Announcing Orlando Corona As Trillium's Fall 2024 Artist in Residence

Trillium Arts is delighted to welcome Orlando Corona of Greenville, SC as our Fall 2024 Artist in Residence this December. Orlando will spend a week at Trillium's Artist Suite to rejuvenate and further his visual art practice. Orlando  was selected from an application pool based on his artistic merit and his commitment to exploring new techniques while engaging with nature here at Trillium. We can’t wait to see what emerges from his creative inquiry!

Website/Portfolio: orfamivisualart.com
Instagram: orfamivisualart

Orlando Corona is a prolific young artist located in Greenville, South Carolina. He specializes in painting, printmaking and murals, starting only a few years ago but exceeding expectations by becoming a successful professional artist in the Upstate and beyond. Orlando draws deep inspirations from his roots as a first-generation Mexican immigrant, and strives to tell stories about his own experience, yet outgrow cultural stereotypes and limits. He aims to inspire others through his work and be an integral part of his community and the world.

Artist Statement:
"At the Trillium Arts residency, I look forward to using the secluded, serene space to improve my watercolor and ink painting skills by drawing inspiration from the surrounding scenery. By immersing myself in this physical and mental space, I know I will be able to focus on my goals and do what I love- create and make meaningful art."
 

Trillium Arts Awards Three North Carolina Choreographic Fellowships in 2024

Trillium Arts is delighted to announce Kristi Vincent Johnson, Nicole Vaughan-Diaz and Chris Yon and Taryn Griggs as awardees of Trillium's second 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 and September. Each group 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.

“The 2024 Awardees were selected as Trillium's NCCF Fellows not only because of their artistic merit, but also because their projects reflect a diverse range of ways that dance holds up a mirror to our contemporary times," says Phil Reynolds, Trillium Arts President. "Trillium is honored to support these artists who enhance the creative community for the entire state of NC."

MEET THE AWARDEES

Kristi Vincent Johnson. Photo courtesy of the artist.

KRISTI VINCENT JOHNSON

Durham, NC
Instagram: @profkvj

Kristi Vincent Johnson, a Louisiana native, is an artist-educator, choreographer, filmmaker, and scholar whose work transcribes the joys, struggles, triumphs, and tragedies that shape our identity and define our shared humanity. Over her two-decade career in higher education, Kristi has created more than 40 choreographic works and has received commissions from organizations such as The Ernie Barnes Foundation and the NC Museum of Art. Her acclaimed films, I Want To Ask The Trees and The Communion of White Dresses based on the poetry of the NC Poet Laureate, Jaki Shelton Green, have been presented in such festivals as the San Francisco Dance Film Festival, the Longleaf Film Festival, the San Francisco Arthouse Film Festival, and the Black Truth Film Festival. Her creative work for both stage and film exemplifies the high value she places on community and collaboration. As a result, Kristi was selected as the 2021 NC Campus Compact Engaged Faculty Scholar to initiate community-campus partnerships and advance the scholarship of engagement at her respective institution. Kristi Vincent Johnson holds a Master of Fine Arts in Dance from Texas Christian University and a Doctorate of Education in Kinesiology from UNC Greensboro. Currently, she serves as Assistant Professor and Director of Dance at North Carolina Central University, where she is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Repertory Dance Company.

FELLOWSHIP PLANS:
"During my residency, I plan to start production on my new film, "Black Being," which is inspired by the powerful poetry of Jaki Shelton Green, the NC Poet Laureate. The location, which covers 22 acres of stunning land, provides an ideal environment for exploring site-specific choreographic prompts and developing ways to integrate the natural spaces with choreographic intention. We will use these movement explorations to investigate approaches to creating a harmonious relationship between the movement, the landscape, and the figurative language used to illustrate the theme of “perseverance" highlighted in the poem. This program promises to be a transformative experience beyond anything a typical studio could offer, as it will challenge us as artists to embrace risk-taking and employ innovative techniques essential to crafting thought- provoking and aesthetically satisfying work. Upon completion of the film, my intention is to submit it to a variety of film festivals, with the goal of broadening the reach and recognition of documentary poetry, dance, and film."

Nicole Vaughn-Diaz. Photo courtesy of the artist.

