Artists in Residence
Akiko
(She/Her/Hers)
Akiko is a Twin Cities-based interdisciplinary storyteller, teaching artist, curator, and activist. The mediums she most commonly works with include poetry, music, dance, collage, and puppetry. Her work often includes themes of anti-oppression and social change. A native of Osaka, Japan, Akiko tells stories that reflect the narrative of immigrant women of color that are often underrepresented in white eurocentric society. For seven years, Akiko has worked as an activist creating both visual and performing art pieces that center around social issues. Telling stories for social change is a crucial part of Akiko’s artistic practice. In addition to creating and performing, Akiko has worked closely with the Minneapolis community through teaching at schools and museums, working for large-scale community art projects, and curating shows.
Image Description:
Photo credit:
Last updated:
Leila Awadallah
(She/Her/Hers)
Leila Awadallah 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. Born near the Tehankasandata / Thick Wooded River (Sioux Falls, SD) she moved to Minneapolis, Mni Sota (2012) to pursue a BFA in Dance at the University of Minnesota, and found home in the Twin Cities.
Leila is the Artistic Director of Body Watani Dance (body-as-homeland) project/practice in collaboration with Noelle Awadallah. She has received fellowships celebrating her performance, research in Arab-rooted contemporary dance, and choreographies: McKnight Dancer (2022), Jerome Hill (2021–2023), Daring Dances (2019) and Springboard 20/20 (2018). Her work TERRANEA received support from National Performance Network, MSAB, Arab American National Museum, Links Hall, and Goethe Institute. Leila was a member of Ananya Dance Theatre (2014–2019) and the Kelvin Wailey trio (2015–2019). She lives and works part time in Beirut where she collaborates with the Theater of Women of the Camp based in the Borj El Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp. In her free time, she prefers not to sit still and instead practices Tai Chi, Qi Gong, and Aikido.
Free Palestine!
Image Description:
Photo credit: McKnight '22 by Canaan Mattson
Last updated:
Frank Buffalo Hyde
(pronouns)
Frank Buffalo Hyde (b. 1974; Santa Fe, NM) is an Onondaga/Niimíipuu (Nez Perce) artist whose paintings examine and elevate an image of contemporary Indigenous life through a vibrant pop-sensibility and uncompromising satirical eye.
His work has been shown at museums including the Wheelright Museum of the American Indian, Santa Fe, NM; the C.M Russell Museum, Great Falls, MT; and Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK. It is in the public collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Washington DC; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; Iroquois Museum, Cobleskill, NY; Longyear Museum at Colgate University, Hamilton, NY; the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, NM; the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian; the Hirshhorn Museum of Contemporary Art; the Minnesota Museum of American Art; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; and many more. Hyde lives and works in Northfield, MN.
Image Description:
Photo credit:
Last updated:
_edited.jpg)
Masanari Kawahara
(He/Him/His)
Masanari Kawahara 川原正也 is a Butoh doer, theatre artist, puppeteer, and teaching artist. He is a resident teaching artist and Director of the Naked Stages program at Pillsbury House + Theatre.
During his RSD residency, Masanari worked with his collaborer Sho Nikaido. Sho Nikaido is a Japanese musician. He has played in various bands for over two decades in the Twin Cities music scene. Also, he composes the soundtrack for film and stage performances.
Image Description:
Photo credit: Masanari Kawahara
Last updated:
Gayatri Narayanan
(They/Them)
In their dance practice, Gayatri Narayanan investigates the Brahmanical appropriation of Bharatanatyam and the embodiment of purity politics by oppressor-caste dancers. Connecting dance, caste, gender, and land relationship, Gaya is committed to understanding the ways in which we consume and regenerate violent stories through our bodies in relationship to the land. Parallelly, Gaya dances as a form of deep listening, a sacred expression of suffering, and most importantly, as a primary site of engagement with what remains unknown to them.
Their dancing is a site of burning, birthing, and all the magical muckiness in between. Currently, their practice is shaped by studying narrative practice, internal family systems therapy, Silvia Federici's work on feminism and the commons, the poems of Akka Mahadevi and Basavanna, Alexis Pauline Gumbs's experimental triptych, and Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez's book Let's Become Fungal! Gaya is focused on dancing to cultivate a sense of inner neutrality as a strategy of holding multiplicity, resisting ideas of reconciliation, and getting comfortable holding deep pain.
Gaya graduated with their Masters in Environmental Justice from the University of Michigan, towards which they wrote a thesis on Brahmanical Bharatanatyam as a Site of Embodied Environmental Casteism. Their thesis combined auto-archaeology, feminist political ecology, facilitation, performance, and zine making. They were guided by Dr. Kyle Whyte, Prof. Michelle Martinez, Dr. shakara tyler, Dr. Petra Kuppers, and Dr. Clare Croft in this work.
Deeply informed by their dance practice, Gaya offers deep listening and healing as a bodyworker in South Minneapolis. Their Patreon page is a great way to access consistent healing and support their work. Or, directly book a session with them! Gaya is also a facilitator, coach, and educator with Spring Up, a worker-owned co-op of queer and trans care workers and transformative justice practitioners.
Image Description:
Photo credit:
Last updated:
Alys Ayumi Ogura
(She/Her/Hers)
Alys Ayumi Ogura (オグラ アリス ア有美) is a storyteller and performance maker through her movements, voice, and quirky humor. A native of Japan, now based in the Twin Cities, Ogura has been performing since 2010, and she has worked with more than 40 artists—near and far—including Company Blu (Italy) Hauser Dance, Emily Johnson/Catalyst, April Sellers Dance Collective, Kinetic Evolutions Dance Company, Emily Gastineau, Sandrine Harris, Kata Juhasz (Hungary), Pam Gleason, Pramila Vasudevan, and Laurie Van Wieren.
Ogura has created about 20 original works—from five to 50 minutes, in length—performed at Twin Cities venues and several U.S. cities, including formal performance spaces, such as the Southern Theater, Walker Art Center, Red Eye Theater, Keshet Dance & Center for Arts (New Mexico), the Epic Center (Michigan), and at site-specific spaces, such as the Mississippi riverbank, streets in the Twin Cities and the Lanesboro Arts Gallery. Anywhere between, she creates her own stories or delivers stories (messages) by others.
Notable highlights include the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship (2025–2028), Arts Organizing Institute Fellowship through the Pangea World Theater via NEA Our Town Program (2017–18), Naked Stages fellowship through Pillsbury House + Theatre (2021), Lanesboro Arts’ Early Career Artists-in-Residence (2025) and Rosy Simas Danse (RSD) Artist in Residency (2025–2026). Ogura is also a steering-committee member for DanceMN.
Image Description:
Photo credit: Russell Cooper
Last updated: August 2025
Arneshia Williams
(She/Hers)
Arneshia Williams was born in Stillwater, Oklahoma. She 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. Her areas of practice and research are influenced by wellness, embodiment, and community.
Arneshia gives thanks to the persons and communities who have encouraged her to view her art as a valuable part of the arts ecosystem. She has been awarded residencies and scholarships to support her choreography and danced works by communal and nationally known artists. She was a member of the 2020 Momentum: New Dance Works cohort, supported by the Cowles Center, and her short film, morsel, was in the 2021 Black Lives Rising Film Festival. Her written research has been published in the Journal of Dance and the Journal of Dance, Movement, and Spirituality. Residencies and support include Rosy Simas Danse's three thirty one space, Red Eye Theater, Dea Studios, the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and the Minnesota State Arts Board.
Arneshia offers body and sensory-based workshops to encourage spaces of connection and healing. In these intentionally created spaces, people offer and develop ways to connect, embody, and respect their personhood and the personhoods of other people. During the week-long residency at three thirty one space, generously offered by Rosy Simas Danse, Arneshia worked with collaborators to further develop a workshop that was offered in May 2023 for Black Women to take part in. During the residency, workshop development was shared with an invited audience for feedback. Residency time was also used to work on a forum in June 2023 for Communities of Color.
Image Description:
Photo credit: Stan Waldhauser
Last updated:
