Shayla-Vie Jenkins

Choreographer

Shayla-Vie Jenkins is a performer, maker, educator, poetry lover, writer, and mama based in Philadelphia, PA. She is grateful for a life in dance, having performed for a decade with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and in inspiring projects with Susan Marshall, Moriah Evans, David Gordon, James Allister Sprang, Sage Ni’Ja Whitson, Merce Cunningham Trust’s Night of 100 Solos, Yvonne Rainer, Yanira Castro, Yara Travieso, and Yaa Samar! Dance Theater, among others. She is currently touring Faye Driscoll’s Weathering. Jenkins’ creative research explores blackness within somatic presence. Her last three choreographic works – a forgotten elegy, the feels, and hand in mine – reclaim performance as ritual, mourning, and catharsis. Jenkins was an Assistant Professor in the School of Dance at the recently shuttered University of the Arts. She hopes On Buried Ground serves the Philly community well by bringing continued conversation and reflection on this city’s historic grounds.

Rayne (Angela Bey)

Playwright

Rayne (Angela Bey) is an artist from Southwest Philadelphia. They champion liberated futures for un(likely) outsiders. Rayne is the founder of Upstream Performance Collaborative. Affiliations: Ring of Keys and New Pages (Azuka); [former] Rising Writers (Azuka Theatre), Playwrights Cohort (PlayPenn), Echoes (Primary Stages), Emerging Playwrights (Strides Collective), Directors Gathering, and Jouska PlayWorks (Simpatico). Selected Credits: [awards/exhibitions] F. Otto Haas Finalist (Theatre Philadelphia) and #blackgirlquarantine (University of California, Berkeley); [design] sandblasted (Theatre Horizon) and A Hit Dog Will Holler (Azuka); [roles] Ensemble at Sundance Directors Lab (Sundance Institute) and “Genesis” in The Light (Theatre Exile); [words] COMET (UPC) and Finding Freedom (Museum of the American Revolution); [direction] The Taming! (Shakespeare in Clark Park) and Water By the Spoonful (Eagle Theatre). Upcoming: [direction] Judy’s Life’s Work (Naptown African American Theatre Collective); [words & lyrics] Ever (Azuka & SCP). raynebey.com and(or) angelabey.com “Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.” -James Baldwin, “Nobody Knows My Name”

Nia Benjamin

Director

Nia Benjamin is an agender, queer, Afro-Caribbean multidisciplinary artist, performer, filmmaker, set/projection designer, video-synth artist and director of experimental theatre. Their work uses the synthesis of dance, poetry, live music, theatre and video arts to create live performances about the sovereignty, liberation and interiority of Black and Brown, queer and trans* people. Nia is the Co-Artistic Director of Ninth Planet, a Philadelphia based experimental dance-theatre company that makes original works of performance that centers people of color, women, queer and trans* people. Their most recent full-length work, high noon was the winner of a 2022 Fringies Award.

song aziza tucker

song aziza tucker (she/her) is a project based movement and writing artist whose works have spiraled out of her love for Black femmes, music, and poetry. song is wrapped up in the erotic, cathartic, horrific and beautiful reflections of the ways Black femmes survive and pronounce imminent aliveness for themselves. She obtained both her BFA and MFA respectively from the University of the Arts School of Dance under the direction of Donna Faye Burchfield. Alongside her research, song has had the pleasure of working as a performer and collaborator with Mark Caserta, Tommie-Waheed Evans, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Jordan Lloyd, Niall Jones, Doug Varone, Jesse Zaritt, and Abby Zbikowski among others. Throughout all collaboration, song desires and commands a full pronouncement of a voluminous self impelled by black femme strategies in research and lived practice.

Arianna Polite

Arianna Polite (she/they) is a dance artist, performer, and writer based in Philadelphia, PA, where she has deepened her studies at the University of the Arts under Donna Faye Burchfield. She has performed in works by Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Katie Swords Thurman, and Hélène Simoneau. She has had the opportunity to Perform at the American College Dance Association and Jacob’s Pillow. In her ongoing practice, Arianna seeks to find new pathways of connections that resemble the way in which life fluctuates. She is very interested in what affects our everyday desires and the adaptive ways that humans form attachments. As of now Arianna is performing in a new work conceived by David Dorfman that was commissioned by the American Dance Festival for their end of the year Footprints performance.

