is Kids, All People's Youth Development programs, and others.
Hixon Dance receives funding from The Greater Columbus Arts Council, The Ohio Arts Council, The Columbus Foundation, The Ohio Alliance for Arts Education, Puffin Foundation West, the Johnstone Fund for New Music, and from other grants and individual donors. They have been featured in The Columbus Dispatch, The Columbus Underground, The Columbus Alive!, LifeLine Columbus, and other publications.
MORDINE LEGACY PROJECT - Shirley Mordine began her early training in San Francisco with Welland Lathrop, Anna Halprin, and the San Francisco Ballet School. She performed with the Welland Lathrop Dance Co. for 10 years. After graduating from Mills College in Oakland, California, she taught at the University of Minnesota for three years and continued her studies with Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis. Mordine founded the Dance Center at Columbia College Chicago in 1969 and served as Chair until 1999. As director of Mordine & Company Dance Theater, also founded in 1969 as the Chicago Dance Troupe, Shirley has choreographed over 50 pieces and collaborated with several local, national, and international artists.
Danielle Gilmore & Melissa Pillarella are Chicago based artists, trained and mentored under the direction of Shirley Mordine since 2011. Gilmore is original from Yuma, AZ, attend the University of Arizona, receiving her BFA. Pillarella is from Chicago, IL, received her BFA from the University Illinois. Gilmore and Pillarella have performed at the Chicago at Museum of Contemporary Art, Columbia College, Smart Museum, and Harvest Chicago Contemporary Dance Festival with Mordine & Company Dance Theater. As part of The Mordine Legacy Project they are working to preserve performance and repertoire of Shirley Mordine and Mordine & Company Dance Theater. Gilmore and Pillarella first premiered choreography in 2018 and have continued to create separately and collaboratively.
ANNA PERETZ ROGOVOY (she/her) is an MFA candidate and teaching assistant at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Prior to moving to the Midwest in pursuit of this degree, Anna spent ten years dancing and choreographing in New York City after earning a BA from Bennington College (VT). Her dances, called "choreography for movement purists" by The Dance Enthusiast, were presented at venues including The Flea Theater, the 92nd St Y, JACK, University Settlement, HERE Arts Center, Triskelion Arts, and Eden's Expressway, among others. While in NYC, Anna studied at the Merce Cunningham Trust, performing Cunningham works including Trails, TV Rerun, and Inlets 2. She also performed for Mina Nishimura, was a teaching assistant for Janet Panetta's Ballet for Professional Contemporary Dancers class series, company manager for John Jasperse, Michelle Dorrance, and Damian Woetzel, and Public Relations Coordinator for Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. At UIUC, Anna has performed in dances by Sara Hook, Sarah Marks Mininsohn, Rebecca Nettl-Fiol, Tere O’Connor, and Rachel Rizzuto. Her own dances have been presented in Illinois at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts (spring 2022) and the Virginia Theater (spring 2023). She received the 2023 Patricia Knowles award.
ALFONSO CERVERA + ELLIOT REZA EMADIAN
Alfonso Cervera (he/him/they/them) is a Queer first generational Mexican/x choreographer, performer, educator, curator, activist, and as Assistant Professor at Ohio State University. Along with his MFA degree from UC-Riverside, he holds professional certifications in Asana Yoga, Reiki Healing, and has recently been elected as Executive Director of Show Box L.A. His research and specialization as an independent artist, focuses on the conversation between queerness, Ballet Folklorico and Afro-LatinX social dances in a contemporary auto-biographical embodied experience that he calls Poc-Chuc. Poc-Chuc, an emerging and inclusive dance technique developed by Cervera, weaves these techniques as a pedagogical tool to adhere to the current times and to create representation for marginalized communities.
Elliot Reza Emadian (they/them) is a gender-nonconforming interdisciplinary artist and educator. Their primary medium, choreography, functions as an algorithmic, scalar practice to magnify, confound, and transcend humanness and to digest the webbed patterns that give rise to form and trope. Their work is a bridge toward the end of time, in which the manifold of the mainstream manifests anew: a dense, saturated future birthed from vibrant LED light. Elliot, a true queer of the South at heart, now splits their time between Cleveland, OH, Central Illinois, and Chicago. Elliot holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from W&L 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.
DOMINIC MOORE-DUNSON (he/him) is an award-winning choreographer, professional dancer, teaching artist, speaker, and creative entrepreneur. Dominic is the founder of MooreDunson Co, an arts, media, and entertainment company committed to "Urban Midwest Storytelling". Dance Magazine's 2023 "25 to Watch", Dominic has received numerous recognitions including a 2021 Top 40 finalist for the National Dance Project Production Grant, 2021 Associate Artists at Atlantic Center for the Arts with Doug Varone, 2019 Cleveland Arts Prize's Emerging Artist Award, and a 2018 fellow of The Anne & Weston Hicks Choreography Program at Jacob's Pillow. Moore-Dunson is a Creative Research Residency Artist and named a Creative Administration Research Fellow with the National Choreography Center at The University of Akron.
CARIBE CONEXION is a Cleveland based Afro Caribbean dance company founded by Dr. Munirah Bomani (she/her) and Inali Pichardo. Together, they have taught hundreds of authentic, low cost dance classes to a variety of ages and nationalities. The company's artistic mission to amplify the voices and stories of our Caribbean ancestors, and honor them in the mainstream dance community. Company repertoire includes works in western classical styles, fused with latin dance, orisha work and west african dance. Caribe Conexion's work has been showcased at events such as Station Hope, Cleveland Dance Festival and "Celebremos".
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. Over 51% of TMP's operating budget was dedicated to paying artists and in 2022 TMP collaborated with over 150 artists and organizations throughout the year. 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 $43,500 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'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.
Fall of 2017 TMP launched The Movement Project School of Dance for youth 2.5-18 years old, serving the neighborhoods of Cleveland. January 2022, TMP moved its operations to Cleveland’s westside community of Fairview Park where we offer year-round weekly professional classes, summer intensives, company rehearsals, festivals and performances.