NICOLE VAUGHN-DIAZ

Asheville, NC
Website: nvdproject.com
Instagram: @nvdproject
Facebook: www.facebook.com/nvdproject

Nicole Vaughan-Diaz is a choreographer, performer, and filmmaker, based in Asheville, North Carolina. Originally from Miami, FL, Vaughan-Diaz earned a BFA in Dance Performance from the University of South FL (2013), where she was granted the BRAVO and Hope Rietschlin scholarship awards for exceptional artistry.
 
As a performer, Vaughan-Diaz has been an integral member of the critically acclaimed Kate Weare Company (NYC), from 2013 to current. Additionally, Vaughan-Diaz has performed works by Doug Varone, Rosie Herrera, Sasha Waltz, Michael Foley, Kate Hilliard, Luke Murphy, and ODC/Dance.

In 2019, Vaughan-Diaz founded NVD Project, and has since presented work at venues including: Judson Memorial Church (NYC), The Public Theater (NYC), Arts on Site (NYC), and more. Vaughan-Diaz’s choreographic work has been hand-selected and presented by The Future Dance Festival (NYC), the North Carolina Dance Festival (Greensboro, NC), and was awarded the Challenge Winner Award (2019) for the 24th Annual DanceNOW Festival of New York City. In 2023, Vaughan-Diaz was commissioned by the American Dance Festival to present a new work as part of the Made In NC series, and was recently named a 2024 ‘Artist in Residency’ at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City.

FELLOWSHIP PLANS:
Nicole Vaughan-Diaz’s intention with the Trillium Arts NC Choreographic Fellowship is to begin reviving her long-awaited evening-length piece titled, Maeror; originally crafted in NYC and placed on hold following the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. The piece, named after the Latin word for ‘grief’, is a trio dance performance about exactly that – the lasting impact of grief and the many forms and faces it often emulates. Through sophisticated and risky partner-work, carefully curated gestural phrasing, and tender thought-provoking imagery, the work aims to seek collective growth and understanding surrounding loss, in hopes of learning how to best recognize and support each other during times of
bereavement. The Trillium Fellowship will allow the work time and space to be reawakened to a new cast of performers and to continue developing material critical to shaping the narrative of the piece. Nicole will be joined by two dance artists and a filmmaker to document her process.

The Yoggs. Photo courtesy of the artist.

CHRIS YON AND TARYN GRIGGS (THE YOGGS) 
Winston-Salem, NC
Website: chrisandtaryn.com
Instagram: @vodvilyon and @taryngriggs

Taryn Griggs and Chris Yon create original dance works that are deadpan slapstick, understated melodrama, autobiographical science fiction, cubist vaudeville, asymmetrically consonant explorations of magic and virtuosity in everyday movement.  They met at the Bessie Schönberg Artist Residency at The Yard in 2002 and have been working together ever since. They were participants in the dance communities of New York City, Minneapolis, and Iowa City, before moving to Winston-Salem.  Chris and Taryn’s choreographies have been presented across the US, Canada, Ireland, and France. In New York, in addition to the presentation of their work at La MaMa, Dance Theater Workshop, PS122, The Kitchen, and Danspace Project, they appeared together in the work of David Neumann, Yoshiko Chuma, Karinne Keithley Syers, and Sara Rudner.  During their years in the Twin Cities, they were both McKnight Fellows, co-curators for Choreographer’s Evening at the Walker Art Center, and their work was presented as part of the Walker’s Momentum Dance Series at The Southern, Red Eye Theater’s Isolated Acts, Jaime Carrera’s Outlet Performance Festival, and 9x22 at the Bryant Lake Bowl.

Since moving to Winston-Salem, their work has been commissioned by the North Carolina Dance Festival (NCDF), American Dance Festival (ADF), and they have developed a platform for new work and collaborations through Interstitial: A site specific dance during the changeovers between art exhibits at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art.  Griggs teaches at UNCSA, Yon at Appalachian State University.   Their current project is Yoggs Family Newsletter (2014-present) which has been workshopped Southeastern Center for Contemporary Arts (WS,NC) as part of their Interstitial series, The Southern Theater (MPLS) part of the Candy Box Festival, Goodyear Arts Center (CLT) as part of the North Carolina Dance Festival, as part of the Modes of Capture Symposium (Limerick, IE),, and this spring at La MaMa Moves (NYC).  It is receiving generous residency support through the second annual Trillium Arts North Carolina Choreographic Fellowship ahead of its premiere at the Nasher Art Museum co-presented by the American Dance Festival on September 12, 2024.

