Trillium Arts is delighted to announce Jingqiu Guan, Marcelo Martinez and Ashley L. Tate as awardees of Trillium's third annual North Carolina Choreographic Fellowship Award. These extraordinary artists, who hail from locations around the state, will be in residence at Trillium during the months of August 2025 and May and June 2026. Each choreographer will be joined by their dancers and/or key collaborators to advance their projects toward completion.
THE NORTH CAROLINA CHOREOGRAPHIC FELLOWSHIP (NCCF), launched in 2023, provides established North Carolina- based choreographers and their dancers with a full menu of resources and benefits including private lodging, rehearsal space, administrative mentorship, per diems and a $1,000 honorarium. If they so choose, NCCF awardees may opt to engage/interact with Trillium's growing cohort of regional and local artists. NCCF residencies are seven to nine days in length, providing space and time to deepen creative endeavors and rejuvenate in the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains.
Following an open call application process earlier this spring, a panel reviewed a robust and competitive set of applications. The panel selected the awardees with a priority given to artists who are at a catalytic point in their career and/or are actively incubating a new project for future public presentation.
"Trillium Arts is honored to support these artists whose diverse works reflect a broad range of dance artistry in North Carolina,” says Phil Reynolds, Trillium Arts President. “The 2025-2026 Awardees were selected as Trillium's NCCF Fellows due to their excellent artistry and also because their projects are inspired by vitally important contemporary issues.”
MEET THE AWARDEES
Jingqiu Guan
Durham, NC
Website: jingqiuguan.com
Originally from Chengdu, China, Jingqiu Guan is a filmmaker, choreographer, dancer, and scholar. She currently teaches at Duke University as an Assistant Professor of the Practice of Dance. Jingqiu makes interdisciplinary performance work and dance film that engage with social issues and cultural memories. Centering voices and expressions of women, immigrants, people of color, and individuals with disabilities, her work explores cultural identities, motherhood, and addresses issues of racial and disability justice.
As a filmmaker, Jingqiu has presented her dance films and documentaries in a number of film festivals worldwide and won various awards, including the Outstanding Documentary Film Award (Mama Dancers 2025) at the Beijing Dance Festival, Outstanding Direction Award from Manifest Dance-Film Festival in India and Best Dance Film Award from Black Lives Rising Dance Film Festival (The Weight of Sugar 2021), Chinese Screendance Maker Award from Hong Kong’s Jumping Frames International Video Dance Festival, Best Student Film Award at the San Francisco Dance Film Festival, the Grand Jury Award from Chicago’s In Motion Dance Film Festival (Family Portrait 2019), etc.
Jingqiu’s choreography for live performance has been presented at various venues such as the Getty Museum, Highways Performance Space in Los Angeles, Shadow Box Theater, the Arts Center in NC, Space Place Theater in Iowa, Duke University’s von der Hayden Theater, and Reynolds Industries Theater. She is in the process of developing a multimedia dance performance inspired by stories of migration and immigration connected to trains and railroads.
FELLOWSHIP PLANS:
During the residency, I will collaborate with four dance artists to develop an evening-length multimedia dance theater production, tentatively titled Rail-Tracks, which recounts stories of migration and immigration through an immersive journey of a train ride across time and space, from modern China to 19th-century US and wartime Germany. The residency will be the first time the entire cast rehearses in person altogether, as not all dancers reside locally. We look forward to having dedicated time and space to delve deeply into crafting this work and building a community within us to reflect together on the relevance of these stories in today’s cultural and political landscape. In addition, we plan to conduct a community workshop and present an informal showing to connect with local residents and artists during the residency. The completed work is planned be to premiered in January 2027 at the von der Heyden Theater at Duke University through Duke Arts.
