Investing in Disabled Choreographers

The goal of the AXIS Choreo-Lab Fellowship is to develop, refine and advance the artistic skills of disabled and/or neurodiverse choreographers. The Lab offers an inclusive environment where established, disabled and/or neurodiverse artists mentor their peers to challenge boundaries and create perception changing art. During the Lab participants will be led through a creation process stemming from their own concept, collaborating with an integrated group of performers including AXIS dancers and professional dancers from the local community. The Lab provides studio space, dancers, and administrative support for every choreographer. This opportunity also includes ongoing mentorship and professional development support in the year following the Lab.

Five dancers improvise in a fort-style textile installation. At the center, choreographer August looks up with wonder.

DJ and Zara talk and use touch to communicate in the dance studio with a black binder. DJ, who is blind, wears a black track suit and sunglasses. Zara and Janpi wear black eye masks that cover their faces.

Choreo-Lab Fellow Davian Robinson with Zara Anwar

In work by Saira Barbaric, Alaja and Zaria kneel and flip Julie upside down while Zara lifts Julie from Julie's shoulders.

Alaja Badalich, Julie Hasushi, Zara Anwar and Zaria Jackson in work by Saira Barbaric

Four artists dance underneath a ballet barre. Janpi holds the barre by their hands, arching back. Stephanie, z and David face forward.

Saira smiles behind a mask. They have purple braids and wears a black beanie and grey cropped shirt.

Choreo-Lab Fellow Saira Barbaric

Choreographer Larissa Velez-Jackson stands, wearing red patterned pants and a black face mask, speaking to three disabled and non-disabled artists in the studio.

David Calhoun holds Anna Gichan in counterbalance, as Anna extends an arabesque

Anna Gichan and David Calhoun in work by Sammie Murray

Sammie raises two upper limbs while directing dancers in rehearsal. They have brown wavey hair cut into a mullet, wearing a black jumpsuit and brown socks and turtleneck.

Choreo-Lab Fellow Sammie Murray

Guest Dancer Zaria Jackson

Choreographer Brian and the AXIS team put their hands together in a circle, all smiling

All photos by Robert Suguitan & Konstantin Braverman

Lab Mentors will share their experience, guiding participants in exploring their ideas to structure tasks, improvisational scores, generate material, develop accessible language, and compositional structures. The Lab also includes Professional Development sessions with industry leaders in the fields of grant writing, presenting and project and stage management.

Participating choreographers will receive a $1,000 fee for their participation, with a stipend for travel and a per diem for those from outside of the Bay Area. Fellows are eligible to receive a professional development stipend to be used within the year following the Lab.

The AXIS Choreo-Lab is made possible with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The 2024 AXIS Choreo-Lab took place in-person at AXIS’ home base in Berkeley, CA from Tuesday, May 28th – Saturday, June 8th, 2024.

Four stellar choreographic fellows from across the disability and dance landscape joined us: Larissa Velez-Jackson, August Grace, Brian Golden, and Joelle Santiago!

With the mentorship of Nadia Adame and Kayla Hamilton, the choreographers investigated creative inquiries on themes including including access intimacy, improvisational dance-monologues, neurodiverse brain/body patterning, and the legacies of disabled textile artists.

2024 Choreo-Lab Mentors:

Photo by Travis Magee

Kayla Hamilton is a Texas born, Bronx based performance maker, dancer, educator and cultural consultant,

Kayla is a 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow and a 2023 Pina Bausch Fellow. Her past performance work has been presented at the Whitney Museum, Gibney, Performance Space New York, New York Live Arts and the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance.

Kayla co- developed ‘Crip Movement Lab’ with fellow Disabled artist, Elisabeth Motley-a pedagogical framework centering cross-disability accessible movement practices that are open to every-body. She has taught dance at Sarah Lawrence College, Virginia Commonwealth University and University of Iowa.

As a consultant, Kayla has developed and designed programming for disabled artists for the Mellon Foundation and Movement Research. As a dancer, Kayla was part of the Bessie award winning skeleton architecture, she has also danced for Maria Bauman, Sydnie L. Mosley and Gesel Mason

Kayla is currently in the process of creating a future organization centering the work of BIPOC Disabled creatives and developing a new evening length performance set to premiere in NY at The Shed in 2024.

Nadia smiles for the camera. She is a cane user and a light-skinned hispanic woman with brown hair pulled back and green/blue eyes. She is wearing a black tank top with a blue, flowing sleeveless blouse on top and black, flowing pants.

Nadia Adame is a Spanish multidisciplinary award-winning artist with a spinal cord injury. She studied Ballet & Flamenco at the Royal Dance Conservatory of Madrid and has a BA in Theatre from the University of Colorado. She was a company member with AXIS (2000-2003) and Candoco Dance Company (2007-2008). In 2004, she co-founded and was the Co-Artistic Director of Compañía Y in Spain, a multimedia and performance collective. Nadia’s credits include dance, theatre, commercial, and independent film projects in the UK, Spain, US, and Canada. As a performer, she has been featured in works by Stephen Petronio, Bill T. Jones, Arthur Pita, Rafael Bonachela, Davis Robertson, Sonya Delwaide, Marc Brew, Chevi Muraday and Asun Noales, among others. For more information, visit www.nadiaadame.com.

