Performance in Progress
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Performance in Progress showing has been postponed. Check back for updates.
Performance in Progress is a program dedicated to the development of works-in-progress and facilitated feedback. This platform allows for artists at all stages of development to share their work in mini sessions and are later presented at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on March 14, 2020 in a culminating Performance in Progress showing.
Please note: all works must be 10 minutes and under for both the works in progress showing and the performance at Atlas Performing Arts Center.
A $250 stipend will be awarded to each choreographer selected for this program.
Mini Showing 1: November 24, 2019, 3:00-5:00pm, Dance Loft on 14 (4 artists)
Mini Showing 2: December 1, 2019, 4:00-6:00pm, Joe’s Movement Emporium (4 artists)
Mini Showing 3: January 11, 2010, 7:00-9:00pm, Dance Place (4 artists)
Performance in Progress Tech: March 13, 2020, All day, Atlas Performing Arts Center (all 12 artists)
Performance in Progress Showing: March 14, 2020, 6:00-8:00pm, Atlas Performing Arts Center (all 12 artists)
2019-2020 Performance in Progress Cohort
Emily Ames is energized by dancing in offbeat places with unconventional people. She graduated May 2018 from the University of Maryland Magna Cum Laude with degrees in Dance and History and now works as a Marketing Associate at Studio Theatre. Emily’s work has been featured in UMD’s undergraduate dance concerts, the NextNOW Fest, American College Dance Association’s 2018 conference, and in UMD’s Second Season series. Recent artistic highlights include: working as a community organizer for 120 Project, wearing a velvet jumpsuit in a Heart Stück Bernie performance, and touring Sinaloa, Mexico with PEARSONWIDRIG DANCETHEATER along with many, many oranges.
Amber Lucia Chabus and Sydney Lemelin hail from the Northern land of New Jersey/New York (respectively). They moved to Maryland for the "warm" weather and instead met each other at the University of Maryland, College while both pursuing degrees in dance and some other stuff like science and technology. They are familiar faces to choreography by Heart Stuck Bernie, PEARSONWIDRIG Dance Theater, ReVision Dance Company, and Orange Grove Dance. In their joint choreographic process, Chabus brings her Virgo sense of organization while Lemelin brings Gemini rising to mess it all up. When they are not choreographing, they bring shenanigans to real life through joint Halloween costumes, fruit breaks, and beautiful singing in the car along to the 2018 "A Star is Born" soundtrack. Chamelin or Lembus, whatever their company name is, is excited to share their new work with the DMV community this year.
Hailing from the Midwest, Krystal Leniece Collins (she/they) captivated their first audience in the produce section of the local Moo & Oink (may the beloved Chicago grocery store chain rest in power). A graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (BFA ‘18), Krystal has performed in and choreographed many works during her matriculation. They currently move, groove, and reside in Washington, D.C. where they are currently a company member with Contradiction Dance Theatre, darlingdance, and Heart Stück Bearnie. She is currently the Junior Staff Program Manager at Dance Place and a freelance performer and choreographer, dance educator, curator, and most importantly a proud power disrupting combative sagittarius. Their work has been shown at Joe’s Movement Emporium (MD), Dance Place (DC), Krannert Center for the Performing Arts (IL) and the Kennedy Center as a part of the National College Dance Festival (DC). Her most recent performance venues include: the shower (a COVID-19 safety compliant venue), Dance Place (DC) and Joe's Movement Emporium (MD). As a non-binary femme, Krystal’s artistic practice amalgamates many lenses of Blackness, including: queerness, girl/womanhood, popular culture, joy, ancestral and spiritual practices. Currently, she curates a weekly rotating playlist, entitled quaranTUNES, with her younger sister a.k.a. DJ Mighty. Learn more about Krystal here https://krystal-collins.wixsite.com/krystaleniece.
Ila M Conoley began her studies at the Dance Center of Colorado Springs and continued her training at the Alabama Dance Theatre where she performed in classical, neoclassical, and contemporary ballets. She earned her BA in dance from the University of Colorado at Boulder and MFA in dance from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Ila returned to Colorado to chair the Pikes Peak Community College Dance Department. While in Colorado she performed with the Ormao Dance Company and Push/Don’t Pull Dance Theatre as well as independent choreographers. Ila has choreographed for a wide variety of companies and schools such as The Moving Collective, Flatlands Contemporary Dance Theatre, Texas Technical University, Dragon Theatre Productions, Ormao Dance Company, Moving Collective, Sansara, and Savannah State University’s Obsidian Repertory Dance Company. Ila choreographs concert dance, site-specific work, dance theatre, and community modern. Ila is an instructor of modern dance, ballet, dance appreciation, dance history, and composition and has taught courses and master classes at various institutions such as Colorado Mesa University, New Mexico State University, University of Texas El Paso, New Mexico State, University of Kentucky, and Savannah State University. As a freelance artist based out of Northern Virginia / Washington, D.C., Ila enjoys teaching master classes and workshops throughout the country. Currently, Ila is faculty at The Kentucky Governor’s School of the Arts, an instructor at Local Motion Project in Alexandria, VA as well as a dancer in the LMP Performance Ensemble, and freelance choreographer and educator.
Ava Delasanta, a Rhode Island native, received her BA in Dance Performance from Rhode Island College (RIC) in 2015. During her time at RIC, two of her choreographic works were presented at the American College Dance Association’s New England and Northeast conferences. After graduating college, Ava performed with Providence Ballet Theater. In 2017, she was awarded the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Choreography Fellowship. The Fellowship funding helped her attend Regional Dance America's National Choreography Intensive. Ava currently works at Dance Place as the Production Associate and teaches many youth dance classes.