FELLOWSHIP PLANS:
As part of their Trillium Arts North Carolina Choreographic Fellowship Residency, Chris Yon and Taryn Griggs will be working on an evening length version of their Yoggs Family Newsletter, a dance that explores memory and how one family tells its story narrated by their daughter Bea, ahead of its premiere at the Nasher Art Museum co-presented by the American Dance Festival on September 12.  They will be joined in residence by collaborators: theater director Cindy Gendrich and video artist Steve Morrison. They will be using the Red Barn Studio at Trillium as a proxy for the great hall at the Nasher Museum where the Yoggs and their collaborators will experiment with how to integrate the audience into their trio as momentary chorus members to their family stories, dances and drawing games.

Congratulations to this year's awardees! 
Follow Trillium Arts on Instagram to witness how these Fellowships progress!

Announcing Xavier Nunez as the Recipient of the 2024 ACE Fellowship in Dance!

Trillium Arts is delighted to announce Xavier Núñez, Joffrey Ballet dancer, choreographer, and co-founder of Action Lines, as the recipient of its fifth annual ACE (Asheville/Chicago Exchange) Fellowship in Dance. Xavier will be joined at Trillium by filmmaker Tim Whalen of Big Foot Media, and  Evan Boersma and Olivia Duryea , dancers from the Joffrey Ballet. The group will be in residence at Trillium July 21-28.  During their Trillium residency, the creative team will begin work on the second in a series of dance films titled Mates For Life. The first film, directed by Whalen and choreographed by Núñez,  was inspired by whopping cranes. The next iteration is motivated by barn owls, which, as do whooping cranes, mate for life.


THE ACE FELLOWSHIP provides established Chicago-area choreographers and their dancers with a full menu of resources and benefits including air transportation between Chicago and Asheville, a rental car, private lodging, rehearsal space, and an honorarium/per diem. If they so choose, ACE Fellows may opt to engage/interact with Trillium’s Western NC Artist Roster for onsite experimentation and collaboration with a growing cohort of regional and local artists. Each ACE Fellowship is seven to nine days in length, providing space and time to rejuvenate and deepen creative endeavors in the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains. ACE Fellowship awardees are selected by invitation. 

“Xavier Núñez was selected as the 2024 ACE Fellow based on his tremendous artistic merit and the quality of a truly unique dance film project about barn owls that he and his collaborators will advance while here at Trillium,” states Phil Reynolds, Trillium Arts President. Trillium is delighted to support this innovative work that aligns dance with conservation.

MEET THE AWARDEE

Photo of Xavier Núñez, courtesy of the artist.

Xavier Núñez

Websites: Joffrey.org and Actionlines.com
Instagram: @xaviernunezv and @action_lines

Born in Caguas, Puerto Rico, Xavier Núñez  embarked on his dance journey at age ten at The Hartt Community Dance Division in Hartford, Connecticut, becoming the first dancer in his family. He continued his training at the International Ballet Academy in Cary, NC, under Miguel Campaneria in 2010.
 
In 2012, he earned the silver medal at the World Ballet Competition, propelling him to join the American Ballet Theatre Studio Company under the guidance of Kevin McKenzie and Franco De Vita. Here he performed in international galas in Italy and France, performing George Balanchine’s Tarantella and Alexei Ratmansky’s Le Carnaval Des Animaux. Xavier's path led him to The Tulsa Ballet in 2013, where he performed in productions including The Sleeping Beauty, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Cinderella. In 2017, Xavier took part in the Concours de Opera National de Paris, earning him 6th place and a contract for the 2017-2018 season with the Paris Opera Ballet.
 
In 2018, Xavier proudly became a member of the Joffrey Ballet, a momentous step in his career. Since then, he has been privileged to grace the stage in lead roles, performing in acclaimed productions such as Yuri Possokhov's Anna Karenina, John Neumeier's The Little Mermaid, and more. Xavier's recent choreographic achievements include the creation of a new performance for the Joffrey's "Winning Works" program, and Cosmic Rhythms at Chicago's Adler Planetarium. 
 
Beyond his onstage achievements, Xavier Núñez's entrepreneurial drive led him to co-found a creative studio, Action Lines, with talented peers Dylan Gutierrez and Eric Grant. He creatively directs and choreographs, aiming to fuse dance, education, and entertainment for a fresh perspective on the industry, enhancing its connection to our community.

