Photo by Nicole Yen

Joanne Park(she/they/he) is a street dancer in Vancouver, as well as a Computer Science student at UBC. They specialize in Popping, Krump, W*acking, and Waving. Since 2019, Joanne has taken classes from and trained under Vancouver-based dancers such as Rina Pellerin, Natasha Gorrie, Simran Sachar, and Eric Cheung. They have also been trained under street dance and contemporary pre-professional programs, Higher Ground, Immigrant Lessons, and Modus Link. In 2023, Joanne was a commissioned artist in the Festival of Recorded Movement, and received the Most Memorable Youth Short Film award by the SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs for their film Tell the Truth (But Tell It Slant).

Photo by Deane Bayas

Ripcode aka Ghost Rexx has been a developing professional dancer in the street dance scene based in so-called Calgary for the past 7 years. Specializing in the style of Krump he has focused primarily on teaching, battling, and expanding the community and culture throughout Calgary and western Canada. He is a member of the largest Krump crew in western Canada, Empirical Freedom as well as one of the most well respected Krump Fams in the world Rexx Fam. His impact has been able to expand outside of Calgary by working with the budding Krump scene in Vancouver and working with leaders in both the Toronto and Montreal communities. Ripcode has put a large focus on traveling to places he can learn from OG’s and Veterans within krump to uplift his home community. He is a teacher and a community leader who promotes diversity and inclusion within any dance community while also striving to educate those willing to learn and learn from anyone he can.

Photo by Nii Okaidja Afeloso Adjemang

Meysha Harville (they/them) is a versatile poet, musician, and performer from Youngstown, Ohio. Currently, they’re writing their first full-length play and recording an album with hip-hop duo Transonic. Meysha’s works include comedic performance, voice-over, and Black trans archival preservation.

Photo by Mare Hirsch

Mare Hirsch (she/her) is an artist whose practice is mediated by data, light, and sound, resulting in work that weaves together code, installation, and sculpture. Rooted in the California coast–now residing in Seattle–she explores the complex intersections of queerness, identity, and place. Mare holds a PhD in Media Arts & Technology from the University of California Santa Barbara and teaches digital media and computational art at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA.

@marehirsch | marehirsch.com

Naomi Deckard (Ms. Luxxe) is a Seattle-based interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of wearable technology, costume, and live performance — building responsive, technological garments and writing and composing the text and sound of her own performances. As CPU Fashion, her work asks how identity is constructed, surveilled, and displayed on the body.

She brings an unusual foundation to the work: a BSEE from the University of Washington and fifteen years as a software engineer (most recently in audio at Amazon Lab126), which she now turns toward building the electronics, sensing, and sound systems her work depends on. She is now focused full-time on her art practice and enrolled in Seattle Central College's Apparel Design & Development program, graduating 2027.

At On the Boards' NW New Works 2026 she performed inside a breathing inflatable gown — spoken word over an audio score she composed, in dialogue with a real-time AI avatar of herself, a digital double. Her silicone garment Temporal Smearing received a Curator's Choice award at the 2026 Seattle Central Student Invitational. The work is drawn from CPU, the fictional technology corporation she has built since 2023 from the Void Studio in Pioneer Square. Her work is rooted in identity trauma — the cost of compressing oneself to conform — and in the body as the contested site where the self is both lived and read by others.

‍ ‍@naomiluxxe| cpuhive.net

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 converse with memory. She approaches her practice as an imaginative space grounded in rhythm where improvisation, Black vernacular movement, and choreography meet. Nia-Amina has received regional and national commissions for her choreographic and film work and has a working background as a performer and dramaturg. She is co-founder of Black Collectivity, a collaborative project created movement-based experiences that celebrate memory and culture through embodied responses.

