Trillium Arts Announces Awardees for the Spring 2026 Individual Artists in Residence Program
Trillium Arts is delighted to announce Arkayla Tenney-Howard and Eduardo Vilaro as awardees of Trillium's Spring 2026 Individual Artists in Residence Program. These exciting artists, who hail from Missouri and New York, will be in residence at Trillium during the months of April and May. Each artist will be on a solo creative adventure to work on their artistic projects. Trillium residencies provide space and time to deepen creative endeavors and rejuvenate in the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains.
MEET THE Awardees:
ARKAYLA TENNEY-HOWARD
Website: https://linktr.ee/arkaylath
Arkayla Tenney-Howard is a St. Louis-based writer whose work lives at the intersection of storytelling and social impact. Her background is in strategic communications and most of her work exists within the nonprofit and social justice space. From managing advocacy campaigns to writing poetry, she is dedicated to uplifting voices and stories like her own. Her marketing work and personal writing focus on collective liberation through powerful storytelling.
Residency Intentions:
I plan to use the Trillium Arts Residency to lay the foundation for my second poetry book—an expansion of my sorrow chapter in my first book, If Feelings Could Speak. During the residency, I will use old journal entries to write new poems while studying the structure and emotional storytelling of Blues music while drawing from my St. Louis roots and Mississippi Delta lineage. By the end, I hope to have new poems for my book that reflect the spirit of the Blues and share my journey through grief in a way that supports my readers.
EDUARDO VILARO
Website: https://www.ballethispanico.org/
Eduardo Vilaro is the Artistic Director & CEO of Ballet Hispánico (BH). He was named BH's Artistic Director in 2009, becoming only the second person to head the company since its founding in 1970, and in 2015 was also named Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Vilaro has infused Ballet Hispánico’s legacy with a bold brand of contemporary dance that reflects America’s changing cultural landscape.
Mr. Vilaro’s philosophy of dance stems from a basic belief in the power of the arts to change lives, reflect and impact culture, and strengthen community. He considers dance to be a liberating, non-verbal language through which students, dancers, and audiences of all walks of life and diverse backgrounds, can initiate ongoing conversations about the arts, expression, identity, and the meaning of community.
Born in Cuba and raised in New York from the age of six, Mr. Vilaro’s own choreography is devoted to capturing the Latin American experience in its totality and diversity, and through its intersectionality with other diasporas. His works are catalysts for new dialogues about what it means to be an American. He has created more than 40 ballets with commissions that include the Ravinia Festival, the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Grant Park Festival, the Lexington Ballet and the Chicago Symphony.
A Ballet Hispánico dancer and educator from 1988 to 1996, he left New York, earned a master’s in interdisciplinary arts at Columbia College Chicago and then embarked on his own act of advocacy with a ten-year record of achievement as Founder and Artistic Director of Luna Negra Dance Theater in Chicago.
The recipient of numerous awards and accolades, Mr. Vilaro received the Ruth Page Award for choreography in 2001; was inducted into the Bronx Walk of Fame in 2016; and was awarded HOMBRE Magazine’s 2017 Arts & Culture Trailblazer of the Year. In 2019, he received the West Side Spirit’s WESTY Award, was honored by WNET for his contributions to the arts, and was the recipient of the James W. Dodge Foreign Language Advocate Award. In August 2020, City & State Magazine included Mr. Vilaro in the inaugural Power of Diversity: Latin 100 list. In January 2021, Mr. Vilaro was recognized with a Compassionate Leaders Award, given to leaders who are courageous, contemplative, collaborative, and care about the world they will leave behind. In May 2022, he was honored to serve as a Grand Marshall of 2022 Dance Parade. He was also recently awarded an honorary Doctorate from his alma mater, Adelphi University, in May of 2024. Mr. Vilaro is a well-respected speaker on such topics as diversity, equity, and inclusion in the arts, as well as on the merits of the intersectionality of cultures and the importance of nurturing and building Latinx leaders.
Residency Intentions:
During his residency, Eduardo looks forward to taking a break from the hectic urban environment and having time to work on his new book about artistic competency and leadership. Eduardo is also an avid bird watcher and plans to explore the natural surroundings for sources of creative inspiration.
Congratulations to this Spring's Artists in Residence!