2024 Choreographic Fellows:

Larissa Velez-Jackson (LVJ) (they/she) is a choreographer, interdisciplinary artist, and teacher who uses improvisation as a main tool for research and creation. They are a Boricua-Italian-American originally from Newark, New Jersey, and an ongoing cancer survivor, committed to the healing potential of art and bodymind practice. Called “an adroit physical comedian” who “seems to be questioning entrenched conventions of contemporary performance” by The New York Times, LVJ creates works that offer audiences a warm entry into contemporary art’s critical and political discourse. LVJ was named a Caroline Hearst Choreographic Fellow at Princeton University (’21-’22) and was recently awarded Dance/NYC’s Disability. Dance. Artistry Residency (’22). In 2011, they launched an experimental song-and-dance collaboration with their husband, Jon Velez-Jackson, called Yackez, “The World’s Most Lovable Musical Duo.” Yackez presented a two-act world premiere at New York Live Arts in March 2017, entitled “Give It To You Stage,” a year after LVJ received the prestigious Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Grant to Artists Award. In 2016, LVJ was also nominated for “Outstanding Emerging Choreographer” by the New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” awards. LVJ is the Artistic Director of their project-based company, LVJ Performance Co. The theme of healing of Self and Community continues in their new Yackez project that will begin its research at Jacob’s Pillow’s Pillow Lab in the spring of ’23.

August Grace (a thin, white, nonbinary individual) looks directly at the camera.

August Grace (they/them) is a dance artist, dramaturg, and choreographer from Vermont whose work explores absurdity, opacity, and queer deviance. They graduated with a BA in Dance Theory and Criticism from Mount Holyoke College in 2023. August received grant funding from Mount Holyoke College to conduct research in Belgium and the Netherlands investigating queer, disabled opacity and grotesque performance. Their choreographic work has been presented at Three Dollar Bill, TICTAC Art Centre, The Henny Jurriens Foundation, Mount Holyoke College, The Brick Theater (NYC), Boston Ballet School, Bridge for Dance, and Urbanity Dance Company. They were a choreographer and movement director for the first all-neurodivergent workshop of The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Nighttime. They acted as dramaturg for Fashioned Creature by Sammie Murray and To Be Swept Up! by Bebe Miller and Angie Hauser. They have performed works under the direction of Sarah Lass, Barbie Diewald, Kathleen Mitchell, Tom Goldhand, Lauren Langlois, and Alaina Albertson Murphy. August is currently building work that integrates live music, Shibari, and text derived from queer anti-language.

Brian smiles for the camera; he has light tan skin, brown hair and beard; wearing a pink shirt and silver chains.

Brian Golden (he/him) is a choreographer and movement director based in Los Angeles and New York. He obtained his BFA from Chapman University where he studied Dance and Film Production. Brian has researched improvisation in Israel with the Batsheva and Vertigo Dance Company. He has presented work at the Joyce Theater as a part of the Martha Graham Dance Companies fall season, Battery Dance Festival, Southern California Institute of Architecture, New Century Dance Project, and McCallum Choreography Festival. He has also choreographed music videos for Yung Gravy, Daddy Yankee, and Two Friends. Most recently, he completed a choreography residency at Jacob’s Pillow and studied choreographic devices under the mentorship of Doug Varone. His work explores elements of conflict, expression, and sensation in order to reveal dramatic scenarios and multi-dimensional characters.

Joelle poses with a focused gaze, hand supporting her head, wearing a black tank top.

Joelle Antonia Santiago (b. New York, NY), she/her, is a New York and Paris based choreographer and director. Joelle is a recipient of the Fulbright Harriet Hale-Woolley Award for the Arts. She is currently an Artist in Residence at the Fondation des États-
Unis in Paris, France, where she creates choreographic projects as part of the 2023-2024 season. She has presented work at the NYU Tisch School for the Arts, The Clark Art Institute, Roulette Intermedium, Chelsea Piers, The International Studio and Curatorial Program, the Fondation des États-Unis, and with the PROMPTUS collective. She is an adjunct professor at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and has guest lectured at the Peabody Conservatory at John’s Hopkins University. She frequently collaborates with Blackbox Music Ensemble, musicians, sculpture artists, theorists, visual artists, and filmmakers. Joelle graduated Cum Laude from Barnard College of Columbia University (B.A., Dance), a nominee of the Bold Award, honoring alumna Grace Lee Boggs. She has sung with The Fire Ensemble (The Shed, NY), and sang classical and contemporary American, Russian and French repertoire with the Barnard-Columbia Chamber Choir and Chorus.