MARCELO MARTINEZ
Raleigh, NC
Marcelo Martinez was born in Paraguay and began his training at the former Academia de danza Bettina Ramos. He trained in Brazil at the Centro de Dança Rio under the instruction of Maria Angelica Fiorani. At age 17 he was accepted into the Companhia Jovem do Teatro Municipal do Rio De Janiero where he danced for four years under the direction of Dalal Aschar and Mariza Estrella. He joined Washington Ballet for three seasons (2004-2007) where he danced under the direction of Septime Weber. From 2007 to 2024, Mr. Martinez, promoted as Principal Dancer in 2010, performed with Carolina Ballet, showcasing his talent in numerous principal roles. He danced as Romeo in Robert Weiss’s Romeo & Juliet, Man of Darkness in Lynne Taylor-Corbett’s Carmina Burana, and Dracula in another production by Taylor-Corbett. Additionally, he portrayed James in La Sylphide, Albrecht in Giselle, and Macbeth in Macbeth. Throughout his 17-season tenure with Carolina Ballet, Mr. Martinez captivated audiences with his performances. He has also graced the stage as a guest artist with Greensboro Ballet, Susan Farrell Ballet, Arka Ballet, The Raleigh Dance Theater, and The Asheville Ballet.
FELLOWSHIP PLANS:
During the Fellowship, I intend to explore forms, lifts, and movements inspired by the surrounding natural beauty of the mountains and keeping this quote in mind:
“Emotional into motion:”
I want to work on this phrase, to translate into motion, grief, anxiety, and loss. It is almost like acting with your body language to interpret the relationship of two different people and the tension between them, to give intention to their movement to express the devastation that Helene has left in our dance community, and we as artists have the ability to translate and reveal the hope and resilience that is inside of everyone.
The choreography process of creating a Contemporary Ballet at the North Carolina Fellowship program will become a journey of introspection for myself. This opportunity is an unyielding determination to be helpful, to be part of this community, even in moments of despair. Hopefully, I will have the opportunity, thanks to Trillium Arts, to present this original piece of work with The Asheville Ballet’s fall program in September at Pack Square in downtown Asheville.
ASHLEY L. TATE
Charlotte, NC
Instagram: dancert8
Website: https://ashleyliane9.wixsite.com
Ashley L. Tate is a director, choreographer, educator, and performer from Saint Louis, Missouri. She is an assistant professor of dance at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, an affiliate faculty member with the UNC Charlotte Department of Africana Studies, and founder and artistic director of Ashleyliane Dance Company (ADC). Tate earned a BS in Computer Information Science from Texas Christian University and an MFA in Dance from Washington University in St. Louis, where she received the prestigious Spencer T. & Ann W. Olin Fellowship for Women in Graduate Study. She has taught as an adjunct professor of dance at Saint Louis University, Washington University in St. Louis, Webster University, and Southeast Missouri State University, and she previously chaired the dance department at Grand Center Arts Academy. Audiences have seen her choreography in concerts across Missouri and beyond, including (but not limited to), New York City, Baltimore, Las Vegas, Chicago, Boulder, Greensboro, Charlotte, and Santa Monica. Tate's current research centers on how African Diasporic dance education, practice, and performance function as pathways for social justice. She has presented her research at multiple conferences and conventions, including the European Hip Hop Studies Network Conference in Cork, Ireland, and the Dance Studies Association Conference in Washington, D.C.
FELLOWSHIP PLANS:
During the Trillium Arts Fellowship, I intend to continue developing a dance work that began during the pandemic, an exploration of climate activism and environmental racism through movement-based storytelling. The natural setting will serve as both contrast and catalyst, deepening our connection to land while amplifying the voices of communities most impacted by environmental harm. With time for reflection, experimentation, and embodied research, my dancers and I will co-create a physical language that honors resilience, grief, resistance, and joy. This residency will not only advance the work artistically but also strengthen my commitment to using dance as a tool for civic engagement and social change. For the production, I am interested in presenting the work at the Carolina Theatre in Charlotte, NC, and also creating site-specific performances in public outdoor spaces to further the connection between dance, environment, and activism.
Congratulations to this year's awardees!
The 2025-2026 North Carolina Choreographic Fellowships are made possible by support from the Cannady-Ford Family Fund of The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina.