WE CREATE! 2018 COHORT




Poster Art: Amanda Ng Yann Chwenn


Led by Marsha Parrilla, Danza Orgánica is a Boston-based dance theater company that focuses on social justice oriented work. For more information, visit our page. 



Maggie Cee is the founder and artistic director of The Femme Show, a ground-breaking touring variety show about queer femme identity and femininity. She is the 2011 recipient of the History Project's Lavender Rhino Award for an emerging LGBT history maker. www.thefemmeshow.com





Grace Osborne is a sound artist, healing arts practitioner, and academic. Her artistic practice includes sound baths, soundwalks, improvisation, listening, and intuitive knowledge. Currently, Grace is a doctoral student at New York University and her dissertation is titled, “Vibrating Negative Space: listening and healing in the practice of Sound Baths.” 





Nayda A. Cuevas Ramos was born in Hato Rey, PR. Her family migrated in 1990 to Deltona, FL. Ms. Cuevas passion emerged for unearthing a visual language to better articulate through visual arts her observation and/or interpretation of her Latino American experience. As an artist her interest lies in using history, art history, and current cultural trends to produce images of both her physical and emotional experiences of displacement.





Baindu "Bintu" Conté was born in Maninkan/Mende tribe of Western Africa. In addition to leading her dance company, Jaara Dance Project, she also teaches Traditional West African Dance and serves as Choreographer and dancer for Benkadi West African Dance and Drum Company. 



Angel Chinn studied dance at Morgan State University and the University of Maryland Baltimore County where she received a BA in dance and performance. Her work as been presented at GreenSpace, Dixon Place, Alvin Ailey Citigroup Theatre, Irondale Center, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and Atlas Performing Arts Center in Washington DC. Angel is currently pursuing her MFA in Dance at Hollins University.





Barbie Diewald teaches dance at Mount Holyoke college and makes her work in Western Massachusetts. Her choreography has been recently presented at Jacob's Pillow, The APE Gallery, the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought, and the Performance Mix Festival in New York.  For We Create, she will be collaborating with Philadelphia based choreographer Kate Seethaler, with whom she has been collaborating since 2014. 




 

Dancer/poet, Karen Klein is the founder of teXtmoVes, a poetry/ dance collaborative

which has performed at The Dance Complex, Third Life Studios, Galatea Fine

Art, the Faneuil Branch of the BPL, the Cotuit Library, and We Create 2016. She is a member of Prometheus Elders Ensemble and has danced annually with Across the Ages Dance.Her recent publications include poems in The Comstock Review and SLANT.




Lilly Evelet is a self taught multimedia Indigenous artist of mixed heritage. Her works are founded in otherness, womxnhood and her indigenous culture. Lilly weaves into her works an in-between experience, social justice topics and issues of disenfranchised peoples that offer spaces for dialogue and healing. 





 
 

Nicole Stanton is a dance artist, currently an Associate Professor of Dance, African American Studies, Environmental Studies, and the Institute for Curatorial Practice at Wesleyan University. Her choreography has been presented at venues such as Gowanus Artist Gallery, Triskelion Arts, The 92 Street Y, and the Wexner Center for the Arts. 





Emily Craver hails from the great town of Framingham, Massachusetts and graduated with honors in dance from Skidmore College. She dances with Trainor Dance, shawnbibledanceco, and Chicago-based CabinFever, as well as her own performance group, The Little Streams. Find her on the interwebs here: www.emilybcraver.com




Originally from Stoneham, MA- Janelle Gilchrist earned her BFA at the Hartt School in Connecticut. She is a company dancer and teacher at Jose Mateo Ballet Theatre- and is a teacher at the Tony Williams Dance, among others. In her off season from Jose Mateo Ballet Theatre, Janelle leads her own troupe called: Janelle Gilchrist Dance Troupe.   http://www.janellegilchrist.com






Yara Liceaga-Rojas is a Puerto Rican poet, cultural administrator, and educator. Since 2010 she has been the curator of the multi-disciplinary artists performance series Poetry Is Busy, which recently received a 2018 Cambridge Arts grant.  She is also a 2018 grantee of NEFA´s Creative City program for her project Acentos espesos/Thick Accents.




Jesse Epstein is a Sundance Award-Winning documentary filmmaker. Her films have screened in over 40 film festivals worldwide, at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Mass MoCA, The Peabody Museum, and Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam.  Jesse is also the Z-Tech Video Coordinator at Zumix -- where she teaches and mentors youth in East Boston.






Jenny Oliver is a Choreographer, Teaching Artist and Humanitarian. Jenny teaches at Tufts University, Emerson College, The Dance Complex, and Deborah Mason Performing Arts Center. In March 2018 her work was presented at Dixon Place and she’s working towards her first evening length concert, Hot Water Over Raised Fists, in October 2018. She is a Board Member of the Rasin Foundation Haiti. 






Karishma Javier is a Lyric Coloratura Soprano with an extended vocal range from F#4 - Bb6. She sings in 10 languages and 17 genres. Javier was trained at the Conservatory of Music of P.R,  the Interamerican University (BA in Jazz music) and the Bellas Artes School of Acting (film, television). Javier is the winner of the F.A.M.A grants from The Operetta y Zarzuela and the Jovenes Amigos Foundation at the P.R. Metropolitan Opera Council auditions. 




Mary Driscoll, Zahra A. Belyea, and Liana Asim


Mary Driscoll is the founder of OWLL, a non-profit theatre collective of women artists. She has taught OWLL workshops for the International Health Organization in India, the Nomagando Fund in Uganda, and CAST in Kingston, Jamaica.  As an actor, she has appeared on Boston, New York, and Provincetown stages. 

Zahra A. Belyea, M.Ed., M.A., is a writer, actor, dancer, and educator. She has held the position of adjunct faculty at Wheelock College, acted with Open Theatre Project and Fort Point Theatre Channel, collaborated with various Boston choreographers, and written plays as part of the OWLL Collective andCompany One’s PlayLab Unit. 

Liana Asim is a Boston-based playwright/actor/director. She has studied performance art at Northwestern University and screenwriting and playwriting at Emerson College. She is the proud wife of author Jabari Asim, mother to five brilliant children, and a grandmother. She believes in the power of LIVE theatre to change the world.