2023 ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE
Tay Alexander, Julia Bryck, Benae Baemon, Benjamin Bass,
Marguerite Hemmings, Leigh Huster, Loren Groenendaal/ Vervet Dance, Olivia Brown, Katarina Poljak, Timothy Porter/215 Entertainment Productions, Meredith Stapleton, Sheila Zagar, mik phillips, Natalie Gotter, Chachi Perez, Kate Seethaler, Aaron Pond, Katherine Stark /The Naked Stark, Chelsea Murphy, Chloe Wang, Marguerite Hemmings, Lu Donovan, Leigh Huster, Collo O'Brien, Jax Gilliam, Curt Haworth, Chloe Marie, Micah Lat, KS Movement, Michelle Slavik, Adam Kerbel
Chloe Marie
Marketing & Development Coordinator
Chloe Marie is a multi-disciplinary artist based on the Lenni Lenape Land also known as Philadelphia. In 2013, Chloe moved to Philadelphia to attend The University of the Arts where they received their BFA in 2017. While at UARTS they worked with artists of varying styles of performance and technique. Chloe currently collaborates with multiple artists in Philadelphia and occasionally teaches. Chloe realizes the immense privilege they have to live life as an artist; they are extremely thankful for those in their life who continue to support and care for them.
Mik Phillips
Financial Coordinator
mik is a white, trans, queer + fat multidisciplinary artist currently based on Lenni Lenape land (aka Philadelphia) who received their BFA in Dance from the University of the Arts in 2021. their research deeply investigates how queerness inhabits performative structures + how in these spaces, vulgarities exist in simultinaeity with notions of intimacy, care + tenderness. mik examines + lives inside a constant welling; a need for quivers, heaving, uncontrollable laughter, sobs, + indiscriminate violence guides them into creating temporary worlds that are maniacally unkempt and grotesquely forgiving. he aims to distort time, go elsewhere, + make intentional decisions on who is coming with; all while exploring humor, absurdity, + intense physicality through different modes of efficiency. mik is committed to expanding on, continuing, remembering, moving inside + through queer futurity through the lens of movement based practices, text, voice/sound, collaboration + enactments.
Chachi Perez
Member Coordinator
Rooted in Miami, FL, Chachi Perez is a queer Cuban American artist who was born into a family where dancing in kitchens became a nightly after dinner event. Chachi attended Miami Dade College under the direction of Michelle Grant Murray. They then moved to Philadelphia, PA and attended The University of The Arts under the direction of Donna Faye Burchfield where she received her B.F.A in Dance. She has had the opportunity to perform and collaborate in works by Bobbi Jean Smith, Marguerite Hemmings, Katie Swords-Thurman, Curt Haworth, and Emily Wexler along with artist such as Valeria Gonzalez of VALLETO, Pioneer Winter Collective for Miami Art Week and tHumble Materials for the production of MEDEA. Chachi is a 2022 IR for MOTIVE Brooklyn, Grass Stains, and is currently a part of the Miami Dance Makers cohort under Adele Meyers. They are the Artistic Director of a Lenape Land movement based company, Carne Viva Dance Theatre where they create large impact works for the communities of Queer, Trans, and BIPOC while centering their work around their culture as an act of liberation and to decolonize their bodies with radical joy.
Micah Lat
Artist in Residence
Micah Lat (he/they) is a Lenapehoking/West Philadelphia based choreographer, composer, and performance artist. They use sound, film, and dance to explore berserk playfulness and time travel. His work centers on sharing-as-caring as philosophy and asks where are we right now and where can we go? He believes in an art making approach that is whimsical, seductive, and poetic.
Curt Haworth
Artist in Residence
Curt Haworth is an expatriate Californian who lived in New York City for twenty years before moving to Philadelphia in 2009. He holds a BA in Creative Writing from UC Santa Cruz and a MFA in Dance from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He has an eclectic movement background ranging from athletics to modern dance and postmodern techniques, to yoga, contact improvisation and ballet. Curt toured internationally with David Dorfman Dance from 1990 to 2002, while creating over 15 original roles. He was a Movement Research Artist in Residence in 2001-2002, he has taught regularly at Movement Research and DNA (formerly Dance Space Center) in NYC and is on faculty at ADF. He was the co-director of PARD in Philadelphia, an organization dedicated to supporting new movement performance and teaching, located at the Mt Vernon Dance Space. He has taught and set work as a guest artist throughout the United States, South America and Europe and is currently an Associate Professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
Katarina Poljak
Development & Marketing Coordinator
Katarina Poljak (they/them) is an award-winning filmmaker and interdisciplinary performance artist, recognized for their contributions in both the film and performance art realms. Their works have been showcased at prominent venues such as The Kimmel Center, Vox Populi Gallery, and the Icebox Project Space, along with screenings at international film festivals including ARFF Paris, Croatian Fashion Film, Indie Short, and Rethink Dance.