Madeline Maxine Gorman is a Maryland native who graduated as commencement speaker from Towson University with her B.F.A. in Dance and B.S. in Mass Communication. Described as a “raw talent” and “a treasure that can push her and the dance community in the right direction” (Charm City Dance), her choreography explores societal issues through contemporary movement alongside projection, spoken word, humor, and community engagement. Gorman self-produced ADDICT, which ran for two sold-out nights at Baltimore Theatre Project and raised over $4,000 for a Baltimore homeless shelter. Most recently, Gorman was commissioned by Joe’s Movement Emporium to premiere her new evening-length work Veritas in May 2020. Draft showings of Veritas will be performed at The Warehouse and as part of Dance Metro DC’s Performance in Progress series at Dance Place and the Atlas Performing Arts Center.
Nancy Havlik formed Dance Performance Group in 1989 to explore her choreographic ideas with a small group of dancers and musicians. The Company has performed extensively in the Washington DC area at venues including Dance Place, Atlas Theater, Shakespeare Theater’s Velocity Festival, Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, Joe’s Movement Emporium and Rhizome. Havlik has directed site work at locations including Josephine Butler Parks Center, Anderson House and in Eastern Europe. (Czech Republic and Slovakia). Havlik received a 2017 Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council.
Nancy has studied dance/dance improvisation with Robert Dunn, Simon Forti, Susan Rethorst and John Jaspers and physical theater with Saskia Hegt.
She teaches interactive dance workshops for frail older adults throughout the Washington area as a teaching artist for Arts for The Aging.(AFTA) and co-directs AFTA”S Quicksilver, a dance improvisation company of older adults with cellist Adam Gonzales. Through AFTA Nancy and artist Donna McKay received a Met Life grant to develop Moving Art, a series of interactive dance/art workshops for older adults.
Gabriel Mata is a Mexican-American dance choreographer, educator, and performer. He also navigates the world as queer, Latinx, and an undocumented immigrant/DACA recipient. He graduated from San José State University with a B.F.A in Dance. The StarTribune has called him “Sly, subtle and totally virtuosic, theatrical dancer-choreographer Gabriel Mata holds the stage with expressive movement and witty words.” Gabriel Mata/Movements is a Washington DC project-based company, initiated in 2015. The "Movements" is a double entendre within physicality along with the act of exposing the human condition through talking dances. His dances have been performed in Minnesota, California, New York, North Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Washington DC, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. His work has been commissioned/performed by sjDANCEco, the Festival of Latin American Contemporary Choreographers, the Luna Dance Institute, Joy of Motion, Dance Place, and the Charlotte Dance Festival. He has performed for companies such as sjDANCEco (CA), Post:Ballet (CA), haus of bambi (DC), and Zenon Dance Company (MN). Mata has also performed for PEARSON WIDRIG DANCE THEATER, Diane Frank, Mark Foehringer, Joel Smith, Keith Johnson, Wynn Fricke, and the work of José Limón. He is currently a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Maryland - College Park.
Charlie Maybee is a music and dance artist hailing from Woodbridge, Virginia. He holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Illinois with a certificate in Criticism and Interpretive Theory, a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, and is an alumnus of the Metropolitan Youth Tap Ensemble. He is currently on faculty at Shenandoah University and American University, and the Artistic Director of Polymath Performance Project through which he shows interdisciplinary performance artwork nationally. His current research explores hybridity and techno-cultures through a tap dancer’s perspective and works to make tap dance more visible in contemporary performance and scholarly study.
Roxann Morgan Rowley is the artistic director for Next Reflex Dance Collective a resident dance company at the Workhouse Arts Center. Since 2006 she has been producing dance work in the DC Metro Region. Her work has been showcased in productions at Dance Place and Joy of Motion, Dancing Across the Virginias, the Charlotte Dance Festival, The Goose Route Dance Festival, White Wave CoolNYC Festival, The Velocity DC Dance Festival, John F. Kennedy Center, and the Harman Shakespeare Theater.
An artist and performer, she has had the opportunity to work artists and companies including MansurDance, Clancy Works, Steven Mazolla, Daniel Burkholder and the Playground, Dakshina Dance Company, Anomosmotion, Peter DiMuro, Jane Jerardi, Jane Franklin Dance Company and Malcolm Shute. Ms. Rowley holds an MFA from George Mason University and a BA from George Washington University studying under national and international faculty members.
Outside of NRDC Ms. Rowley has taught for James Madison University and Fairfax County Public Schools Institute for the Arts and Joy of Motion. Currently Ms. Morgan Rowley teaches for University of Mary Washington and George Mason University.
Zoe Wampler is a DC based dancer, choreographer, and interdisciplinary artist with a B.F.A. in Dance & Choreography from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is constantly exploring different ways of creating and viewing dance, including video choreography, movement photography, and virtual reality experiences. Through all of these formats, Zoe seeks to provide immersive and empathetic experiences for viewers of all backgrounds while fostering a spirit of research and collaboration in her creative processes. Currently, she works in Development for Jane Franklin Dance and Fractal Theatre Collective, serves as Company Intern to Christopher K. Morgan & Artists, is a Lead Teacher with Tippi Toes DC, and is dancing for Britta Joy Peterson in her project 'External Organ'.
Baakari Wilder is internationally known for starring in the Broadway musical Bring In Da Noise, Bring In Da Funk. He received a Bessie Award for his performance, and later assumed the lead role for a year. He has also received the Pola Nirenska Award for achievement in dance. Baakari's dancing has delighted audiences around the world in places such as the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, France, Africa, Brazil, Germany, Japan, and Russia. He has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Theatre from the University of Maryland at College Park. He shares his knowledge of tap dancing through his role as assistant artistic director of the Washington, D.C.-based companies Capitol Tap and District Tap. He is currently producing, directing, and starring in “Reform Live” which premiered at Dance Place in Washington, DC in November 2019.