COLLABORATOR:
TIM WHALEN
Websites: matesforlife.co, bigfootcreates.com and timwhalen.com
Instagram: @matesforlifefilm, @Big_Foot_Media and @timjwhalen

Tim Whalen is a commercial director and short form doc-filmmaker. He is engaged with many non-profits, using video to further mission and extend their reach through storytelling. He has worked for several years with Chicago performing arts organizations such as Lyric Opera of Chicago and The Joffrey Ballet, as well as conservation organizations including The Nature Conservancy, Ducks Unlimited and Pheasants Forever. He has told stories for major corporate brands and organizations including Nestlé Purina, The University of Michigan and Gerber as well as small businesses in the craft beverage industry. Tim is a native of Michigan and a current resident of Chicago, IL where he owns a small production company, Big Foot Media.

FELLOWSHIP PLANS:

Behind-the-scenes photo as Núñez choreographs during the filming of "Mates for Life: Whooping Crane."

Xavier Núñez and Tim Whalen’s intention during their residency at Trillium Arts is to start work on a dance film titled Mates For Life: Barn Owl. Mates For Life: Barn Owl will be the second film in a series about animal species that mate for life. The first in the series, Mates For Life: Whooping Crane, was released in 2023 and has been screened at national and international film festivals.
Behind-the-scenes photo as Núñez choreographs during the filming of "Mates for Life: Whooping Crane."
 
Núñez is specifically interested in choreographing at Trillium because its dance studio is housed in The Red Barn Studio at Odonata Farm,  an eighty-year-old tobacco and hay barn: https://www.trilliumartsnc.org/the-red-barn-studio. There could be no more authentic, inspiring space to begin creating choreography for a dance film about barn owls.The intimate interpretation inspired by birds’ movement will engage both supporters of dance and conservation, resulting in heightened awareness and support for both causes.

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TAKING FLIGHT: MEET THE ARTISTS

Come soar with us on July 27th!
Trillium Arts invites you to a magical evening with the artistic team and Orion, a live barn owl.

Orion, the Barn Owl.

EXPERIENCE an open rehearsal with choreographic excerpts from “Mates For Life: Barn Owl” the second dance film collaboration by Nunez and Whalen, performed in the Red Barn Studio by amazing dancers from the world renowned Joffrey Ballet.
VIEW a film screening of “Mates For Life: Whooping Crane," 
MEET Orion, a barn owl from Carolina Mountain Naturalists.
ENJOY libations & delicious appetizers.

Taking Flight
Saturday, July 27, 2024
4:00pm - 7:00pm
The Red Barn Studio at Odonata Farm
5640 Paint Fork Rd.
Mars Hill, NC 28754
Tickets: $30. Space is limited and advance purchase is advised.

PURCHASE TICKETS

 

Special Thanks to the Sponsors of the 2024 ACE Choreographic Fellowship:

Patti S. Eylar and Charlie Gardner, and Hallie Rehwaldt.

Taking Flight is sponsored by the Madison County Tourism Development Authority.

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Kim Crutcher Awarded The 2024 "Miss Sarah" Fellowship

Trillium Arts is delighted to announce Kim Crutcher of Chicago, IL as the 2024 awardee for the “Miss Sarah” Fellowship for Black Women Writers. The Fellowship, named in honor of Sarah M. Johnson of Hickory, NC, aims to provide Black women writers a restful environment conducive to reflection and writing. It also offers uninterrupted time to plant the seed of an idea for a new writing project or to develop or complete a project underway.  Learn more about the "Miss Sarah" Fellowship Program.
 
A panel of esteemed black women writers reviewed 45 competitive applications that were received from around the country in the genre of Fiction. The panel ultimately awarded the Fellowship to Ms. Crutcher for the 2024 cycle. The “Miss Sarah” Fellowship offers a variety of benefits including a $1,000 honorarium, transportation, and accommodations for ten days in July at the Trillium Arts artist residency location in rural Mars Hill, NC and/or at “Montford Manor” in downtown Asheville, NC.

About the “Miss Sarah” Fellowship Awardee:

Kim Crutcher is a licensed psychotherapist and ordained Interfaith Minister. She tells, shares, makes up and listens to stories as a mode of healing and a method of providing education to the communities that welcome her in as a teacher, preacher, facilitator or artist. Currently, Kim is the Herbalism Conductor for Urban Growers Collective’s Herbal Apprenticeship Program in Chicago IL. She has a private psychotherapy practice serving individuals, groups and families; and she leads public and private rituals for celebrations, life transitions, as well as communal and organization change. Kim is a long-term artistic associate with MPAACT Theatre where she has been directing new plays for over twenty years. Having been raised in a community and family that valued storytelling and storytellings has led her to value story as one of the most powerful medicines available to our species.

