Moving into the Future

Join us to celebrate the 2023 Arts Council Choreography Fellows!

The 2024 NJ State Council on the Arts Choreographers’ Showcase celebrates the dynamic and diverse artistic visions of 14 of the 2023 Arts Council Individual Choreography Fellows.  These talented artists bring the beauty and athleticism of dance to the SOPAC stage!

Selected every two years, choreographers submit samples of their work to an independent peer panel, who selects recipients based solely on artist quality.  Artists can receive up to $32,000 to be used towards furthering their artistic goals.

This program is conducted by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, in partnership with the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation.  To learn more about the Individual Artist Fellowship program, visit the Mid Atlantic Arts website.

Moving Into the Future: New Jersey Choreographers’ Festival is a co-sponsored project of SOPAC and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Performing on April 2

Heidi Cruz-Austin of DanceSpora
Sameena Mitta of MeenMoves
Samuel Pott of Nimbus Dance Works
Charly of mignolo dance
Amber Sloan

For a complete list of the 2023 NJ State Council on the Arts Individual Choreography Fellows, CLICK HERE.

Meet the Choreographers

Sameena Mitta of MeenMoves

Sameena Mitta is artistic director of dance-theater company MeenMoves and its outreach program MadHops. Mitta was a 2022/23 Artist in Residence at 92NY Harkness Dance Center, an NJPAC Choreography Fellow, and received a 2023 Choreographic Fellowship award from the NJ State Arts Council/Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. She has presented works at Little Island, 92NY Mainstage Series, NJPAC, BAM Fisher, Americas Society, Ailey Studio Theatre, Martha Graham Theatre, Judson Church and many other venues around NYC and around the world. Mitta has produced live events including International Women’s Day of Dance and co-produced international digital events with 1014 Space for Ideas. Mitta completed an intergenerational dance film Bilateral Quadrennium and continues work on a 10-year site-specific dance film project Struwwelpeter Project. Mitta earned with distinction the Cecchetti Society’s Diploma and a MA in Dance Creation from Université du Québec à Montréal focusing on Movement Intervention for South Asian survivors of domestic violence. Under Mitta’s artistic direction, MeenMoves explores questions of identity, focusing on the unique perspectives of those who check “none-of-the-above”, to create socially relevant, quirky, highly-technical dance-theater works for stage and film. Mitta advocates for diversity in dance and has sat on multiple dance juries for granting agencies in Canada and the USA. Mitta is mentor to the Recanati-Kaplan scholars in dance, the Harkness Dance Center Artistic Advisor, and she is on faculty at the Limón Institute and 92NY.

Mitta’s piece Fe gathers together an all-female creative team from a wide variety of places and identities to honour the strength of women navigating the challenges of modern-day migration. The choreography and composition iterate around subtly shifting patterns of six. With deceptively straightforward footwork, the performers traverse the space in intertwining sequences that bring them together in fleeting moments of unity and solidarity and then drive them apart. Fe poses the question: What does it take to feel as though we belong? With musical composition by Stephanie Griffin and costumes by Sarah Timberlake.

Explore Mitta’s work at www.meenmoves.com and on Instagram @meenmoves.

Charly of mignolo dance

Charly, co-founder and artistic director of mignolo dance, is a dancer, choreographer, writer, and curator. Originally from Florida and based in the tristate area, she graduated with highest honors from Rutgers University in 2017 with a major in philosophy and minors in dance, music, and creative writing. Charly has danced with several companies and choreographers including Heidi Latsky Dance, VALLETO Dance, ReFrame Dance Theatre, Katelyn Halpern and Dancers, Yu.S. Artistry, and Monteleone Dance Collective. She also regularly performs in her own work, which has been presented at numerous venues around the tristate area including Ailey Citigroup Theater, Peridance, Triskelion Arts, Suzanne Roberts Theater, and The Berrie Center. In recent years, she’s been selected for coLAB Arts’ new choreography commission, Dance Canvas’s Choreographic Initiative, an Urbanity Dance NEXT Residency, Norte Maar’s CounterPointe9, One Day Dance’s third season, and a Kulturfactory Residency in Domicella, Italy. She has won screendance awards at several international film festivals as well as Ramapo College’s Leaning into the Unknown Competition, Spoke The Hub’s Winter Follies (Director’s Choice), Palm Springs International Dance Festival’s film competition, KoDaFe in NYC, and International Online Dance Competition’s Choreography Division. Charly is currently an MFA candidate at University of the Arts,.

