KEYES WILEY

Keyes Wiley (they/them) is a multi-hyphenated performing artist, dj, light and sound designer. They are currently a dance faculty member at Cornish College of the Arts, resident dj of the drag performance show TUSH and the artistic director of the performance group The NoGoodDoers. Not too long ago they were a Managing Artistic Director for the DIY performance space Studio Current. From 2010-2015 Keyes formed the dance co. The New Animals and was also a member of Lingo Productions directed by KT Niehoff before branching off into solo performance. Beyond that Keyes has performed/collaborated with Keith Hennessy (SF), Keyon Gaskin (PDX), Alice Gosti, Ben de la Creme, Jinx Monsoon and many others. More recently Keyes has and continues to perform in the works of dani tirrell, Kitten n Lou and will be touring with the drag queen Betty Wetter. Keyes’ considers themselves a natural born collaborator and thrives in rooms with artists who feel the same.

Photo Credit: Scott Foster

KAITLIN MCCARTHY

Kaitlin McCarthy is a Seattle-based dance artist, journalist, and teacher. Her choreography has appeared repeatedly at On the Boards, Velocity Dance Center, 12th Ave Arts, and countless other venues, festivals, and self-produced performances. Her work is “fondly humorous and stunningly creepy” (SeattleDances) and “in the forefront of innovative contemporary Seattle dance” (Deconstruct Collective). In addition to her own work, she has developed a decade-long collaborative partnership with Jenny Peterson, and performed regularly with Alice Gosti/MALACARNE since 2014. More at KaitlinMcCarthy.com.

Photo Credit: Erin O’Reilly

FOX WHITNEY

Fox Whitney is an multi-disciplinary artist working at the intersection of dance, sound, video, theater, writing and visual art. Fox is obsessed with the surreal nature of transformation. His projects center his queer and transgender point of view. He is currently working under his own name as director, performer and writer for experimental works that combine stage, screen and site specific experiences. He also fronts the trans-futurist psych band Light Aloud. His current methods are informed by the interdisciplinary performance project Gender Tender he started in Seattle in 2012. Gender Tender movement research continues to influence his performance practice, teaching artist style and life in general. He is grateful for the way Gender Tender practices and performances have created a safe space for many different kinds of queer and trans people and their friends to move together beyond binary thinking and limited ideas about body based art practices, identity formation and community building. His new work in development is a trippy blend of autobiography and metafiction inspired by films like Fellini’s 81/2 and Sun Ra’s Space is the Place as well as Seattle’s queer nightlife scene, the local punk + indie music scene, the history of QT art + activism and his experience as a dancer, drag performer, gigging musician and event producer.

Fox’s work has been commissioned and produced by the Henry Art Gallery; On the Boards; Velocity Dance Center; Seattle International Dance Festival; Yellow Fish Epic Durational Performance Festival and was selected for the inaugural season of Seattle’s Gay City Arts. He has performed in work by Meg Foley, Will Rawls, keyon gaskin, Morgan Thorson, Andrew Schneider, CommonForm Dance Project, Maureen Whiting Dance Co., Malic Amalya and Gabrielle Civil. He got his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has exhibited his short films and visual art nationally. Fox is also an arts writer currently writing for SeattleDances and Variable West. He is also a teaching artist and was the Artistic Director of Velocity Dance Center from 2020-2022.

mxfoxwhitney@gmail.com https://vimeo.com/foxwhitney www.foxwhitney.weebly.com IG: @fox_whitney_ @gendertenderforever @lightaloud

Photo Credit: Leo Othon

CHERDONNA SHINATRA

Jody Kuehner aka Cherdonna Shinatra uses dance, drag, theater, camp, feminist traditions, absurdity and subversive commentary to make art. Twenty years ago, she landed in Seattle and fell in love with its rowdy, postmodern dance culture. She fell in love with her own queerness. In doing so, Jody created Cherdonna Shinatra as a persona and character to question herself and explore the world from a uniquely queer perspective. Over the last 10 years Jody has created and performed a wide array of evening-length works and performance installations described as “uncategorizable spectacles” (The Stranger) for theaters, museums, clubs, parking lots, and abandoned buildings. She is a 2023 and 2020 NEFA’s National Dance Project finalist, 2017 Artist Trust Fellowship recipient, 2016 NEFA’s National Dance Project awardee, and 2015 Stranger Genius Award winner. She has been presented locally at On the Boards, Washington Ensemble Theatre, Seattle Theatre Group, and the Henry Art Gallery. She has been presented nationally at the USF in Tampa FL, Go Drag! Festival, Berlin, Germany; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI; Centro de las Artes, Monterrey, Mexico; The Yard at Martha’s Vineyard; American Dance Festival, Durham, NC; Sweet Briar College, Sweet Briar, VA; and FringeArts in Philadelphia, PA. Her exhibition DITCH was presented at the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA; The Momentary at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AK; Sarasota Art Museum, FL; and Akron Art Museum, OH. DITCH was featured in ARTnews, i-D Magazine and NBC’s 12 must-see LGBTQ art shows around the world.

