John Jota Leaños, Vanessa Sanchez
John Jota Leaños is a Mestizo (Chicano, Chumash) media artist and animator focusing on critical convergences of history, memory, social space, and decolonization. Leaños’ animation, installation, opera, performance and public media fuse traditional practices and aesthetics with new technologies and contemporary reconfigurations. His work has been shown at the Sundance Film Festival, Cannes Short Corner, PBS.org, the Whitney Biennial, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and a variety of other art and public contexts. A Professor in the Department of Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Leaños is a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow and Creative Capital Foundation Grantee who has received the United States Artist Fellowship, National Association for Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) Master Artist Award, the San Francisco Art Commission Individual Artist Grant, the MAP Fund Award and the Creative Work Fund Award.
Vanessa Sanchez is a Chicana-Native dancer, choreographer and educator who focuses on community arts and traditional dance forms to emphasize voices and experiences of Latina, Chicana, and Indigenous womxn and youth. Based in SF, she is a 2019 Dance/USA Artist Fellow. She works to ensure accessibility to arts training and performances while mentoring youth and young adults of color. Sanchez’s work is rooted in community engagement, creating choreography and accessible events to tell stories of collective resistance. Her production “Pachuquísmo’’ received the Isadora Duncan Award for Outstanding Production. She received a Hewlett 50 Arts Commission grant with Brava Theater for upcoming work “Ghostly Labor.” Sanchez is currently a Dance Lecturer at UCSC and a resident artist at Brava Theater.
Mitchell Rose
Prior to becoming a filmmaker, Mitchell Rose was a New York-based choreographer. His company toured internationally for 15 years. Eventually he was drawn more to visual media and graduated from The American Film Institute as a Directing Fellow. Since A.F.I. his films have won 100 festival awards and are screened around the world.
The New York Times called him: "A rare and wonderful talent." The Washington Post wrote that his work was “in the tradition of Chaplin, Keaton, and Tati—funny and sad and more than the sum of both.”
Mr. Rose is currently a professor of dance-filmmaking at Ohio State University.
Jay Amin
Jay Amin is a British-Indian multi-disciplinary director crossing documentary, music video and fiction.
Irishia Hubbard
Irishia Hubbard is an interdisciplinary artist from South Carolina. She has worked with renowned screendance artists, including Katrina McPherson, Robin Gee, Kelly Hargraves and Charlotte Griffin. Her films have premiered in film festivals such as Dance Camera West, Smash Cut, Nebula Dance and Black Lives Rising. Irishia graduated in 2016 from the University of California, Irvine with a B.A. in Educational Sciences and B.F.A. in Dance Choreography. While completing her undergraduate studies she became the inaugural recipient of the Donald McKayle Legacy scholarship. Irishia is currently a Master of Fine Arts candidate and a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Modern Dance program at the University of Utah. As a graduate student, Irishia teaches Jazz, conditioning for dancers, and is a rehearsal director for guest choreographers. Her other roles include artistic director of The Hubbard Collective and professional stager for the Donald McKayle Legacy.
Bernardo Alevato, Taianne Oliveira
Brazilian designer researching virtual reality and artificial intelligence. He is a teacher in Oi Kabum! Lab and collaborating professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and acts as an autonomous designer.
Taianne Oliveira is a dancer, teacher and visual artist.
Nai’long Song
Song Nai’long，is a dancer, choreographer and documentary director who graduated from Beijing Dance Academy and the National Dance Academy of Rome, Italy. Has won gold, silver, and special awards at the 13th and 16th Rome International Dance Competition; The work "Triviality" won the silver medal in choreography at the Italian National Art Award in 2015. Invited to participate in the 6th "Silk Road International Art Festival", the Italian Lunga VITA International Art Festival, and the Italian Padova International Art Festival with his work "Distance Formula". In 2021, he was specially invited by the organizing committee of the 19th Luohe International Dance Competition to create a dance video work "123, Hide". The video work "The Prison of Imagination" was selected for the second Chinese dance Video Exhibition.