Cory Seals

Cory Seals is an interdisciplinary artist and community curator born in Atlanta and based in Philadelphia. Seals’ practices include vocal jazz, sonic landscape, and improvisation with voice, text, and movement. His work is an expression of radical care and community building for the diversely interconnected experiences of Black and Queer life. Alongside his own current projects, Seals is a cast member of Faye Driscoll’s latest work, “Weathering.” He has had the pleasure of studying with Reginald Pindell, Paul Adkins, V. Shayne Frederick, Marguerite Hemmings, Curt Haworth, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Pietro Gagliano, Marta Bellu, and Nicki & Jorge Cousineau, amongst others. For more info visit coryseals.com

Anna Scattoni

Anna Scattoni (she/her) is a Jamaica Italian dancer and multidisciplinary artist from Queens, New York. Growing up, Anna trained at the Ailey School, the French Academie of Ballet and Verterich Ballet Studio. Anna’s passion for dance stems from transcendental and authentic movement practices. Her other artistic practices also include fine arts, music, and creative writing. Anna attended the University of the Arts and is completing the final year of her degree at Temple University.

Tuçe Yasak

Tuçe Yasak (she/her, Lighting Designer) has been following light since her move from Istanbul to New York in 2009, creating over 100 site-specific light installations for performance in the US and abroad. Light, movement and architecture intertwine in Yasak’s work to support space-making and story-telling. In 2021, she was a resident artist at JACK Brooklyn and her Light Journals were presented by Ars Nova. Culminating her 2023 residency at the Watermill Arts Center, Yasak debuted her installation The light comes through the heart of darkness as an homage to the lives lost in the February 2022 earthquake in Turkey. Among her recent collaborations: The Absolute Future by Raja Feather Kelly & the feath3r theory, FORCE! by Anne Martine Whitehead, M—ER and NOTHING by Autumn Knight, Cannabis by Baba Israel & Grace Kalu; The Path of Pins (Pig Iron Theatre Co.), Jacqueline Woodson’s The Day You Begin at the Kennedy Center, River by Every Ocean Hughes at the Whitney Museum, and Malady of Death by Hague Yang at the Guggenheim. 

Sam Crawford

Sam Crawford (sound design) completed degrees in English and Audio Engineering at Indiana University in 2003. His compositions and sound designs have included works for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company (Venice Biennale, 2010), A.I.M by Kyle Abraham (Untitled Love, 2022), Camille A. Brown and Dancers (BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play, 2016), and David Dorfman Dance (Aroundtown, 2017). La Medea, a live film collaboration with director Yara Travieso for which he composed the music and wrote the libretto, premiered at P.S.122’s Coil Festival in 2017. Crawford is a lecturer in sound design at the University of Maryland’s School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, as well as co-director of the Maya Brin Institute for New Performance.

Naimah Simone Murray

Naimah Simone Murray, age 11, was born in Philadelphia and raised in the Wynnfield section. She is a dedicated dancer and gymnast, training at Gwendolyn Bye Dance Center under the guidance of Gwendolyn Bye. Naimah specializes in tap, hip-hop, ballet, contemporary, African, and Horton techniques. She also trains in rhythmic gymnastics with Valeriya Neikova at Bala Gymnastics. Her stage credits include Annie Jr., Seussical Jr., Matilda and SchoolHouse Rock!, under the direction of John Rea at MacGuffin Theater & Film. A student at the French International School of Philadelphia, Naimah is fluent in French and is also emergent in Mandarin. Beyond dance, she is an accomplished visual artist and has served as a child ambassador for the Kimmel Center. Naimah’s passion for the arts and her community drives her to excel in every aspect of her life, and she continues to grow as a performer and artist.

Hannah Brock

Hannah Brock has trained in Classical Ballet, Horton, Dunham and Tap at Gwendolyn Bye Dance Center since the age of 3.  Her interests include all things dance, creating visual art, swimming and reading.  She loves spending time with friends and family, in that order!  Hannah is very thankful for this amazing opportunity.