As a performer, Nia-Amina has worked with artists such as dani tirrell, Zoe Juniper, Will Rawls, Alice Gosti, Keyes Wiley, and Amy O’Neal. From 2016-2021 she was a Company Artist at Spectrum Dance Theater under the direction of Donald Byrd. Nia-Amina has also provided dramaturgical assistance to choreographers Jade Solomon-Curtis and Donald Byrd. In her work as a curator, she has developed programming at On the Boards, Wa Na Wari, Velocity, and Base, and Friends of the Waterfront Park. From 2014-2016, she was a co-founder and curator of Los Angeles based collective, No)one Art House. As an educator, she has taught, guest lectured, and been a visiting artist at Cornish College, University of Minnesota, CalArts, University of Washington, Western Washington University, Saddleback College, Cypress College, and UC Irvine. Nia-Amina received her MFA in Dance from UC Irvine and a BA from Stanford University. She was Dance Magazine's 25 Artists to Watch in 2021, and one of Seattle Magazine's Most Influential People in 2025. Currently, Nia-Amina is a faculty member at Cornish College of the Arts at Seattle University and is the Curating Artist in Residence at Velocity Dance
Theater.

Black Ends is Nicolle Swims (guitar, vocals) and Ben Swanson (bass). They hail from Seattle, which is obvious once you hear their music: a heady mixture of gnarled guitar chords, bombastic volumes, slimy textures, and Swims’ unique guttural croon. They call it gunk pop, an evolution of grunge that’s filtered through a modern lens, perfectly at home in the era’s panopticon of paranoia and overstimulation. It’s Black at the core but resonant within all hearts.

In 2020 Black Ends broke out via Stay Evil, an EP engineered by legendary Seattle producer Jack Endino that earned high praise from both influential outlets (KEXP, The Alternative, Post-Trash) and individual voices (Anthony Fantano, early grunge proponent Everett True). Their debut LP Psychotic Spew achieved the #1 spot on Seattle Times’ Best Washington Albums 2024 list. In its wake, the band have shared high-profile bills with the likes of Bikini Kill, Otoboke Beaver, Shonen Knife, Skating Polly, Living Colour, English Teacher, and Pretty Girls Make Graves. Whether at home or abroad, they make converts out of whoever finds them.

Photo by JJ Tiziou

Helmed by Artistic Director Adrienne Mackey (she/her), Swim Pony is a devised theater and game company with a commitment to interdisciplinary, risk-taking live performance. Their genre-defying work is created by an ensemble that experiments with expanding the definition of what “theater” can be and lifting up tactile, sensory and experiential storytelling. The company’s original projects include SURVIVE!, a 22,000 sq ft choose-your-own-adventure installation exploring humanity’s place within the universe; LADY M, a feminist re-imagining of Shakespeare’s Macbeth; THE GIANT SQUID, a “crypto-zoology-horror-comedy” performed in science lecture halls across Philadelphia; and THE BALLAD OF JOE HILL, a play with music created for Eastern State Penitentiary about the execution of a historic labor icon. Most recently, Swim Pony has melded game design with theater in projects like TRAILOFF – an immersive mobile app created in collaboration with the PA Environmental Council using GPS to embed original BIPOC stories onto nature trails; AQUA MAROONED!, a wildlife card game commissioned by the Alliance for Watershed Education; and WAR OF THE WORLDS, a theater/game experience created with Drexel's Entrepreneurial Game Studio which explored alien invasion as a metaphor for gentrification. Accolades include two Knight Arts Challenges, a Philly Magazine “Best Of” for TRAILOFF, and a 2023 Games4Change Award nomination. Past residencies: FringeArts, Orchard Project, and Blast Theory. Touring to: FringeArts, Edinburgh Fringe, ASU, Annenberg Center for Perf. Arts, Eastern State Pen., Arcadia, UArts, Swarthmore, CEC. AQUA MAROONED! shared at 40 locations across the US.

