Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation AIR Founder’s Residency
Celebrating the three Springboard-curated recipients of Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation AIR Founder’s Residency
Springboard Danse Montréal and Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation have partnered up to provide nominated Springboard artists with residency opportunities at Chez Bushwick in Brooklyn, NY. In 2021, Springboard nominated 3 artists, once per residency cycle.
This new partnership opens another channel to connect our Springboard artists to career-development opportunities. We are grateful to Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation for the invitation to join them in this collaborative initiative!
Dava Huesca
2021 AIR – Cycle 1 Founder’s Residency
Springboard alumna 2018, 2019
Dava Huesca, from New York City, graduated from SUNY Purchase conservatory of Dance with magna cum laude distinction in 2019. In 2015, she graduated second in the dance department from Fiorello LaGuardia Arts High School and was awarded Desire Keras Dancer from the Heart award. Shortly after her college graduation Dava joined VIM VIGOR Dance company. Dava’s performance experience also includes Stacey Pearl Dance project, Rena Butler, Hannah Gardner, Sidra Bell, Maxine Doyle, Manuel Vigoulle, and Martha Graham Dance Company, etc. Dava attended Springboard Danse Montréal for two consecutive years where she worked with MAZE dance company, Johannes Weiland, Vanessa Goodman, and VIM VIGOR dance company.
Dava is the curator for New York Times and Dance Spirit magazine cited Instagram @Issadancelook. Additionally, she is the co-founder of the interdisciplinary arts collective LLAB RATS. Through LLAB RATS, she has performed and set work for Battery Dance Festival, Ciclo Dos, Purchase Dance company, Arts on site, The Craft NYC and others. Dava has led LLAB RATS experience floorwork based classes at SUNY Purchase and Gibney dance, as well as, organized art-filled peaceful protests in New York City in solidarity with the Black Lives matter movement. Dava continues to educate, teaching modern, floor work, jazz funk, contemporary and gymnastics throughout the New York tri-state area. She hopes to spread her voice internationally through education and choreography.
Dava’s headshot by Matthew W. Quigley
Dorchel Haqq raised in Harlem began her dance training at Dance Theater of Harlem. With education from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts then later at the Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College SUNY, Dorchel initiated her discovery of the body as a political statement. Through Purchase College, Dorchel studied at Korea National School of the Arts and was an Adopt-a-dancer recipient. Working with artists Johannes Wieland, Stephanie Batten Bland, Sidra Bell, Maxine Doyle, Loni Landon, and Kayla Farrish, Dorchel’s movement practices questions, challenges and induces an imaginative world. Dorchel explores fantasy and abstracts the echo of transgenerational trauma in her body of culture through film, sound exploration, and object investigations. Dorchel’s recent choreographic works, ‘tenderheaded’ honorarium of the 2020 Battery Dance Festival and ‘BLACKDIAMOND’ commissioned by the Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College SUNY illuminates these ideals. Dorchel is the co-founder of LLAB RATS, an interdisciplinary arts collective that creates through collaboration in response to social injustice. Dorchel is a Springboard-nominated recipient of Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation AIR Founder’s Residency. Dorchel is currently an adjunct lecturer at Purchase College and joined A.I.M by Kyle Abraham the fall of 2020.
Dorchel’s headshot by Baylie Olsen
Catherine Kirk
2021 AIR – Cycle 3 Founder’s Residency
Springboard alumna 2014 + 2015
Catherine Kirk is a performing artist and dance maker from the un-ceded land of the Kiickaapoi and Wichita peoples, now called Dallas, Texas. When Catherine cultivated a passion for movement in her youth, she decided to continue her education in the arts. In 2013, Catherine graduated with a B.F.A from New York University Tisch School of Dance, gained her Yoga Certification through The Perri Institute for Mind and Body, received her Reiki certification, and joined A.I.M, a NYC based touring company where she continues to work as a Dancer, Collaborator and Marketing Associate. As a freelancer, Catherine is a marketing strategist for a growing Podcast, a yoga teacher, an arts administrator, a digital content creator, and was a former adjunct professor at Hartford University, where she taught improvisation. She has also been a speaker for multiple panels and town-halls advocating for equitable accessibility to wellness practices and for arts workers. Catherine has collaborated and performed with Jasmine Hearn, UNA Productions, Burr Johnson, Helen Simoneau and the award winning Netflix series, Halston. Catherine pours her differing mediums, experiences and hobbies into her movement practices. She created and presented her own choreographic work as Art Cake Brooklyn’s Artist in Residence (2020). She lives in her artistic practice through her ancestry, faith, curiosity, and desire for radical healing.
Catherine’s headshot by Whitney Browne Photography
About the Chez Bushwick Artist-In-Residence Program
Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation is honored to mindfully continue a mission of support for emerging and mid-career diverse artists, as incoming AIRs build their creative work in a facility that has successfully steered a continued safe reopening, proving their theory of change around Venue Safety, piloted in autumn 2020 during the pandemic, and charting new ground specifically to support a safe reopening of Dance Facilities.
All awarded artists were selected through nomination by dance and performance field leaders, in dialogue with Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation.
Read more about the Foundation and the AIR program here.