The LEIMAY Incubator Program is a self-directed opportunity designed to support a local community of movement-based artists by providing dedicated studio space for artistic exploration, creative development, and regular practice. Prioritizing BIPOC makers, the program offers free access to a dance studio, fostering a supportive environment for independent research and exchange. Artists receive studio time scheduled in alignment with their creative process, along with amplification of their work through LEIMAY’s social media and newsletters. This initiative cultivates a space for artists to deepen their practice, share ideas with peers, and engage in an evolving dialogue within the field of live arts. Through the Incubator Program, LEIMAY continues its commitment to nurturing experimental art-making, sustainability, and collective growth.
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Incubator Artist 2021
Incubator Artist 2022
Incubator Artist 2023
Incubator Artist 2024
Incubator Artist 2025
originally from El Paso, TX, is a versatile artist immersed in durational performance, movement, and improvisation. Collaboration is integral to their work as they manifest sensory experiences, guiding viewers to where hyper-surreal and ordinary converge. Their work investigates themes of identity, failure, and intimacy.
I’m an artist who uses movement, poetics, and humor to invite focus into the ideologies that train bodies how to move. Creating across time-based media, performance, and writing, my practice encourages critical play in reframing genres of embodied instruction. My own body is imprinted by: American dance theater, Filipino karaoke parties, a Bolshoi ballerina, immigrant parents, suburban aspirations, Post-Modern chance forms, and slapstick comedy. Working in concert with performers and audiences alike, I’m invested in devising experimental spaces to test beliefs of authority, horizontal organization, and temporary utopias.
is a freelance dancer living in New York. A Dallas TX native, Maggie is an honors graduate of Booker T Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. She graduated summa cum laude with a BFA in Dance from NYU Tisch, and also studied internationally at the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance. Maggie is currently performing with Dual Rivet and cullen+them. Other recent credits include Kayla Farrish Decent Structures Arts showing at Triskelion Arts, Helen Simoneau Danse’s The Delicate Power Project Research Lab, participation as a dancer in Jacob’s Pillow, Ann and Weston Hicks Choreography Fellow Program, and participation … Continued
Through choreographed films and live performances, we’re working to challenge the status-quo and create unconventional and radically vulnerable work which helps us make sense of our changing world and reimagine how dance exists in our spaces and in our bodies. What does incubation mean to you? “an environment that allows an idea to develop, mature and reach its full potential.”
In this program, I am hoping to accomplish two things – one is to keep working on my latest work, While is Motion, and other is to create brand new work. What does incubation mean to you? Process that is full of discovery, learning, challenges, playfulness, joy, and connection with myself and the community.
My work is centered around the many varied layers we encounter in our lives, specifically the layers of gender and societal roles, and where I, as a non-binary gender non-conforming human, fit in. Breaking these layers down to get to the origin, I then use that origin to find different pathways that are separate from the “norm.” Incubation to me is the period between exposure (to an idea) and the result from that exposure (creating, working, processing, thinking).
I will be doing a deep dive into a past solo with the hopes of a newer emergence. I will be conducting new research within disciplines in conjunction to movement. Additionally, I will be calling on Annie Heath for assistance, consultation, and collaboration. What does incubation mean to you? Presently, incubation means entering into an environment in which the conditions are geared towards my fundamental and intellectual development. Through certain fixed conditions, I believe avenues of experimental play and learning can appear more readily. It feels like sustained support with non linear possibilities.
Andrea Soto, raised in Juarez, is a first generation Mexican American movement artist and collaborator whose craft lives in performance and data-gathering. Her last public piece, Multitude (1-2) was presented at MAK Center for Art and Architecture for the opening of VALIE EXPORT: EMBODIED in Los Angeles. Andrea holds the body as our temple of pleasure and truth system; she creates poetic ecosystems rooted in non-hierarchical ways of making and being. A graduate from California Institute of the Arts, she is the recipient of the 2024 Barbara Ensley Award on behalf of the Merce Cunningham Trust, and the 2023 Foundation … Continued
Chaery Moon embarked on her dance journey with the Korean National Ballet and the Korea National Institute for the Gifted in Arts, earning early recognition by winning the Tanzolymp in Berlin. She obtained her BFA at The Juilliard School and later joined the Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon in France, where she expanded her repertoire across diverse dance forms and cultures. Upon returning to the U.S., Moon pursued an MFA in Dance from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Since then, she has been creating works that merge physical movement with the intricacies of human experience through collaborative processes with … Continued
Nikki Theroux is a dancer and choreographer based in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BFA in Dance Performance from Marymount Manhattan College and has additionally studied with the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company’s International Dance Program under the direction of Danielle Ohn, and Big Bang with Stéphanie Decourteille in Montreal. Nikki has performed and presented work in venues including the Park Avenue Armory, the Joyce Theater, Westbeth, and Bryant Park. Currently, Nikki is working with More Fish Dance Company under the direction of Doron Perk. She is also a co-founder of Wildflower Collective, alongside her longtime collaborator, Dale Ratcliff. The two … Continued
Sebastian Arredondo, frequently known as Sea, is a multi-hyphenate movement artist from Southern California. Recently relocating to New York City, they are exploring the relationship between movement cultivation and music production, examining how these two processes intertwine. Drawing from a blend of contemporary modern technique and hip-hop styles, such as waving, they aim to challenge themselves by discovering new ways to create movement and immersive audience experiences that are sensory expansive. Now embarking on their journey into music production, Sea hopes to find ways to align their choreography with the original music and sounds they create themselves.