Photo by M. L. Dogg

M.L. Dogg has designed for such companies as Second Stage, Seattle Children’s, Swim Pony, Seattle Rep, Alley, Primary Stages, Actors Theatre of Louisville, New Group, Signature, New York Stage and Film, Huntington, American Repertory Theater, Playwright’s Horizons, Geffen Playhouse, Roundabout, Royal National Theatre, Ars Nova, Pearl, Shakespeare & Co., and Nicholas Ward Productions. Selected Broadway: Becky Shaw; Gutenberg! The Musical!; Here Lies Love; Oh, Hello On Broadway; The Pee-wee Herman Show. Lortel award, Here Lies Love, fringeNYC award, Go-Go Kitty, GO!; Sound On Stage,Tony, Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk, nominee. Assistant Professor of Sound Design, UW School of Drama.

Photo by Kate Drummond

Nick O'Leary is a director, theater maker, and projections designer. Working across regional theater, opera, and immersive experiences, Nick has directed everything from world premiere new plays to explosively reimagined classics. His original works include grand immersive spectacles and intimate participatory events.

He has developed new work with organizations like Guerilla Opera, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Official Puppet Business, The Pittsburgh CLO, The Flea Theater, The Museum of the Moving Image, and Dacha Theatre. Nick holds an MFA in Directing from the UW School of Drama and is a Dacha company member. Recent design credits include You Will Get Sick (Sound Theatre), House of Joy (Pratidhwani/Seattle Public), Vietgone (Pork Filled Productions), and Champagne and Sodomy: Gross Indecency (The Feast).

Photo by Shawn Poynter

With her company Swim Pony, Adrienne Mackey has created works like SURVIVE!  - a 22,000 sq-ft science installation; THE BALLAD OF JOE HILL at Eastern State Penitentiary; WAR OF THE WORLDS, with Drexel’s Entrepreneurial Game Studio; and THE END – a month-long ARG exploring mortality. Most recently, she's created THE STUPIDEST, SCARIEST TIME, an interactive comedy about American workaholism; TRAILOFF, a mobile app that embeds immersive audio onto nature trails; and OMNIA BREAK ROOM, a movement play critiquing mass consumerism. Mackey serves as Head of Directing at UW and is the recipient of two Knight Arts Challenges, an Independence Foundation Fellowship, and a Global Innovation Fund Award.

Photo by ToriWinkler

Tariq Mitri (he/him) is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher based in Seattle, WA. He was born in Abu Dhabi and raised in Portland, OR. He earned his BFA in Dance Performance from the California Institute of the Arts in 2015. His performance career spans 10 years between Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle, performing with over 25 choreographers and companies.

From 2019 to 2021, Mitri served as Rehearsal and Co-Director of the Brooklyn-based company HEIDCO. A longtime Dance Church teacher (2017–2024), he also held roles as Training Manager and Program Manager, shaping national programming from 2020 to 2023. Returning to Seattle in 2022, Mitri has been developing solo, duet, and collaborative works. He is gaining a deeper understanding of his Palestinian heritage within his art-making and how it coincides with his American upbringing. His choreography has been presented by the International Dance Festival New Orleans, Velocity Dance Center, Friends of Waterfront Seattle, and the Seattle Art Museum’s SAM Remix. In 2024, he was awarded a Body Space Time Residency through the University of Washington. In April 2025, he premiered his first evening-length work, Of Us, with collaborator Jenna Eady, produced by CO- in partnership with Dunya Productions. Mitri is a 2026 Centrum Foundation Emerging Artist Resident. He is a co-founder and teacher for Dance Class, a rotating class series featuring Cunningham Technique, Contemporary, and Dance Improvisation forms with Una Ludviksen and Ashley Menestrina. He is currently the Program and Operations Manager for Base: Experimental Arts + Space.

