2018 – 2019 Cambridge Arts Grant Panelist Bios
Dance
Marissa Molinar
Ken Pierce
McKersin Previlus
Smitha Radhakrishnan
Laura Sánchez
Marissa Molinar
Marissa Molinar is a dancer, arts administrative activist, and the founder/curator of Midday Movement Series, a program that provides emerging contemporary dance teachers with the space and time to find their voice, hone their skills, and build a following while offering low-cost, rigorous classes to dancers. Marissa is currently a freelance dancer, performs with nathantrice/RITUALS Dance Theater in New York, and is a proud member of Ruckus Dance in Boston. In addition to her artistic work, Marissa is the Outreach Coordinator at Deborah Mason Performing Arts Center. She also provides administrative support to Boston-area dance artists of color, offering free consultation in marketing, grant writing, and organizational/artistic planning.
Ken Pierce
Ken Pierce trained in ballet and modern dance, studying on scholarship at both the American Ballet Theatre School and the Merce Cunningham Studio. He has specialized in early dance, especially, late-Renaissance and Baroque dance, for over thirty years, as choreographer, reconstructor, performer, and teacher. He has performed with early dance companies on both sides of the Atlantic and his choreographies have been presented at workshops and festivals in Europe, Canada, and the United States. He directs the early dance program at the Longy School of Music of Bard College and is on the faculty at Integrarte (integrarteusa.com).
McKersin Previlus
Growing up without the means for dance classes, McKersin overcame a troubled environment, persevering to become the dancer and choreographer that he is today. With Ethnic-Haitian dance as his base vocabulary, McKersin started building a bigger arsenal with Hip-Hop, Jazz, and Tap. Today, he leads workshops throughout various parts of the country orientated towards social justice and the roots of African American culture and movement. McKersin’s current project Bridge 4 my Brothers focuses on building up men in the inner city to become emotionally intelligent and agents of social change within their community. He also works to inspire young students as a full-time performing arts teacher at a local K-8 school in Boston, MA.
Smitha Radhakrishnan
Dr. Smitha Radhakrishnan is a lifelong Bharatanatyam practitioner. Since 2008, she has trained and performed with Navarasa Dance Theater, led by Dr. Aparna Sindhoor and Anil Natyaveda. In 2015, she established NATyA Dance Studio in Natick, which aims to promote the Indian classical arts through bridge-building performance and teaching in the Greater Boston area. When she is not dancing, Smitha is Associate Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College.
Laura Sánchez
Born in Spain, Laura Sánchez is a flamenco dancer, educator, entrepreneur and expressive arts researcher at Lesley University where she is developing her unique theory and approach of Expressive Flamenco © by conducting auto-ethnographic expressive arts-based research. She is the founder of LS Flamenco, an organization whose mission is to bring joy into people´s lives through flamenco dance. Over the past years she has brought flamenco dance to hundreds of people in Massachusetts and collaborated with organizations such as Boston Ballet, Jose Mateo Ballet Theater, The Dance Complex, Lesley University, and Boston College of Fine Arts, among others. She has been teaching flamenco dance for kids and adults in Cambridge since 2014 and is a teaching artist at Boston Ballet (ECI) and Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana in NYC. Laura is also a business strategist with more than 10 years of experience working as marketing manager for different multinational companies and has brought her extensive experience into the arts field offering business mentoring to arts companies and independent artists.
Music
Jennifer Chen
Andy Graydon
Anthony R. Green
Michael Monestime
Catherine Morris
Jennifer Chen
Jennifer Chen completed her undergraduate degree at Harvard University (History of Art and Architecture cum laude) and is an MBA graduate of the Yale University School of Management. Her career has brought her from producing operas in dining halls to working with institutions including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, New York City Ballet, Peabody Essex Museum, Celebrity Series of Boston, and Villa I Tatti in Florence, Italy. Since 2017, Jennifer has served as Managing Director of the American Modern Opera Company, a new ensemble she co-founded with Artistic Directors Matthew Aucoin and Zack Winokur.