Rooted in a fusion of social critique and technological exploration, Poljak's performance-based films transport audiences to fantastical realms, blending retro futurism, sculptural set-design, and intricate hand-made costumery. Influenced by collaborations with experimental film and performance artist Kathy Rose, Poljak is committed to creating work that navigates the intersection of past and future mass culture, challenging the unspoken boundaries shaping our social lives.
A recipient of a BFA from the University of the Arts, where they studied
both Dance and Film, Poljak earned the prestigious Shannon D. Moore major film award for their thesis film in 2019. Intrigued by humanity's trajectory into "posthumanism" and its framing by the idealized human body, their work explores surrealist suspense, delves into society's fascination with the spectacle of gore, and taps into the visceral nervous system of the grotesque.
Poljak's latest film, "Incredible Machine Glass Body," garnered acclaim with selections and wins at various international film festivals in 2020. Currently collaborating as a co-director and producer with documentary filmmaker Mike Attie and scholar-activist Dr. Nathan R. Stenberg, Poljak is working on an untitled feature documentary about Pennhurst State School and Hospital.
In addition to their artistic pursuits, Poljak is an Adjunct Professor at The University of the Arts, School of Film, and an Artist in Residence at Mascher Space Cooperative. In these positions, they persist in curating interdisciplinary performative work, integrating projection and the body. They also work as a freelance production sound mixer, documentary editor, and choreographer. Currently, Poljak is working to bring their newest film, "Source Architecture", to life, contributing further to the evolving landscape of contemporary film and performance. To view their portfolio visit www.rageboxx.net
TimothyW. Porter Jr., MBA
Artist in Residence
Aka T.W. Porter aka Supreme is a Hip Hop Dancer, Choreographer, Performing Artist, CEO, Artistic Director, Film Writer, Film Director, Arthur, Actor, Spoken Word Artist and DJ. Born and raised in North Philadelphia, PA and currently resides in Northeast Philadelphia Supreme is a self-taught dancer and is considered a Philly Dance Legend and OG to the community. He has helped founded many dance groups throughout the Philly dance scene from The Fantastic Four, Dynamic Dancers, Deadly Combination, So Phresh Crew, Above Average Dance Crew and Infinite Styles Dance Crew. Supreme has been dancing professionally for over 30 years and have performed throughout the US and abroad. He has choreographed for several major recording artist and television shows such as Kids on the Beat, Urban Expressions, WHYY, In the Groove, Jenny Jones Show and featured in a movie called Creepin. Supreme is the founder of International Dance
Crew Repertory Company and Training Academy, Making A Change Performing Arts Company and the Co-Founder of 215 Live Entertainment, LLC. He is the founder of Battle 4 Supremacy Battle League and CEO of Dance Champions Dance League which is one of the biggest dance leagues in the United States. He truly believes in Philanthropy and has helped hundreds of kids with funding for College, helped organized dance programs for the Philadelphia Parks and Recreations Centers, feeds the homeless, pass out toys to children from low income families every year for the last 10 years, volunteering for the Broad Street Run 7 years straight and counting, hosting free dance workshops for the community and group homes, host monthly dance sessions for the dance community and funded many dance events to allow other Philadelphia Dancers to present their competitions, battles and shows to the Philly Dance Community. 215 Live Entertainment, LLC is a Philadelphia-based company that create hip hop theater performances that address social issues. 215 also, organizes events to uplift the Philadelphia communities and to educate and train local dancers that inspire to become professional dancers as well as provide a safe-haven for dancers to session for the love of the arts. Founded in 2021 by Timothy “Supreme” Porter and Ryheen “Gate” Thomas, we create audience engaging repertoires that address social issues to inspire change. 215 Live Entertainment is dedicated to uplifting the arts of dance, djing and music and utilizing them to empower and inspire audiences to make positive changes within their lives and spreading it throughout their community, city, state, country and the world.