Sonam Tshedzom Tingkhye is a Tibetan-American body-based artist working between dance, theater, durational performance, installation, and music. Originally from Seattle, Washington, she received her BFA in Contemporary Dance Performance from The Boston Conservatory at Berklee in 2022 and since has been dancing between coasts. Rooted in her Tibetan upbringing, she engages with the physical body as an extension of identity and vehicle to liberation. Fueled by a sense of responsibility that compels her to create, she is drawn to the transitional spaces where emotions blur and layer. Through her art, Tshedzom aims to generate atmospheres that echo our current realities while expanding our public imagination. Her work has been presented with The Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, Marina Abramović Institute, On the Boards, Velocity Dance Center, Northwest Film Forum, CO-, Kaleidoscope Dance Company, Yakpo Collective, and Tibet Film Festival. She was awarded the Body Space Time Residency at the University of Washington in 2025, and is now in residency with Shunpike at 2+U. As a performer and collaborator, she has worked with artists and companies including Robert Moses' Kin, Juel D. Lane, Alice Gosti, Fox Whitney, Alyza DelPan-Monley, Skye Hughes, Boston Early Music Festival, and HYBRIDMOTION Dance Theatre. She has performed works by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Merce Cunningham. She currently serves as an artist circle member with Velocity Dance Center, and will be presenting a shorter iteration of her work “Returning” at FACT/SF in San Francisco this summer.

Maya Tacon is a graduate of SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance with training in Taiwan. In Seattle, she has worked with artists Cameo Lethem, Jordan Macintosh-Hougham, Michelle Miller, Andy McShea, Joseph Hernandez, Alice Gosti, & Lavinia Vago. Maya is one half of CO-, a Pilates instructor, and a guide for Dance Church ®.

Photo courtesy of Una Ludviksen

Una Ludviksen is from Seattle. She has performed locally and internationally with the Merce Cunningham Trust, GREYZONE NYC, Dylan Crossman Dance, Emily Schoen Branch, AnA Collaborations, and Emily Kessler. She has shown work in Seattle at Base‘s Pairings (sound by Kole Galbraith, curation by Bebe Miller and Lori Goldston), CO- SHOW 8 (sound by John Garlid, curation by Maya Tacon and Emma Lawes), and in Berlin for Clemente Ciarrocca’s The Joys. Una is an authorized Cunningham Technique® teacher. She is a co-founder and teacher at Dance Class and faculty at Bainbridge Dance Center. She received her BFA from SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance with a study abroad at the Amsterdam University of the Arts.

Carlin Kramer is a Seattle-based dance artist and performer who uses improvisation, sound, instinct, fantasy, catharsis, and in-between spaces to unlock portals through the body. She investigates life through movement and seeks answers through chaos and emotion.

Undercurrent is a teaching and performance entity invested in rigorous and specific technique. Through curated research labs, national creative partnerships, international intensives, immersive performance pop-ups, and weekly community classes, we engage in nuanced floorwork research practiced with seamless continuity and an eye for the thrill of kinesthesia. We believe that communal care precedes the possibility of risk, and that attunement to collectivism is a vital and precious practice.

Hilary Grumman co-founded Undercurrent in 2017 and has since cultivated the company’s development. As Artistic Co-Directors under the umbrella of Undercurrent, Hilary and Alethea Alexander (Undercurrent Artistic Co-Director, Ballet Rituals Co-Founder and independent artist) have been making work together since 2023. Their collaborative works have been supported by On the Boards, Actualize, Pike Street Plaza, University of Washington, Cornish College, CO–, Velocity Dance Center, westFEST, 4Culture, Abbey Arts, Walk Don’t Run, Mosswood Hollow Retreat Center, Kitbash Studio, Alia Swersky, Glenn Kawasaki, and Douglas Pearce.

____________________________________________________________________________

Surface Tension, presented at NWNW 2026, is a high-velocity kinesthetic rollercoaster for seven dancers, two lights, and a DJ. It is a meditation on the essential relationship between risk-taking and community care. In darkness, held close through directed lighting and tension between what is seen and unseen, movement slices and slips through restricted space, underpinned by an original soundscore from local artist Marco Gill.

Photo by Stefano Altamura

Alethea Alexander (she/her) is a Seattle-based dance artist and educator, and is the Artistic Co-Director with Undercurrent. Community, sensuality, care, effort and collaboration are central tenets of her work with dance partners human, object and sonic. She performs her own improvised, choreographed and installation-based works in collaboration with multidisciplinary artists in Seattle and nationally. Her recent works have been supported by 4Culture, City of Seattle, the Kreielsheimer Foundation, Bellingham Repertory Dance, Cornish College of the Arts, and Sam Houston State University. Alethea is Co-Founder and Teaching Artist for Ballet Rituals, a Seattle-based community practice initiative.

