Founded in 2001 by co-directors Debby Kajiyama & José Ome Navarrete Mazat. NAKA Dance Theater creates experimental performance works using dance, storytelling, multimedia installations and site-specific environments. NAKA builds partnerships with communities, engages people's histories and folklore and expresses experiences through accessible performances that challenge the viewer to think critically about social justice issues.

Lela Pierce (she/they) is a Black multiracial artist, born and raised in rural MniSota Makoce - the ancestral and current homeland of the Dakota and Anishinaabe people. Lela has danced extensively with Ananya Dance Theatre as a founding member (2004-2016) as well as Rosy Simas Danse and Pramila Vasudevan of Anichha Arts (both 2015-present).

Arneshia Williams is a weaver and mover who co-builds to create cultures of belonging from community to community. She views her artwork as snapshots into the social, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of life. She is interested in dance, vocality, sound, and media, and is particularly invested in Black American and African Diasporic forms of expression.

Valerie Oliveiro is a dance and performance maker based in the Twin Cities and from Singapore. While they currently engage movement as their primary motor for expression, they also engage in other expressions, such as design, writing, drawing, and photography, as generative, complexly relational proposals.

Taja Will (they/them) is a queer, chronically ill, Latinx (Chilean) adoptee, performer, choreographer, somatic therapist, and Healing Justice practitioner based in Mni Sota Makoce, on the ancestral lands of the Dakota and Anishinaabe.

Leila Awadallah ليلى عوض الله (she/her) is a dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker based in Minneapolis and partly in Beirut, Lebanon. Dancing with a body of Palestinian, Arab-American, Sicilian, and diasporic Mediterranean ways and waves.

nouf saleh (she/her) is an artist, cultural worker, organizer, and arts administrator who has been studying and working at the intersections of arts and culture for over ten years. Most recently, she was an artist assistant at Dyani White Hawk’s studio and co-founder and member of Wild Path Collective. She is also part of the Public Functionary studio artists.

"The award is, for me, a real recognition of my work cumulatively over the last 30 years," said Simas, 55, founder of Rosy Simas Danse.

StarTribune Variety Friday December 30, 2022. The Best of 2022. Rosy Simas’ she who lives on the road to war.