Thursday, February 25, 2016

Field Leadership Fund: Meet Kyoung H. Park & Aya Lane

Artist Fellow, KYOUNG H. PARK was born in Santiago, Chile and is the first Korean playwright from Latin America to be produced and published in the United States. He is author of Sex and Hunger, disOriented, Walkabout Yeolha, Tala, Pillowtalk and many short plays including Mina, which is published in Seven Contemporary Plays from the Korean Diaspora in the Americas by Duke University Press. For over a decade, Kyoung has worked internationally in Brazil, Chile, England, India, and South Korea in search of contemporary theatrical models that integrate his passion for peace studies and playwriting. Kyoung writes and directs his own work as Artistic Director of Kyoung’s Pacific Beat, a peacemaking theater company.
Kyoung is currently under commission by Mixed Blood Theater Company (Minneapolis) and is a proud member of the Ma-Yi Theater Writer’s Lab and Soho Theatre’s Writer’s Hub (London). Kyoung is recipient of an Edward Albee Playwriting Fellowship, Theater of the Oppressed International Exchange Fellowship (Rio de Janeiro), Target Margin Theater’s Institute for Collaborative Theater-Making fellowship, grants from the Arvon Foundation (London), Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, GK Foundation (Seoul), and was named a 2010 UNESCO-Aschberg Laureate (Paris).

Kyoung received his BFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU, MA in Peace and Global Governance from Kyung Hee University, and MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University, where he was a Dean’s Fellow. He lives in Brooklyn with his husband, Daniel Lim, and continues his self-education in Buddhism, following his refuge vows with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India.

"...having the opportunity to work with a professional arts manager is a game-changer. I look forward to working with someone who not only understands the field, but the context, values, and community for which my work is created."

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Manager Fellow, Ayanna Lane, who goes by her given name, Aya, is a creator hailing from Atlanta, GA. As a queer woman of color from the South, her story is a unique one. She tells it through writing, pole dancing, DJing and healing. She’s a performance artist who combines these mediums mentioned above and is a dance teacher. She firmly believes in art as a way to connect to your innermost truths and using those gifts to connect to people in your community. She lives in East Harlem, owns every Outkast CD ever recorded and is obsessed with avocados.






"For me, it’s critical for me to be on the other side. I want to know how to assist other artists, whose stories are so often ignored. These stories, this work, and this art, are the building blocks to transform our society."

Thursday, February 18, 2016

Field Leadership Fund: Meet Bryan Glover & Kendra Ross

Manager Fellow, Bryan E. Glover, is an award-winning arts producer, filmmaker, writer and professional coach. As an arts producer, he is particularly focused on showcasing alternative, contemporary voices. He is a co-founder of Harlem9, producers of the Obie award winning “48Hours in…Harlem,” the highly anticipated annual showcase featuring emerging and established Black theater artists in New York City. Bryan has supported the arts and emerging artists for over 25 years, having worked with musicians, choreographers, performance artists, and playwrights in a variety of contexts and cities. He has also worked previously for over two decades in the social service sector in a variety of capacities and professional environments both in private and non-profit organizations.  He is committed to using his skills to enhance and promote the careers of artists, and lending his prior management experience to strengthening arts organizations. He is especially interested in enhancing and promoting the voices of LGBT artists of color, having served as a founding board member of Freedom Train Productions, the groundbreaking Black LGBT theater company based in Brooklyn, NY from 2006 - 2011. He has also served on the board and executive committees of several community based organizations over the years, supporting a variety of social justice and organizing efforts. Bryan has recently opened his practice as a trained professional leadership and life coach, supporting people in adopting a leadership stance in their life and manifesting their vision.