Meredith Stapleton
Artist in Residence
Meredith Stapleton, MFA in Dance/Choreography from the University of Iowa, is a Philadelphia-based dance artist, educator, and organizer. She is the Member Coordinator for Mascher Space Cooperative, through which she serves as liasion with Headlong and producer of Fresh Juice. Meredith is also a mother, and training as a doula/childbirth educator. She is enlivened by facilitating dialog within various creative communities. Since 2013, Meredith has performed and collaborated with many local choreographers and dance companies, including DanceSpora, Nora Gibson Contemporary Ballet, Shannon Murphy, Megan Flynn Dance Company, Agora Dance, The Naked Stark, stb x at, Harlee Trautman, Joseph Ahmed, and Emie Hughes. Meredith currently teaches yoga at Temple University, and has taught in dance at Muhlenberg College, Swarthmore College, and The University of Iowa, as well as Koresh School of Dance and Philadelphia Dance Academy. As an Artist In Residence at Mascher, Meredith's creative practice has
evolved along her real-time experience of trying to conceive, pregnancy, and early motherhood. She is accumulating material for a solo show, tentatively titled "Routine Routine" featuring this autobiographical embodiment manifested through her on-going character study, Trisha Frown. "Dance is a lens through which I reflect, refract, and absorb. I rewire the body to confuse the brain until I relocate myself on the map; I am woman, casual athlete, disaster, and polka-dot."
Natalie Gotter
Artist in Residence
Natalie is a dancer, choreographer, filmmaker, educator, and researcher who after receiving her MFA in Modern Dance from the University of Utah relocated to Philadelphia. Her artistic interests lie in the relationship of the socially constructed body and how its meaning and understanding changes in intimate relationships between other entities. She has studied and performed in many pieces, including an original work by John Allen that was nominated for a 2011 Big Easy Award. She was also a featured dancer in the Alwin Nikolais Centennial Celebration in 2011 and has danced professionally with Tsunami Dance Company, Avatar Dance Company, Gorilla Tango Theatre, and MotionVivid Dance. Currently Natalie works as an Assistant Professor of Dance at Muhlenberg College and is in residence at the Mascher Space Collective, where she will premiere her full length work "Last Call" at the Cannonball Festival in September 2022.
Olivia Brown
Artist in Residence
Olivia Jenna Brown is a Philadelphia-based dance artist from New York City. She is currently an artist in residence with Mascher Space Cooperative, a member of Poético Dance Collective, and a movement teacher with Salamander Arts. Her choreography, which explores Jewish culture, nature, and improvisatory structures, has been shown at Chi Movement Arts Center, Fidget Space, and FringeArts Theater. Her dance education includes the Alvin Ailey School and Hunter College, from which she received her BA in Dance in 2019. She is currently deepening her framework of movement research by pursuing a somatics certification in Movement Analysis from the Laban Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies. Olivia passionately believes in the power of movement as a tool of radical imagination—a process of envisioning and embodying positive new futures—and aims to create experiences in which audiences and artistic collaborators alike can tap into the healing power of embodiment that connects and enlivens us all.
Aaron Pond
Artist in Residence
Aaron Pond is a person who loves singing, playing, and wandering the streets. He likes to take moments to serenade the vines growing in cracks, the black and white warblers as they hop along trunks. Etc. He primarily utilizes voice and employs extended techniques- picking out harmonics with his tongue and folding his false vocal cords over, in addition to going all the way up there. Also in the arsenal are Horn (French’d) and EWI (electronic wind synthesizer). They are themselves systems more so than solo instruments, used to generate a sound field, a maternal enveloping. He runs the Sonic Sunsets concert series at the Discovery Center in Strawberry Mansion and has lectured on theories of consonance and dissonance at UPenn and Temple University. You can see him utilize his entire bag of tricks in a few bands, that man/machine duo that is Argyle Torah, and the acoustic gorgeousness group Green Plum Ensemble. He grew up on the edges of the Everglades and wishes to honor all birds and water with music, movement, and cultivation of a multitudinous being. He dislikes recording preferring the subject over the object.
Benjamin Bass
Artist in Residence
Benjamin Bass is a queer multi-disciplinary artist living in Philadelphia, as well as the founder of Broken Mirror Studio.