Fellowship Plans

“I will use the quiet of the Trillium Arts residency to write my novel. The working title is Buffaloed; and the main characters emerged as minor players in a children's play that I wrote and directed almost twenty years ago. In the novel the two main characters move between realms as the woman goes on a quest to save the man in both body and soul. The most difficult portions to write have been the chapters when each character is moving from one ‘realm’ or way of knowing, into a new realm. Both characters have multiple entrances into liminal spaces, of communicating with spiritual and/or mythical beings, and of learning the rules of those new realities. I welcome the deep quiet to define the subtleties of such transitions. The hope is that readers will feel that it is possible that forces like Nature and Creation are on our side; are with us; are supportive of our desires. My experience will offer a retreat like state of peace that allows a different type of listening than what is available to me at my dining room table in downtown Chicago."
 

About the Review Panelists

Omi Osun Joni L. Jones is an artist/scholar/facilitator who employs Black Feminist principles and theatrical jazz aesthetics in her work.  Her original performances include sista docta, a critique of academic life, and Searching for Ọ̀ṣun, an ethnographic performance installation around the Divinity of the River.  Her most recent book is Theatrical Jazz: Performance, Àṣẹ, and the Power of the Present Moment, a collaborative ethnography focusing on three theatrical jazz practitioners.   Omi is Professor Emerita from the African and African Diaspora Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin.
 
Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Ph.D, is Founding Director of the Women's Research & Resource Center at Spelman College and Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women's Studies. She is past president of the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA) and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She also edited Words Of Fire: An Anthology of African American Feminist Thought and co-authored with Johnnetta B. Cole Gender Talk: The Struggle For Women's Equality In African American Communities.

Natasha Trethewey served two terms as the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States (2012-2014). She is the author of five collections of poetry, including Native Guard (2006)—for which she was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize—and, most recently, Monument: Poems New and Selected (2018); a book of non-fiction, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2010); a memoir, Memorial Drive (2020) an instant New York Times Bestseller; and The House of Being, a meditation on writing, forthcoming this April. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Beinecke Library at Yale, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Philosophical Society. In 2017 she received the Heinz Award for Arts and Humanities. A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets since 2019, Trethewey was awarded the 2020 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt Prize in Poetry for Lifetime Achievement from the Library of Congress. In 2022 she was the William B. Hart Poet in Residence at the American Academy in Rome. Currently, she is Board of Trustees Professor of English at Northwestern University.

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THANK YOU to the Supporters of Trillium's Triple Match Campaign!

Thank you to all below who helped us exceed our Trillium@Three $3,000 goal of new or increased contributions to be matched three times by an extraordinarily generous anonymous donor. What a great way to embark upon Year Four!
 
Anonymous (x3), Sandi & Carl Alguire, Ariel Ashwell, Lyn Benjamin, Ann Boyd, Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, Jill Chukerman, Scott Ferwerda, Melissa Fraterrigo, Meg Grundy, Heather Hartley & Phil Reynolds, Lynette & Eric Hartley, Tim Hendrickson, Joyce Huggins, Bertram Johnson, Ayako Kato, Gary & Lucia Lund, Susan Manning & Douglas Doetsch, Dr. Dwight A. McBride, Michael McStraw, Rick & Connie Molland, Deenie & Brad Owen, Anne Rawson, Kevin & Mary Rechner, Connie Regan-Blake, Susan & William Sewell, WNC Dance Academy, Richard & Amy Woodbury.

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Meet Trillium's Spring 2024 Resident Artists!

Trillium Arts Announces An Exciting Lineup of Spring 2024 Resident Artists

Trillium Arts is delighted to welcome a roster of four individual artists from across North Carolina and around the U.S. this May and June. The awarded artists are working in a variety of disciplines and will each have a solo week at Trillium's Artist Suite to rejuvenate and further their creative endeavors. They were selected from an application pool based on their artistic merit and the quality of the exciting projects they will advance while here at Trillium. We can’t wait to see what grows out of these residencies this spring!

MEET THE SPRING 2024 ARTISTS

JOHN ALLEN
Knoxville, TN
https://www.johnallenart.com/

John Allen is an artist working in drawing and photography residing in Knoxville, Tennessee. John is active in community art organizations and teaches locally at Pellissippi State Community College as an adjunct instructor. John's artwork explores the complexity of our relationship to ecology through exploring the idea of interdependence and mutuality with our relationship to animals.
 