Julia Lawton is a New York-based dancer and choreographer, and the Artistic Director of Lawton Dance Collective. She graduated from Adelphi University in spring of 2024 with her BFA in dance, as well as a minor in Art and Design Education and as a member of the Honors College. Throughout college, she performed works by numerous choreographers, including Paul Taylor, Orion Duckstein, and Frank Augustyn. Julia currently dances in the professional division at The Taylor School and works as The Taylor School Associate and as a Community Director at Arts On Site. Julia has presented her work at numerous venues, … Continued
Lindy Fines is choreographer and artistic director of GREYZONE, an NYC-based collaborative dance project that she co-founded with creative director Justin Fines. Melding deconstructed ballet and modern dance vocabularies, visual arts, and time-based media, GREYZONE’s works for film and stage uncover non-narrative theatricality and highlight the rituals embedded in dance training and performance. Lindy received a 2024 Support for Artists award from New York State Council on the Arts. GREYZONE is a NYFA Artist Fellow in Choreography through New York Foundation for the Arts, and has been supported by Harkness Foundation for Dance, New Music USA and Foundation for Contemporary … Continued
Shira Kagan-Shafman is a New York based dancer, choreographer and multidisciplinary artist. She has performed in works throughout theaters and museums in New York including, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Poster House museum, Arts on Site, Spring for Spring Dance Festival, Triskelion Arts and Green Space. She was a recipient of the 2023 B. Wilson Foundation grant for which she produced, choreographed and performed in a production at Baryshnikov Arts Center in the John Cage and Merce Cunningham studio and was a 2023 artist-in-residence at Mother’s Milk. Kagan-Shafman has had the pleasure of performing in works by Joanna Kotze, Mariana Valencia, Peggy … Continued
Sofia Engelman & Em Papineau are life partners and choreographic collaborators living in Lenapehoking // Brooklyn, NY. Sofia + Em’s first collaborative project was presented at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts while they were students at Smith College. Since then, they have held choreographic residencies at The Croft, Mana Contemporary, The Living Room, Ponderosa, The Dance Complex, MOtiVE Brooklyn, Sky Hill Farm Studio, The Floor on Atlantic, College of the Atlantic, and School for Contemporary Dance & Thought. In addition to presenting their work at these residency spaces, the pair have performed at festivals including FRESH Festival, EstroGenius … Continued
Maho Ogawa is a Japanese-born multidisciplinary movement artist working in NYC. Her work has delved into building a choreographic language based on nuances and isolated body movements, and she has built a database, “Minimum Movement Catalog” (https://minimum-movement-demo.web.app/movements). Maho Ogawa uses body, video, text, computer programming, and audience-participatory methods to discover how relationships and the environment affect individual bodies consciously and subconsciously. Her recent works partly decontextualize and research the minimum movement in Japanese tea culture and cinema. She’s working on public events inspired by Japanese tea rituals to build new thinking methods about “silence,” providing a quiet but active mindset … Continued
Stephanie Acosta is an interdisciplinary artist, director, experimental archivist and organizer who places the materiality of the ephemeral at the center of their practice. Blending performance with practice-based and studio research and engaging ensembles in facilitated processes, they create fleeting performance works that examine perception in shared experiences. Acosta has presented her works with and for Museum of Art and Design, MCA Chicago, Chocolate Factory Theatre, Knockdown Center, the Current Sessions, Miami Performance International Festival, IN>Time Symposium, Abrons Arts Center, and the Performance Philosophy conference. As dramaturg Acosta has collaborated with artist Miguel Gutierrez, on multiple projects including Cela nous … Continued
Ash Rucker received a bachelor’s in Fashion Merchandising from Buffalo State University and the Fashion Institute of Technology. After graduating, Ash moved to New York and interned for Betsy Johnson, W magazine, and designer Mara Hoffman after shortly settling at Loreal. Since then Ash has shifted careers and is the founder of a non-profit organization Therapart. Working with youth has been impacted by the criminal justice system. Ash has recently completed a fellowship at the New School and Columbia University with her work centered around healing through modalities such as somatic-based movement, meditation, and art therapy practices. Aside from working … Continued
Sarazina Joy Stein works together with Emily LaRochelle. Both are NYC-based dancers who met at Bates Dance Festival summer of 2017 and have been collaborating ever since. They’ve performed their work at PSNY, Triskelion Arts, Theater for the New City, Wild Project, TADA, New Dance Alliance, HONK! Open Streets, and in community gardens. The two have performed with Žilvinas Jonušas, Mindy Toro, and Kathleen Clark. They curated and performed an evening of dance and music at Spoke the Hub with Toro and Clark. They’re also in the Brazilian samba reggae-style drumline, Fogo Azul, and work as freelance theater electricians.
