LAUREN HORN
Lauren Horn is a movement and text-based artist from Windsor, CT. She graduated from Amherst College with degrees in Psychology and Theatre and Dance. Lauren’s work explores identity and the ways it can be uncovered, marginalized, highlighted, and erased. By utilizing movement and text as means of fostering a more welcoming form of vulnerability, the work creates a space for self-reflection and conversation for both the performer and viewer. Another aspect of Lauren’s work is entrenched in creating a dialogue around our current society’s relationship to technology. From the Silent Generation to Generation Z, she wants to understand how groups of individuals, in each living generation, feel that technology has affected their expression of their true self. Lauren’s choreographic work has been showcased at The Studio of Contemporary Dance and Thought in Northampton, MA, The Northampton Center for the Arts, Amherst College and ACDFA New England.
Lauren has performed with Deborah Goffe’s Scapegoat Garden, Dante Brown’s Warehouse Dance Company, Arien Wilkerson’s TNMOT AZTRO, Wendy Woodson, Katie Martin and Jennifer Nugent. While in the Five College Dance Consortium, Lauren has studied under Paul Matteson, Angie Hauser, Jim Coleman, Shayla Jenkins, Paul Dennis and Caroline Fermin. She has also performed in repertory works of The Bebe Miller Company, Bill T. Jones/ Arnie Zane Company, Delfos Danza Contemporanea and Gallim Dance Company.
ABENA KOOMSON-DAVIS
Abena Koomson-Davis is a performer, educator and wordsmith. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College where she earned a B.A. in Liberal Arts, and also of Teachers College, Columbia University where she earned a Masters in Education Leadership. Abena was an original cast member of the hit Broadway musical FELA! which earned 3 TONY awards. She originated the role of Funmilayo Anikulapo Kuti in the Off-Broadway production at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. Abena plays in several notable bands including the cappella trio Saheli, the Cool Rulers, and Van Davis, where she has been the featured vocalist for over a decade, and had the honor of performing with Stevie Wonder. Abena is a founding musical director of the Women’s March Resistance Revival Chorus, and has been featured as part of their monthly Resistance Revival Music Series. She currently serves as Ethics Chair of the middle school division at Ethical Culture Fieldston School, where she teaches ethics and social justice to middle & upper school students. Abena is married to world-renowned jazz trombonist Steve Davis. Abena’s approach to life is polyphonic. Her poem, BLACKSMITH ORCHESTRA is her anthem. (photo by Phil Mansfield)
ARIEN WILKERSON
Arien Wilkerson (all pronouns) is a queer, black, choreographer, dancer, film maker, director, producer, installation artist based in Philadephia, PA. The Hartford-native began their dance training under the tutelage of Jolet Creary, and has been a student at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, The Artists Collective, Earl Mosley Institute of the Arts, CulturArte (a youth arts residency program in Cape Verde), and the Batsheva Dance Company “Gaga Intensive” in New York, NY and in Tel Aviv, Israel. Arien showed great promised as a teenager when their choreographic work was selected by David Dorfman and Nicole Stanton for inclusion in Wesleyan University’s Dance Masters programming, recognizing their potential as a emerging young choreographer in New England. Arien now engages youth, adults, non-dancers and seniors through workshops and lectures on movement and performance practices.
As founder and Artistic Director of TNMOT AZTRO, Arien has been commissioned by Hartford’s Town & County Club to develop their sold-out show, BLACK BOY JUNGLE, which went on to the Wadsworth Atheneum. As an Artist in Residence at The Garden Center for Contemporary Dance (2013-2014), Arien developed three iterations of “The Projector Series”, which went on to sell out Real Art Ways for 3 consecutive evenings. Since then, Arien has received funding support from The Graham Foundation (2021), the Sachs Program for Arts & Innovation at UPenn (2020), Connecticut Dance Alliance Jump Start Award (2019), The Greater New Haven Arts Council (2019), NEA “Big Read” Grant (2018), and The Director’s Discretionary Fund Award from the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund (2018). From the Connecticut Office of the Arts, Arien has been awarded the Artist Workforce Initiative Sponsorship (2019), Artist Fellowship (2019), and project funding (2018). And Arien has been awarded two New England Dance Fund Grants (2017 & 2018), and was selected as Rebecca Blunk Fund Awardee (2018) by New England Foundation for the Arts.