Photo Credit: Eric Paguio

ANGEL BABY KILL KILL KILL

A dumbfounded mix of heart, horror, and habit, Angel has been producing dynamic performance art in the PNW for over 15 years. Combing elements of traditional storytelling, dance, mixed-media, and drag, their work recalls a sense of playful nostalgia and sorrow. Ever curious and never satisfied, audiences are left with a strange and wandering excitement, desperately searching for reality’s exit door.

ALYZA DELPAN-MONLEY

KELLY LANGESLAY

kelly langeslay is a queer dancer, performance artist, and writer. they tell stories to and/or about you. their recent research investigates queer futurity through the writing of José Muñoz, CGI Barbie movies, early 2010s pop music, and conversations with friends and AIs. much of this research is made possible through the space and resources provided by the public library, to whom they owe $313.49. they are motivated by a love of excess, nostalgia for a nonexistent past, and insatiable hunger for approval. they have something to say about camp sincerity and overlaying their queer body on nostalgic figures and reinhabiting the past to imagine alternative ways of being; of course, this is mostly nonsense. you may find kelly wasting time, practicing lying, burning cds, and/or on the kitchen floor. they make their best work when you’re not texting them back.

Photo Credit: Marcia Davis

MARK HAIM

Along with Ali el-Gasseir, Mark Haim was the founder of the RESET program at WET. He has been choreographing and teaching and performing since 1983, based in Seattle since 2002.

ALICE GOSTI

Alice Gosti (she/her) is an Italian-American immigrant artist, choreographer, DJ, curator and hybrid performance artist who creates site-responsive performance rituals and live art installations that examine how history, politics and place enter the body and condition they way we move and relate. Gosti works under the name MALACARNE. 

Drawing on current and historical social realities, her projects center people made invisible by white-normative power structures, including: immigrants, womxn, trans-activists, Indigenous populations and those experiencing homelessness. Gosti’s work has been recognized with numerous awards, commissions and residencies nationally and internationally. Born and raised by dynamic artist duo SANDFORD&GOSTI in Perugia, Italy, she’s worked between Italy and occupied Duwamish and Coast Salish land (Seattle) since 2004. 

Alice also works as a Movement Director and Choreographer for theaters across the country. She has worked at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Merrimack Repertory Theater, Seattle Repertory Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Folger Theatre, ACT Theatre, Intiman Theatre, Seattle Shakespeare Company and Portland Center Stage. She is an associate artist for upstart crow collective.

www.gostia.com IG @gostiaa

MALACARNE www.malacarne.co IG: @malacarneco

Photo Credit: James Harnois

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NIA-AMINA MINOR

Nia-Amina Minor is a movement artist, choreographer, curator, and educator originally from Los Angeles. Her work focuses on the body and what it carries using physical and archival research to explore memory and history. Nia-Amina is co-founder of Black Collectivity, a collaborative project that explores and celebrates memory and culture through embodied responses. She has received regional and national commissions for her choreographic and film work and has a working background as a performer and dramaturg. In 2021, she was recognized as Dance Magazine’s 25 Artists to Watch. Nia-Amina holds a MFA from UC Irvine and a BA from Stanford University is currently based in Seattle, WA.

Photo Credit: Tawfiq Abdulaziz

RANA SAN

Rana San is an intermedia artist, cultural arts practitioner, curator, and choreographer pondering hyper visibility, bodily autonomy, and immigrant liminality. Her creative and curatorial practice centers experimental and analog approaches to storytelling through film, writing, and movement presented on screen and stage. Based between Seattle and Istanbul, she co-directs the annual Cadence Video Poetry Festival and is a co-curator of Good Symptom: A Serial Anthology of Time-Based Disturbances.

Photo Credit: Anastasia Babenko

MARIA MANNESS

Maria is a facilitator of the performing arts through use of her management, fabrication, and education skills, and love of spreadsheets. She is the Managing Director of Washington Ensemble Theatre, where she started as the Production Manager in 2013. Outside of WET she has worked with institutions such as Velocity Dance Center and On the Boards, but favors working directly with artists such as Emmy Smith-Stewart + Jeffrey Azevedo, Kitten N’ Lou, Alice Gosti, Cherdonna Shinatra, and Drama Tops, many of whom she had the great fortune of meeting through the reSET program, which she has Stage Managed since it’s inception. Sometimes she makes zines under the monicker daisy chain press.

Photo Credit: Kendall Lauren Shea