Andy Graydon
Working in film, video and sound performances and installations, Andy Graydon tracks the wayward lives of forms in the world, from morphogenesis to translation to decay. Interested in natural and social ecologies, and the role of listening and the voice, Graydon’s work engages structures of music such as scoring, improvisation, collective emergence and community. His work has been presented internationally at the New Museum, New York; Berlinische Galerie, Berlin; the Frye Art Museum, Seattle; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; Wroclaw Media Arts Bienniale, Poland; and the upcoming Honolulu Biennial in Hawai’i. In 2017 Graydon was a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, New Hampshire. He received his MFA in Radio, Television, and Film from Northwestern University.
Anthony R. Green
A McKnight Visiting Composer and a Bemis Fellow, internationally recognized composer and performer, Anthony R. Green is an artist whose practice centers on equality, freedom, and social justice. His compositions have been performed in over 20 countries, with support from 9 residencies, as well as national grants and fellowships. As a performer, he has played piano, conducted, and engaged in unique music-based performance art across the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Austria, Cyprus, Israel, and South Korea. He is the Associate Artistic Director of Boston-based Castle of Our Skins, dedicated to celebrating Black Artistry through music. www.anthonyrgreen.com
Michael Monestime
Michael Monestime grew up in the Egleston Square neighborhood of Jamaica Plain. Following his completion of a BA in American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Michael used his knowledge of American Studies, strong communications skills, and entrepreneurial know-how to excel in a number of his own startup businesses and marketing positions with the Institute for Contemporary Art, ZIP Car, and Live Nation. After more than ten years of doing experiential marketing programming in NYC, Michael returned to Boston where he completed the MS in Urban Planning and Community Development at Umass Boston, while serving as the Executive Director of the Central Square Business Association and Cultural District. The CSBA aims to maintain and support a lively business environment and enhance the experience of the Central Square Cultural District. Michael, his wife, and two daughters reside in Cambridge.
Catherine Morris
Catherine T. Morris is the Founder, Visionary and Executive Director of Boston Art & Music Soul (BAMS) Fest. The organization strives to breakdown racial and social barriers to arts, music, and culture for underserved communities of color across Greater Boston. Since 2015, BAMS Fest has produced and curated a traveling live arts and music series called “The Prelude.” This program “edutains” and helps audiences of color experience the arts in underutilized spaces across local neighborhoods. In June 2018, the organization debuted it's first annual festival, where it featured 19 local artists on 2 major stages. As a result, the organization has presented over 150+ local and independent musicians and artists, curated in 15 public spaces and has attracted over 5,000+ attendees.
Theater, Literature, & Multidiciplenary
Rosanna Yamigawa Alfaro
Evelyn Francis
Scott Ruescher
Audrey Seraphin
David Shane
Rosanna Yamigawa Alfaro
Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro is a Cambridge based playwright. Her plays include Before I Leave You (Huntington Theatre), Behind Enemy Lines (Pan Asian Repertory), Mishima (East West Players), Barrancas (Magic Theater), Pablo and Cleopatra (New Theatre), and Martha Mitchell (Edinburgh Fringe Festival and Six Figures Theater). She wrote and narrated the documentary Japanese American Women: A Sense of Place, directed by Leita Luchetti, (the Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition and PBS Seattle). She was a Huntington Playwriting Fellow (2010) and MCC Artist Fellow in Playwriting (2011). Her shorter plays have been anthologized by Baker’s Plays, Heinemann, Meriwether, PlaySource, Smith and Kraus, in vivo INK, and Charta Books.
Evelyn Francis
Evelyn Francis is a theatre artist, educator, and administrator that joined The Theater Offensive as lead teaching artist for True Colors: OUT Youth Theater in 2001. She was promoted to Director of Programs in 2010 to oversee all elements of TTO’s OUT in Your Neighborhood strategy and now serves as the Interim Artistic Director. As a co-author of the Boston Youth Arts Evaluation Project, Evelyn developed a set of evaluative tools which are utilized across the continent. Evelyn also served as the lead researcher with the Boston Children’s Hospital studying the effect of LGBTQ-specific theater as an intervention for low self-esteem and depression in LGBTQ youth. She is the Founding Co-Chair of The Pride Youth Theater Alliance, and in 2016, Evelyn accepted the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award from First Lady Michelle Obama on behalf of The Theater Offensive's youth program True Colors.