SUPPORT TEAM
OLANA FLYNN
Olana Flynn (Interim Creative Producer, Liturgy|Order|Bridge) is a multi-disciplinary artist, educator, curator and producer based in Holyoke, MA. She holds an MFA in Experimental Choreography from University of California, Riverside and a BA from Hampshire College. She is a founding member and co-director of LOCULUS a dance and performance collective that creates performance in non-traditional spaces, publishes The Loculus Journal, and directs The Loculus Studio in Holyoke. She has had the privilege of studying and performing with artists such as Chris Aiken, Angie Hauser, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Luis Lara Malvacias, Paul Matteson, Jennifer Nugent, taisha paggett, Joel Smith, and Ni’Ja Whitson. Her choreography has been performed in New York, Philadelphia, Southern California, and throughout New England. Her photography has been featured in a number of zines and journals and has been exhibited at VSOP Projects in Greenport, NY. Olana has held faculty positions in the Dance Programs at Sarah Lawrence College and Springfield College, was a graduate teaching assistant at the University of California Riverside, and was most recently a guest artist at Pioneer Valley Performing Arts High School. She currently teaches at Loculus Studios and the School For Contemporary Dance and Thought.
AMISI NAZAIRE-HICKS
Amisi Nazaire-Hicks (Rehearsal Manager, Liturgy|Order|Bridge Hartford prototype) is a Cambridge, MA native who graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in May 2020. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Dance and a Bachelor ofArts in African American Studies. Amisi has trained in ballet, jazz, modern (Limon and Horton techniques), West African, Haitian folkloric, hip-hop, and house. She has performed work by Shakia Barron, Molly Christie Gonzalez, Deborah Goffe, “New Second Line” by Camille A.Brown and “A Choreographic Offering” by Jose Limon. Amisi danced in Jenny Oliver’s projects (Modern Connections Dance Theater) from January 2021-May 2022 and recently performed in the premiere of “Concourse”, a collaborative project between Shakia Barron and Barbie Diewald, and“Genesis”, a new work by Barron. Amisi currently works as program assistant for the Haiti Cultural Exchange (Brooklyn, NY) and is earning a Master of Arts in Performing Arts Administration from New York University, expected May 2024.
ALEXANDRA RIPP
Alexandra Ripp (Creative Producer, Liturgy|Order|Bridge Hartford prototype) is a dramaturg, translator, writer, editor, curator, and arts administrator who is passionate about supporting artists develop ambitious interdisciplinary projects, particularly ones integrating local communities and institutions of higher education. She served as the inaugural Director of Five College Dance (2019-2022) and as DisTIL (Discovery Through Iterative Learning) Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Carolina Performing Arts (2017-2019), where she oversaw the long-term residencies of artists Jonah Bokaer, Robin Frohardt, Toshi Reagon, Abigail Washburn and founded The Commons, an arts criticism-focused performance residency and festival. She also produced and curated the Ideas series of lectures, panels, and symposia at the International Festival of Arts and Ideas (2012-2016). She has served as co-Associate Editor at Theater Magazine, editor/translator of the Chilean edition of the e-journal Imagined Theatres, and dramaturg at Yale School of Drama and Yale Repertory Theater and for independent theater and dance artists.
Alex holds an MFA and DFA from the Yale School of Drama in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism, and a B.A. in Spanish from Princeton University. Alongside her research in contemporary Chilean performance and memory politics, Alex translates Chilean shows for professional U.S. tours. Her translations and writing on performance have been published in Theater, PAJ: A Journal of Performing Arts, and Theater Journal and on Fusebox’s Written and Spoken platform.
KELLY SILLIMAN
Kelly Silliman, a native of the Greater Hartford area, holds a BA in Theatre Arts from Stetson University, and an MFA in Dance from Smith College, where she served as a teaching fellow. She was a founding member and eventually co-artistic director of Drink to This!, a program for emerging artists in Hartford, and co-founded Royal Jelly, a Boston-based performance collective of dancers, artists, and musicians. In subsequent years, Kelly performed with NewARTiculations Dance Theatre in Tuscon, AZ, and in Charlottesville, VA: Prospect Dance Group, inFluxdance, and UpRooted Dance Theatre. In 2008 Kelly opened The Dance Barn, in Stanardsville, VA and served as a board member and resident choreographer of Charlottesville Ballet. Now residing in Western Massachusetts, Kelly directs and performs with the tinydance project, is the Program Director for the Northampton Center for the Arts, and collaborates with Deborah Goffe/Scapegoat Garden and Cat Wagner. Kelly continues her dance scholarship with research into the intersection of sustainability and the arts, and was a Five College Associate from 2014-2016. In 2016 she published a paper titled “Shifting Climates: Applying Principles of Sustainability to Dance-Making Endeavors.” Kelly is the current chair of the board of Scapegoat Garden.
RITZ UBIDES
Ritz Ubides has been a longstanding collaborator with Scapegoat Garden as the company’s Technical Director and member of its Board of Directors from 2004-2012. She has been a vital member of the Privy performance salon production team since 2016. She is Production Supervisor at Trinity College’s Austin Arts Center, and an avid animal advocate.