Made in Taiwan, active in America and quiet places. MFA. She has a deep love for dance and nurturing harmony. She has danced for Susan Marshall, Gesel Mason, Punchdrunk, and many brilliant artists. She was an original cast member of Sleep No More NYC; as well as a rehearsal director of SNM Shanghai. Most recently, she has toured with ANIKAYA to Palestine and African countries. She has bathed in contact improvisation, meditation and yoga since 2005 with occasional teaching and sharing with others. In her free time, she practices calligraphy, plays with voices, and makes bad arts. And she loves … Continued
Shiloh Hodges is a dancer and zinemaker who has worked with Earl Mosley, Sidra Bell/SBDNY, André M. Zachery/Renegade Performance Group, Monstah Black, and Third Rail Projects, among others. She is in ongoing improvisational practice across forms with Shantelle Courvoisier Jackson. Shiloh’s work has been shown at Green Space, The Space Upstairs, and the 2020 EstroGenius Festival (in collaboration with Kim Savarino). Also a matchbox, a phone, a park, and a window.
Kelsey Rondeau is Brooklyn-based queer, non binary dancer, drag performer, and choreographer. Their work draws on diverse elements of pop culture which are collaged, blended, and distilled into fantastic narratives. Coming from a background of concert dance, immersive theater, burlesque and drag, they make work that honors these disciplines to challenge and explore my conceptions of self/hood unique to my voice. With their company, Hard/Femme Dances, they have shown work at Spoke The Hub, Triskelion Arts, BAX and Gibney Dance Center. Outside the studio, they are a member of the Core Creative Team at the House of Yes.
A queer poly-disciplinary performance artist and expressionist, synead’s inspiration and motivation is deeply rooted in her quest for collective healing, self-awareness, and the freedom and advancement of queer, black and indigenous people of color. through her interdisciplinary studies of black radical feminist theories, experimental theater-making, movement-based healing practices, and sonic exploration, she strives towards dismantling fear-based thinking to help self-actualize one’s deepest creative desires. synead’s artistry is not bound by medium, but bound to the varied expressions of living a full and ever-present life. be sure to check her website out at [http://www.synead.com] to get acquainted with her work and … Continued
Rachel Calabrese & Sawyer Newsome of NewBrese Dance Project We will be working on creating a piece that has to do with the passage of time & our distortion of time when it comes to memory – inspired by Salvadore Dali’s painting ‘The Persistence of Memory’. We love physical dance theatre, the art of partnering, and getting into and out of the floor. We are influenced and inspired by Laja Martin, Vim Vigor, and HumanHood. These companies and all the artists involved in them don’t just create beautiful movement but beautiful narrative and environments as well which is something we aspire to do. … Continued
Dominica Greene (she.her) is a Black woman who cherishes and channels her Caribbean heritage and Queerness into an art-based existence. Based on the unceded lands of the Munsee Lenape people, now known as Brooklyn, New York, Greene creates conceptual, body-based art rooted in her belief that dance is not something to be learned, but an innate entity that we all have access to and are perpetually engaging with. Her work aims to reflect nature, human and otherwise, as a way of highlighting humanity and the stark sameness and differences and sameness in the differences within all of us.
The work that I am exploring is a collaboration with the interdisciplinary visual artist Naomi Andrée Campbell. We are investigating movements, imagery, and histories of protective animals in our respective Chinese and Japanese backgrounds. What does incubation mean to you? A protected place to grow and develop. Where all experimentation (silly, fruitful, dead-end, dada, you name it) is possible.
Nikki Theroux, Tamara Leigh, Kimie Parker, Hillary Bonhomme. Wldflwr Dance Collective, directed by Tamara Leigh and Nikki Theroux, works towards multidisciplinary and inclusive art-making. Wldflwr has been in residence at Dragon’s Egg in CT, beginning the creative process for “the last to bloom,” the collective’s debut evening-length which premiered at The Tank NYC in 2021. In 2022, they were Artists in Residence at MOtiVE Brooklyn where they began creating “Permanence.”
I’m working with my musical collaborator Alia Scheirman to develop performance environments that allow for a live and mechanically visible integration of movement and sound, making use of everyday objects, looping technology, live drawings, and more. What does incubation mean to you? I can be very literal sometimes, so I think about incubating an idea like an egg. Sometimes, you’re not entirely sure what’s gonna hatch from it and when – nor can you really control these things – but you decide to give it your time, care, and energy regardless, dedicating yourself to whatever beautiful or monstrous being might … Continued
The work I will be focusing on in my time at the incubation program will consist of a video project in collaboration with Kyle Carrero Lopez. I will be performing movements, dances, and gestures with Kyle writing poetry in response. It will be a conversion of poetry in dance to poetry in word. What does the unknown mean to you? The unknown is both freedom and what we anticipate to be dangerous. I think it stems from the fact that too much freedom can be scary, even deadly.
I am dancing with emotions and trance states, hovering within the intensities they share. I will be premiering a trio at the Chocolate Factory Theater this April 2022 and am also working on a solo premiering in 2023. What does the unknown mean to you? The unknown is space for alternative constellations of feeling.