Scott Ruescher
Scott Ruescher has been reading from his 2017 collection of poems, Waiting for the Light to Change, at various venues in the Boston area, including at Gallery 263 in Cambridgeport, the Cambridge Arts River Festival, the Newton Free Library, and the Somerville Armory. Set in Central Square, Central Ohio, Central America, and other central places (including Graceland and the Lorraine Motel in Memphis), his poems have won annual awards from Poetry Quarterly (the Rebecca Lard Award in 2015), Able Muse (the Write Prize in 2016), and the New England Poetry Club (the Erika Mumford Award for poetry about travel and international culture in both 2013 and 2014). Some of Scott's new pieces have been appearing in Solstice Journal, About Place, Pangyrus, Tower Journal, and Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine. He administers the Arts in Education program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and teaches English in the Boston University Prison Education Program.
Audrey Seraphin
Audrey Seraphin is an artist and arts administrator who works in the greater Boston theatre community as an actor, director, stage manager, and community organizer. She is the Membership & Capacity Building Manager at ArtsBoston; part of her role there includes leading the Network of Arts Administrators of Color (NAAC) Boston. Audrey is also a member of The Front Porch Arts Collaborative, where she serves as the Community Engagement Specialist. She is a graduate of Emerson College's Theatre Studies program and a lifelong Massachusetts resident.
David Shane
David E. Shane is the Program Director at StageSource, an alliance of approximately 200 theater organizations and 1,500 theater artists all over New England. He coordinates programming aimed at workforce development, job opportunities, and sector improvement within the theatrical community. Prior to joining StageSource, he was the Associate Artistic Director of the Bristol Valley Theater in Upstate NY and the Founder/Co-Manager of Footlights Entertainment in New York, NY. David has worked as a freelance director in New York City and around the country.
Visual Arts, Film, & Video
Becci Davis
José Estrela
Neal Rantoul
Alexandra Sheldon
Yevette Wilks
Becci Davis
Becci Davis, 2018 RISD Museum Artist Fellow, works across disciplines, collecting images, documents, and oral narratives. This collection of evidence is combined with her own interpretation and response, creating a new history and personal geography. She was born in Fort Benning, Georgia and finds inspiration in her encounters with nature and experiences as a daughter, mother, Southerner and black woman descended from enslaved Americans. Becci earned her MFA from Lesley University. She was the recipient for the 2018 Providence Public Library Creative Fellowship, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellowship in New Genres, and the St. Botolph Emerging Artist Award.
José Estrela
José Estrela’s ARTWORK arises from his vibrant Portuguese (born) & Brazilian (raised) background that inspire his art. His artwork is an integrated part of countless graphic designs he has done for the past 30+ years. He now devotes his designs and art for the love of IT — as dynamic limited edition digital prints on multi media and one-of-a-kind original pieces. www.josestrela.com
Neal Rantoul
Neal Rantoul is a retired professor and former head of the Photography Program at Northeastern University. He has exhibited and published his photographs throughout his career. He has work in major museum collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. After over 30 years as a Cambridge resident he now lives in Belmont.
Alexandra Sheldon
Alexandra Sheldon is an artist living and working in Cambridge. She works mostly in mixed media. She specializes in teaching collage workshops.
Yevette Wilks
Yvette Wilks is a television and radio producer and has been producing shows since 2014. Yvette is also an active board member of Women In Film and Video (New England region) and the Somerville Media Center. She currently works with the West Medford Community Center on their monthly Words and Music series and is currently involved with creating a program to train the youth and all interested parties on pre- and post- work for the monthly series. She is also the founder of the annual Evolution of Hip-hop Festival which is held in Somerville, Massachusetts in Union Square. In September of 2019, they will be hosting this event for the fifth year, with the goal to promote September as Boston Hip-hop month.