They hold a B.F.A. in acting from S.U.N.Y. Purchase and have been fortunate enough to both work and continue training all over the world. Notable works include "We Own This City"; "Audrey's Children"; The obie award winning hit, "The Woodsman", Trey Lyford's "The Accountant" and the Chinese national tour of, "One Starry Night." Benjamin is a proud member of both Actor's Equity Association and the Screen Actor's Guild
As an educator Benjamin is the head instructor at Broken Mirror Studio as well as acting professor at University of the Arts. They have taught master classes for N.Y.U., S.U.N.Y. Purchase, University of the Arts, UPENN, and Drexel University.
Loren Groenendaal
Artist in Residence
Loren Groenendaal (they/she) is dancer, improviser, choreographer, curator and movement educator. She lives and moves around mostly on Lenape land now known as Philadelphia. Loren earned an MFA in Choreography at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a BA in Dance and Visual Arts from Oberlin College and is also a Certified Movement Analyst from the Laban/Bartinieff Institute of Movement Studies. Loren wand nurtured on a forested mountain in the ancestral homeland of the Susquehannock. Over the years, she has found and built a large network of creative people with whom she collaborates and most of her creative work is under the moniker, Ververt Dance. Much of Ververt's work is "semi-composed" meaning Loren designs some elements and encourages freedom of expression by her collaborators. Much of the work is playful, interdisciplinary, collaborative, and/or references patterns and processes in nature. Movement vocabularies draws influence from Loren's experience with modern, Balinese, social, breakdance and contact improvisation, investigating the community building
possibilities of live art, the spectrum between improvisation and composition, and the spectrum between ritual and performance. Their work has been performed in Canada, Mexico, and many places in between and presented by various organizations including the the Abington Art Center, the CEC including the New Edge Mix, Cultivate, Green Space Blooms, Inhale, Philly Fringe Festival, the North Carolina Dance Alliance, and the StudioSeries at Studio 34. Loren was a founding member of Mascher Space Cooperative from 2005-2007 and happily returned in 2013 as an artist-in-residence, and has been a member of the Board of Directors since it's inception in 2018. She teaches improvisation, creative dance, and technique at Muhleberg College, with Koresh Kids Dance, University City Arts League, and freelance. Her artistic, teaching, and curatorial work promotes community, curiosity, complexity, empathy, and adaptability.
FORMER MEMBERS
Fatima Adamu, Lela Aisha Jones, Lora Allen, Almanac Dance Circus Theater, Althea Baird, Nicole Bindler, Antonia Brown, Dawn Ann Bryant, Michele Byrd-McPhee, Christ Center for Dance, Liza Clark, Miryam Coppersmith, Katherine Desimine, Haley Dulman, Thomas Dura, Tevyn East, Meg Foley, Erin Foreman–Murray, Marcel Foster, Linda Frank, Flandrew Freisenberg, Jenna Frome, David Garrigues, Nora Gibson, Bernard Glincosky, Ellie Goudie-Averil, Green Chair Dance Group, Caitlin Hellerer, Emily Herchenroether, Lindsey Huster, Sutie Madison, Makoto Hirano, Shizu Homma, Tania Isaac, Nick Jonczak, Katherine Kiefer Stark, Kalila Kingsford Smith, Erin Lee, Tori Lawrence, Lisa Lawrence, Emma Morehouse, MJ Kaufmann, Adam Kerbel, Joy Mariama Smith, Carolyn Merrit, Old City Sweethearts, Other Case Notes, Rebecca Patek, David Pica, PIMA Group, perpetual mvmt<>snd, Pink Hair Affair, Martina Plag, Jumatatu Poe, Lesya Popil, Alissa Robin Smith, Lisa Rothstein, Jim Salermo, Jenny Sawyer, Erin Shanti-Desmond, Lee Shapley, Kate Speer, Margot Steinberg, Subcircle, Zornitsa Stoyanova, Barbara Tait, Teatro del Sol, Sam Tower, Becca Weber, Amelia Wiatr-Lewis, Annie Wilson, Rebecca Wright, Sara Yassky, UC Yoshi, Christina Zani, Ilse Zoer, Jaried Kimberley, Sean McGarry - Philadelphia Renaissance Fair, Chrissy Eltvedt, Mads Klemm, Marissa Illingworth, Marina Kec, Dawn Pratson, Ash Phan, Jess Anthony, Lindsey Huster, Christina Gesualdi, Paul Turner, Megan Kelley, Josh Walker, Rebecca Patek, KC Chun, Jessica Anthony, Katie Vickers, Megan Mizanty, Andrew Smith, Katherine Desimine