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Taja Will (they/them) is a non-binary, chronically ill, queer, Latinx (Chilean) adoptee. They are a performer, choreographer, somatic therapist, consultant and Healing Justice practitioner based in Mni Sota Makoce, on the ancestral lands of the Dakota and Anishinaabe. Taja’s approach integrates improvisation, somatic modalities, text and vocals in contemporary performance. Their aesthetic is one of spontaneity, bold choice making, sonic and kinetic partnership and the ability to move in relationship to risk and intimacy. Will’s artistic work explores visceral connections to current socio-cultural realities through a blend of ritual, dense multi-layered worldbuilding and everyday magic.

Taja initiates solo projects and teaching ventures and is a recent recipient of the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, in the dance field, awarded in 2021. Their work has been presented throughout the Twin Cities and across the United States. Including local performances at the Walker Art Center Choreographer’s Evening, the Red Eye Theater’s New Works 4 Weeks, the Radical Recess series, Right Here Showcase and the Candy Box Dance Festival. They were the recipient of a 2018-’19 McKnight Choreography Fellowship, administered by the Cowles Center and funded by The McKnight Foundation. Will has recently received support from the National Association of Latinx Arts & Culture, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and Metropolitan Regional Arts Council.
tajawillartist.com

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Mihyun has trained in dance since 1992 in South Korea. The root of her movement principles came from learning Korean Traditional Dance, Ballet, and Modern dance at Sunhwa Arts School. After achieving solid movement techniques, she studied choreography to explore how art can reflect human experience at Kookmin University in 2005. After she worked as a professional dancer and choreographer, she began to practice improvisational forms of dance including contact improvisation in 2009. Through the practice of improvisational dance, she began to learn how powerful the bodily knowledge is because it often brought her repressed feelings and forgotten memories. She became fascinated by the unknowns and therapeutic practices. This brought her to study Expressive Arts Therapy and Somatic Psychology under the Counseling Psychology program at California Institute of Integral Studies. In 2021, she studied human movement method called Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis at Integrated Movement Studies.
movementflow.org

​Known for her “wonderful insistence on making art about complex ideas” (Janice Steinberg, SanDiego.com), Rebecca Bryant addresses current societal phenomena while blurring the distinctions between artistic disciplines. Coming from a visual art background, Bryant creates performances that combine both pre-determined and improvised movement with text, video, sound, technology, and objects. Critics have called her work “humorous, subtle, and provocative” (David Lemberg, Artscape Media), “exploding with suggestions” (Zachary Whittenburg, Chicago Dancemakers Forum), and “a stunning and witty experience” (Nancy Wozny, Dance Source Houston). Bryant has performed her work in 26 states across the U.S. and in Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Spain, Germany, Romania, Hungary, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Her projects have received support from residencies at Djerassi Resident Artist Program (California) and Guapamacátaro Art and Ecology Residency (Mexico), as well as a Puffin Foundation grant. Recognized for her intelligent dancemaking, Bryant’s work has been selected for Gala Concerts at multiple American College Dance Association conferences (2000, 2012, 2013, 2016). Her piece on gun culture, ASKQUESTIONSLATER, was selected for the 2016 National College Dance Festival held at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.
 

In addition to numerous solo projects, Bryant is an active collaborator. She is co-founder of the Past Modern Performance Duo (dance/percussion/new media) and worked extensively with the Lower Left Performance Collective for 13 years. Bryant’s frequent projects with musicians, visual artists, theater artists, poets, and dancers have brought her into creative relationships with over 120 artists from diverse backgrounds, including the multi-national music collective Trummerflora, African-American poetry group Collective Purpose, Chicano/Latino collective The Taco Shop Poets, Korean-American hip hop choreographer Grace Jun, Argentine filmmaker Paula Zacharias, Polish theater director Jurek Sawka, and German visual artist Fabian Winkler. She has danced with renowned and emerging choreographers including Victoria Marks, Nina Martin, Wally Cardona, Kim Epifano, Shelley Senter, Lionel Popkin, Liam Clancy, Marianne Kim, Sandra Mathern, Randé Dorn, and Manuelito Biag. She has set her work on dance ensembles in the US and abroad, inclusing students at University of Florida, Florida State College at Jacksonville, Winthrop University, Western Washington University, California State University Long Beach, California State University Fresno, University of California San Diego, and Purdue University.

