CREATIVE Ballet and the Alvin Ailey School. She has danced with The Neubert Ballet, Dance Brazil, Ailey II, The Jamison Project and Earl Mosley’s Diversity of Dance. She served as an assistant and rehearsal director for Judith Jamison (The Jamison Project) and has worked with Alvin Ailey, Michael Peters, Paula Abdul, Twyla Tharp, Garth Fagan, Donald McKayle, Graciela Daniele, Jeff Calhoun, Vince Patterson and Earl Mosley. Hurd has appeared on Broadway in Down To Earth, Dangerous Games and Annie Get your Gun. Hurd has taught at the University of Minnesota; Open Look Dance Festival St. Petersburg, Russia; Dance New Amsterdam; American Ballet Theatre Summer Intensive (NYC); Joffery Ballet School; Professional Performing Arts School, The Ailey School and Steps on Broadway, among others. She is the resident choreographer for the Nomad Contemporary Ballet Company and has choreographed for The Ailey School/Fordham University, The Ailey School Junior Division and Lynch Ballet Company, among others. She has choreographed original musicals CRACKED, The Lost Boys, Open Rehearsal (Theatre for the New City) and SPEAK the Show (SummerStage NYC). GESEL MASON (Choreographer—Lec/ Dem or How Do You Spell Femaphobic) is a choreographer, performer, educator and arts facilitator. She is artistic director for Gesel Mason Performance Projects and has been an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder since 2013. She was a company member of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and Ralph Lemon/ Cross Performance Projects and has performed with Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, Repertory Dance Theatre of Utah, Jacek Łumiński (Silesian Dance Theatre), Murray Louis and Victoria Marks. Mason utilizes dance, theatre, humor and storytelling to bring visibility to voices unheard, situations neglected, or perspectives considered taboo. Her current creative research collides the genres and cultures of postmodern dance and erotic dance in an embodied effort to find and hold on to what Audre Lorde calls “the yes within ourselves.” Numerous venues and festivals have presented Mason’s choreography including Joyce SoHo; 651 Arts; Bates Dance
Festival; Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center; University of Albany; SUNY Potsdam; South Dallas Cultural Center; Painted Bride; Dance Place; the International Contemporary Dance Conference and Performance Festival in Bytom, Poland; DanceAfrica and the International Association of Blacks in Dance. OLUWASEUN SAMUEL OLAYIWOLA (Choreographer—black is the new black, Performer—Hand in Heart, Lec/Dem or How Do You Spell Femaphobic, Paramodernities #3) began dancing at the age of 14 in high school color guard in Mansfield, Texas. He then performed with the Bluecoats Drum and Bugle Corps from Canton, Ohio in Summer 2014, earning second place at the Drum Corps International World Championships. He is currently a third-year B.F.A. in Dance (Dance Studies Option) major. Olayiwola plans to perform and choreograph professionally after graduating, while maintaining a professional teaching career. LYN C. WILTSHIRE (Co-Artistic Director, Choreographer—Slow Fade to Black) has performed and toured with several notable directors and dance companies including Dance Theatre of Harlem and nationally and internationally with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. She has performed in film, television and with symphonies across the country. Her dance movement foundation is rooted in professional training with worldrenowned choreographers and directors, including Arthur Mitchell, Jose Limon, Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey. Wiltshire’s most recent project is the cultivation of a student exchange program with Centre National de Danse Comptemporaine—Angers (CNDC). NETTA YERUSHALMY (Choreographer— Paramodernities #3) is an award-winning dance artist based in New York City. Her work aims to engage with audiences by imparting the sensation of things as they are perceived, not as they are known, and to challenge how meaning is attributed and constructed. Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Jerome Robbins