Charly’s piece Nohow is solo performance of speaking and moving inspired by Ill Seen Ill Said by Samuel Beckett. An exploration of movement that is unmoving, the wiggle that can still be detected even amidst the most baffling constraints, Nohow is an extension of Charly’s ongoing work with language and movement that seeks to call into question our heroic efforts to constantly do and perform, flirting with the potential impossibility of stillness and nonexistence.

Explore more of Santagado’s work at www.charlysantagado.com and on Instagram @charlysantagado.

Amber Sloan

Amber Sloan is a Jersey City-based choreographer, performer, teacher, producer, and curator. She is a 2023 New Jersey State Council on the Arts Choreography Fellow. Her work has been presented by Centro Cultural Los Talleres in Mexico City, The Yard on Martha’s Vineyard, the DanceNow Festival, the EstroGenius Festival, Dance on the Lawn, Green Space LIC, and Arts On Site, among others. Amber was the 2023 Artist in Residence at Union Street Dance, the 2020-2021 Emerging NJ Commissioned Choreographer for Dance on the Lawn, and a 2015 Schonberg Fellow at The Yard on Martha’s Vineyard. She has received space grants from Gibney Dance Center, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Spoke the Hub, Monira Foundation at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City, NJ, DanceNow Silo in Hellertown, PA, and MADarts in Accord, NY. Her work has been supported by the Jerome Robbins Foundation, The Jewish Communal Fund, and the Dance New Jersey Regrant Program. As a performer, Amber is a member of The Bang Group and has danced in works by Doug Elkins, Keely Garfield, Sara Hook, Stephan Koplowitz, and James Waring. Amber serves on the faculty of the Alvin Ailey School as the dance composition teacher for the Professional Division Certificate Program. She has been a guest teacher at Marymount Manhattan College, DeSales University, Muhlenberg College, College of Holy Cross, Salem State University, American Ballet Theatre’s Summer Intensive, Boston Ballet Summer Program, The Yard, Gibney Dance Center, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange. Amber co-directs Women in Motion NYC, an organization whose mission is to foster female choreographers through the commissioning of new work, producing, and mentoring.  She has served on the advisory board of Art Omi: Dance since its inception in 2005 and is the Assistant Executive Director at Arts On Site. Amber holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she was honored with the Beverly Blossom/Carey Erickson Alumni Dance Award.

Sloan’s piece Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop, performed by Chelsea Enjer Hecht, Daniel Morimoto, and Jordan Morley, explores the anticipation of an event yet to come. The trio digs into themes of anxiety, restlessness, and suspense.

Explore move of Sloan’s work at www.ambersloan.com and on Instagram @ambersloan.nyc.

About the New Jersey State Council on the Arts

The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, created in 1966, is a division of the NJ Department of State and a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts. The Council was established to encourage and foster public interest in the arts; enlarge public and private resources devoted to the arts; promote freedom of expression in the arts; and facilitate the inclusion of art in every public building in New Jersey. The Council believes the arts are central to every element we value most in a modern society including: human understanding; cultural and civic pride; strong communities; excellent schools; lifelong learning; creative expression; and economic opportunity. To learn more about the Council, please visit www.artscouncil.nj.gov.

Accessibility & Accommodation

If you or a member of your party needs assistance, please notify SOPAC at the time your tickets are purchased. Contact the SOPAC Box Office at (973) 313-2787 or boxoffice@SOPACnow.org.

Title Banner Photo Credit: Steve Vaccariello, from his exhibition Just Dance in the Herb + Milly Iris Gallery.

Collage Photo Credit: MeenMoves’ W(h)ine Pairings, photo by Christopher Duggan; Charly Santagado’s Arcadia; Amber Sloan’s DanceNow.