Bryant has taught both nationally and internationally, with workshops and classes at festivals, universities, community colleges, K-12 public schools, and in the community. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Dance at California State University Long Beach, where she teaches contemporary dance praxis, improvisation, and pedagogy. Bryant has taught workshops in New York, Stockholm, Oslo, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Philadelphia, San Diego, and at the Los Angeles Improvisational Dance Festival, West Coast Contact Improv Jam (Berkeley, CA), Texas Dance Improvisation Festival (Houston, TX), Contact Festival Freiburg (Germany), TransContact Festival (Romania), Kontakt Budapest Festival (Hungary), and at 23 universities across the US.
rebeccabryant.net

Jess Humphrey makes dances to leverage the profound healing potential of human beings moving together, attending to space, time, and bodies, and deepening their relationships with each other and the world through the tenderness and vulnerability elicited by the creative process. Her movement research began in childhood with gymnastics and continues with dancemaking from various, shifting perspectives, and states of body~mind. Her dances are expressions of her engagement with paradox, contemplative and somatic practices, Integral Theory, Practice-as-Research, and reverence for the works of those within whose lineages she moves. 

 

She has co-created several evening-length dances over the past 20 years with artists such as Deborah Hay, Sara Shelton Mann, Gabor Tompa, Guillermo Gomez-Pena’s La Postra Nostra, Leslie Seiters, LIVE, and throughout her 13-year collaboration with Eric Geiger. 

 

In 2021, Jess initiated Portal, a transborder dance experiment born on Zoom during the pandemic and continuing to grow IRL on both sides of the US-Mexico border. She now co-facilitates this platform for dances created through somatic and contemplative experimentation alongside Briseida López Inzunza, Miroslava Wilson Montoya, and Gizeh Muñiz Vengel. 

 

She has an MFA in Modern Dance with a focus on contact improvisation and creative process from the University of Utah (2008) and a BFA in Dance from California State University, Long Beach (2002). 

Intensive study with Deborah Hay in 2009 changed her life and continues to inspire her every move.  

 

She is a Registered Somatic Movement Therapist (RSMT) with the International Somatic Movement and Therapy Association (ISMETA) and is certified in Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis through the Integrated Movement Studies Program (IMS, 2006) with primary teachers Peggy Hackney and Janice Meaden, Dance-Specific Pilates with Body Arts and Sciences, International (BASI, 2002) with Karen Clippinger and Rael Isocowitz, has studied Body-Mind Centering® (BMC®) with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and Amy Matthews, and will graduate from the BMC® Somatic Movement Educator Program at Moving Within with Mary Lou Seereiter in 2025/26. She has studied the Feldenkrais Method® with Seiters, Geiger, and Kristen Baum Wilcox and Alexander Technique with Marjean McKenna, Eileen Troberman, and Shelley Senter. 

 

After experiencing the shadow dynamics of horizontal, non-hierarchical group structures, she was inspired to pursue training in the facilitation of conflict as a creative process as well as leadership that cultivates healthy hierarchy through the integration of both top-down and bottom-up processes. Her certification in Integral Facilitation® (Ten Directions, 2019) with Diane Musho Hamilton, Rob McNamara, Cindy Lou Golin, Gabriel Wilson, and Rebecca Ejo Colwell informs her work in the studio, within institutions, and throughout the community.

 

In her role as a Professor of Dance at SDSU, Jess continues to learn through teaching (dancemaking, contact improvisation, embodied anatomy, somatics, making dances with students and mentoring their dancemaking processes), researching (somatic and contemplative practices in dancemaking as paths to healing and spiritual deepening), and working with the Prison Arts Collective to bring arts education to incarcerated participants.

www.jesshumphrey.com