Residency Plans: "At the Trillium Arts residency, I am interested in making work exploring invasive species within the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains. This work will expand upon recent artwork addressing the environmental impacts of the Anthropocene within Southern Appalachia. Inspired by research which has included volunteerism and discussions with park rangers, the work will depict ecological and cultural changes to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and region, both past and present. Examples include the recent expansion of the Armadillo into a region which would have previously been considered too warm for them, the impacts that reintroduced elk have had on exacerbating traffic problems, and the presence of coyotes in occupying an ecological niche formerly held by wolves."

ALLY HETZER
Detroit, MI
https://allyhetzer.com/

Ally Hetzer is a painter and sculptor working in Detroit, MI who has earned her BFA in Studio Art at the College for Creative Studies. Her paintings and sculptures arise from the surrealist known process of automatism, or the expression of the unconscious mind. With the role of intuition and themes of mortality, religion, and identity, her work creates a space of unadulterated introspection.
 
Residency Plans: "During my residency at Trillium Arts, I will focus on the two-dimensional transformation of three-dimensional objects. I will be studying four of my original bronze sculptures, Cerberus, Mom’s Embrace, Mary, and Running Man, and use them as a reference for a series of paintings. The goal of the studies is to translate these anthropomorphic sculptures onto canvas, so I can explore each figure’s idiosyncrasy between mediums. I look to achieve this through the pensive act of spontaneous mark making. I conversate with the surface by being responsive to the impact each mark makes, this can range from delicate applications to frantic finger painting, smashing charcoal, the carving of the surface, and the scraping away of paint."

HELEN SAVITA SHARMA
Carrboro, NC
https://helsavwords.com/

Helen Savita Sharma is a librarian and writer working on her first novel from her home in Carrboro, NC. Helen's work has appeared in Okay Donkey, Progenitor Literary Magazine, Bizarrchitecture, and erato. You can find Helen on X (fka Twitter) @helsavwords, at www.helsavwords.com, or by staking out any Dunkin' Donuts franchise location south of the Mason-Dixon line.
 
Residency Plans: "Using revision processes laid out by Matt Bell, Jessica Brody, and Peter Ho Davies (among others), I hope to use precious time at Trillium Arts this spring to complete significant scene work and evaluate the structure of my novel's second draft. The book, currently titled It Was So Relaxing, is a queer vampire novel that explores how the genre of horror amplifies human experiences of desire, belonging, and self-protection. I will depart the residency with a plan for the third draft and a clear-eyed sense of the structural and thematic underpinnings of the final product."

ALEXANDRA JOYE WARREN
Greensboro, NC
https://www.alexandrajoye.com/

Alexandra Joye Warren is the Founding Artistic Director of JOYEMOVEMENT in Greensboro, NC.   Alexandra is an Assistant Professor and a Director/Choreographer for the Music Theatre program at Elon University. She was recently selected as an Artist-In-Residence for Creative Greensboro and the North Carolina Dance Festival.  Alexandra has completed post-graduate studies at the Yale Summer Directing Intensive, Leadership Initiative Project for Emerging Directors, and at Germaine Acogny’s L’Ecole De Sables in Senegal. Alexandra has presented her scholarship most recently at the International Federation for Theatre Research Conference in Accra Ghana, 2023. She is a contributing author in the newly released book DANCE IN MUSICAL THEATRE: A HISTORY OF THE BODY IN MOVEMENT, Bloomsbury Press. Her most recent projects include Love Notes (Artistic Director and Choreographer) Head Over Heels (Associate Director/Choreographer), 42nd Street (Director), A Wicked Silence: A Choreoplay (Playwright, Director, Choreographer).

Residency Plans: "During this residency, I plan to continue development of the libretto text and music for Rewind:1968, a requiem for the possible. Rewind:1968 is the second iteration of a series of creative works exploring the history and consequences of the North Carolina Eugenics program. When I first learned about the NC Eugenics program, I felt compelled to bring these stories to light through my artistic practice bringing dignity and respect to the 7,000+ survivors of this program from the 1920s through the late 1970s. During my career to this point, I have mostly focused on cultivating my choreographic and theatrical works as performer, choreographer and director. This residency will allow me to focus on the libretto text, story and dramaturgy for a dance-centered opera."


Follow Trillium Arts on Instagram to witness how these residencies progress!

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