@aletheaalexander | aletheaalexander.com

Photo by Stefano Altamura

Hilary Grumman is an artist, educator, and community organizer. Drawing on her persistent floorwork research since 2011, she is the Director and Co-Founder of Undercurrent, through which she hosts floorwork classes, international workshops, research labs, social gatherings, and collaborative performance projects. She is on faculty at Cornish College and an Artist in Residence at the University of Washington and Abbey Arts. Her work has been supported by Velocity Dance Center, Actualize, westFEST, Mosswood Hollow, 4Culture, Artist Trust, Alia Swersky, Douglas Pearce, the Undercurrent community, and her unwavering respect for and commitment to service as a holistic way to gather and care for others.

Photo by Stefano Altamura

Emma Sumanaweera is a dance artist based in Seattle, WA. She moved to the Pacific Northwest to pursue her BFA in Dance, which she received from Cornish College of the Arts in 2025. At Cornish, she danced for local choreographers such as Undercurrent, Tracy Wong, and Alicia Mullikin. Most recently, she presented her solo work as part of 12 Minutes Max: Edition Two at Base Arts Space. She also performed in a new work by Olivia Evans for Evoke Productions’ Full Tilt2026. Emma has a background in theater and is inspired by the intersections between theater and dance, using movement and text in her creative practice to physicalize stories and explore curiosities.

Photo by Kate Rogers-Guaderrama

Rana San (she/her) is a filmmaker, choreographer, writer, and curator. Her practice centers experimental and analog approaches to storytelling on stage and screen. She recently had a video essay published in TriQuarterly and her cinepoems have screened nationally and internationally. Lately her research ponders hyper visibility, bodily autonomy, and immigrant liminality. Based between Seattle and Istanbul, Rana co-directs Cadence Video Poetry Festival and Anadolu Turkish Folk Dancers.

ILVS STRAUSS(she/her) from a sociodemographic standpoint, is a 45 year-old educated, queer, mixed-race, white-passing, female bodied, Honduran-American artist. From a non-sociodemographic standpoint, she’s still those things, but manifests in 3D by the ethereal: experience, values, judgment, desire, need, love, motivation, inspiration, etc. ilvs once had a job as an analytical chemist for a pharmaceutical company, BA Chemistry - OSU, but then slowly pivoted to the arts and received an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Simon Fraser University. The hats she wears are many, and at times, she has been known to wear several at once: multi-disciplinary performance artist, writer, dancer, facilitator, technical director, lighting designer, and sound engineer. Born in the Los Angeles area, she grew up in Portland, OR, then moved to Seattle before coming up to Vancouver, BC, and now returning to Seattle. At present, she has no intention of moving to the Yukon or Alaska.

@velvetilvs | ilvsstrauss.com

NW New Works 2025 Performance Description

ñ (enye)

ñ (enye) is an audiophile’s unhurried song analysis which tangents into explorations of the physics of sound, speculations about the advent of language, and inquiries about basic human needs. Humorous, sly, and introspective, the titular character is a brat-green rabbit who guides the audience on a journey through an intentional soundscape, audible and otherwise.

Photo by Solika Studio

Parmida Ziaei (she/her) is an Iranian multidisciplinary artist and designer based in Seattle and the co-founder of Seda Iranian Theatre Ensemble. Parmida has been a scenic and production designer with many Seattle theaters including ACT, Village Theatre, Seattle Shakespeare Company, ArtsWest,Taproot Theatre, Seattle Public Theater, among others. When not designing, Parmida performs, choreographs and teaches as a movement artist and serves as a consultant and curator. Parmida has been the recipient of multiple residencies including the 2022 Northwest Creator Residency at Village Theatre.

Instagram:

Website: