team
Will Rawls
lead artist
Will Rawls is a multidisciplinary choreographer whose practice encompasses dance, video, sculpture, works on paper and installation. Rawls' choreography explores language and gesture to stage performances of black presence and becoming. Rawls has presented solo exhibitions at 35th Bienal de São Paulo (2023), Art Basel (2023), Adams + Ollman (2022) and a multi-part installation, Everlasting Stranger, at the Henry Art Gallery (2021). He has also presented at the Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, Performa 15, Danspace Project, The Chocolate Factory Theater, High Line Art, Walker Art Center, REDCAT, the 10th Berlin Biennale, and the Hessel Museum at Bard College.
He has received fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, The Alpert Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Mellon Foundation, United States Artists, the Rauschenberg Foundation, Creative Capital, New England Foundation for the Arts, National Performance Network, MAP Fund, the MacDowell Colony, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Movement Research. In 2016, Rawls co-curated Lost and Found—six weeks of performances at Danspace Project that addressed the intergenerational impact of HIV/AIDS. Rawls is Associate Professor of Choreography in UCLA’s Department of World Arts and cultures/Dance. His writing has been published by the Hammer Museum, MoMA, Museu de Arte de São Paolo, Dancing While Black Journal, Brooklyn Rail and Artforum.
Rebecca Fitton
studio director
Rebecca Fitton is from many places and peoples. She nurtures community through movement, conversation, and food, striving to equally prioritize her multifaceted roles as an artist, administrator, and advocate. Their work focuses on shifting cultural policy, asian america, and disability justice. Fitton works as Co-Director/Director of Operations and Development for Bridge Live Arts and as the Director of Studio Rawls/Will Rawls. She creates artistic work in non-traditional performance spaces–bars, grocery stores, rooftops, gardens, sidewalks, and streets–across New York, New Jersey, Florida, Wisconsin, and Texas. She has been an artist-in-residence at Center (2019, MI), CAVE (2019, NY), EMERGENYC (2019, NY), and The Croft (2021, MI). Their writing has been self-published and by Triskelion Arts, Emergency Index, In Dance, The Dancer-Citizen, Etudes, Critical Correspondence, and Dance Research Journal. As an access practitioner, she creates audio description for experimental dance and performance artists. Currently, she is involved in a multi-year process with Adrienne Westwood and Angélica Negrón as an audio describer-dancer. They hold a BFA in Dance from Florida State University and an MA in Performance as Public Practice from the University of Texas at Austin.
Alejandro Flores Monge
company manager
Alejandro Flores Monge (he/him) is an artist and international arts administrator based in Querétaro, México. While studying for a BA in Art at Williams College, he performed with various dance ensembles, including Ritmo Latino, Kusika, and CoDa, as well as with Daniel Roberts and the Department of Dance at Ohio State University. His photography, videography, textile, and performance art has been showcased both in student exhibitions and sight-specific, solo showings. His administrative experience began as Artistic Director for the student ensemble, Ritmo Latino, and would lead to him to collaborating on curatorial and production projects alongside the ‘62 Center for Theatre & Dance at Williams College, The Williams College Museum of Art, The Clark, MassMoCA, Jacob’s Pillow, The Foundry, and The Yard. His current management portfolio includes several performance collectives across the US, México, and India.
Kearra Amaya Gopee
whistle space project manager
Kearra Amaya Gopee (they/them) is an anti-disciplinary visual artist from Carapichaima, Kairi (the larger of the twin-island nation known as Trinidad and Tobago), living on Lenape land (New York, NY). Using video, sculpture, sound, writing and other media, they identify both violence and time as primary conditions that undergird the anti-Black world in which they work: a world that they are intent on working against through myriad collective interventions. They render this violence elastic and atemporal--leaving ample room for the consideration and manipulation of its history, implications on the present and possible afterlives. In the spirit of maroonage, they have been developing an artist residency in Trinidad and Tobago titled a small place, after Jamaica Kincaid's book of the same name. They hold a MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles; BFA in Photography and Imaging from New York University, and are an alum of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
Sasha Okshteyn
[siccer] producer
Sasha Okshteyn is a creative producer with over 10 years of experience in live performance production. Sasha has collaborated and worked with artists and institutions such as Miles Greenberg, Adam Linder, Madeline Hollander, Jacolby Satterwhite, Yvonne Rainer, Pam Tanowitz, Baye & Asa, Stephen Petronio, Gerard & Kelly, David Gordon, Michael Portnoy, Performa, Museum of Modern Art, Pace Gallery, MCA Sydney and Imprint Projects. A native New Yorker, Sasha received her B.A in Art History and Dance from George Washington University, DC and M.A in Visual Arts Administration from NYU, NY.