"Artists are indeed activists, as their work often reveals to us things about our world – and ourselves – that we may not see, moving us towards action. "
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Arts Organization Fellow, Kendra Ross is a proud Detroit native working as a dancer, teaching artist, choreographer, arts administrator and community organizer in her current home, Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. As a dancer in New York City, Kendra has worked with Urban Bush Women, Andrea E. Woods/ Souloworks, Vissi Dance Theater, Monstah Black, MBDance, Moving Spirits Dance Company and Oyu Oro. In 2013 she also danced in a European tour with DJ Kid Koala in Vinyl Vaudville 2.0.  Kendra is currently a company member of Ase Dance Theater Collective. Kendra’s choreographic work has been presented at the Detroit Performing Arts High School, Joffrey Summer Intensive, Halftime Performances at Florida A&M University, the off Broadway show 7 Sins, and Museu de Arte in Salvador, Brazil. Her community work began as a member of Urban Bush Women’s B.O.L.D Network co-teaching dance workshops and co-facilitating community engagement workshops.  Along with sharing her art world-wide, Kendra serves as the Founder and Director of STooPS, an outdoors-based community building event that uses art as a catalyst to strengthen ties between different entities in Bed-Stuy.

Additionally, Kendra currently serves as the Director of Programs and Administration at Cumbe: Center for African and Diaspora Dance who offers dance and music classes and cultural events that educates and celebrates the joy of African cultures and cultures descended from Africa.


"For Cumbe, we are at a pivotal moment as we enter into an intense strategic planning process.  As we delve into critical critique and change in various aspects of our organization, we welcome the fresh perspective that the FLF Arts Manager assigned to us will bring. "

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Field Leadership Fund: Meet Alexis Convento & Sydnie Mosley

Manager Fellow,  Alexis Convento is a New York City-based, Filipino-American producer, administrator and manager working within the dance and performance art worlds. Her interests include artist and programming development, brand identity and strategy, and performance curation; her creative direction has led to sold out houses, close artist relationships and cultivation of an audience with an enduring interest in the performing arts. Alexis hopes to further locate collaboration between organizations, to create dialogue across genres, and to develop partnerships between the art communities and its public.

Alexis is founder and producing director of the CURRENT SESSIONS, a performing arts organization that develops and presents the work of emerging “contemporary” dance artists through the production of curated performances, residencies, artist-led laboratory sessions, and open discussions. She is also on faculty of the Joffrey Ballet's Jazz & Contemporary Trainee Program, teaching composition and improvisational movement techniques to the next generation of dance movers and makers.


Previously, Alexis was administrator and production coordinator at Gowanus Art + Production, former arts division for Gowanus Hospitality Group; has written about artists, creatives and food on the blog Union x Bond; and was one of three speakers at a Dance Entrepreneurship Boot Camp for the senior class of Point Park University in Pittsburgh, PA.


Alexis holds a BFA in Dance from Fordham University with the Ailey School, with additional training from the LINES Ballet and the Contemporary Traditions Program at Jacob’s Pillow.

She is honored to be one of twelve fellows in the 2015-2017 pilot cohort of the Field’s Field Leadership Fund.



“As a daughter of first generation immigrants, a female Filipino-American working in the arts and a self-taught administrator, my success is frequently hampered by other’s acknowledgement of my managerial capacity and my recognition within the arts.”

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Artist Fellow, Sydnie L. Mosley is an artist-activist and educator interested in work that is both artistically sound and socially aware. Currently she is a 2015-2016 Artist in Residence at The Performance Project at University Settlement where she produced her second evening length work BodyBusiness. She is also currently a 2015-2016 Dancing While Black Fellow. She is an alumna of the Create Change Fellowship with The Laundromat Project, and the Gibney Dance Institute for Community Action Training. With her 2012 work, The Window Sex Project, which uses movement to respond to the sexual harassment of women in public places, she became the inaugural Barnard Center for Research on Women Alumnae Fellow. She earned her MFA in Dance Choreography from the University of Iowa, and earned her BA in Dance and Africana Studies from Barnard College at Columbia University.

As a performer, Sydnie danced with Christal Brown's INSPIRIT: a dance company from 2010-2013, and continues to be a guest artist for Brooklyn Ballet, since 2009. She is a teaching artist for the DreamYard Preparatory School, YMCA and designed and teaches Barnard College's Dance in the City Pre-College Program for high school students. She is currently consulting with the Barnard College undergraduate humanities course, “The Worlds of Ntozake Shange and Digital Storytelling,” to develop a movement curriculum to accompany the study of Shange’s work.

An advocate for the field, Sydnie served on the Dance/NYC Junior Committee 2011-2015 leading as Vice Chair in her last year. She has also contributed writing to Dance Magazine and The Dance Enthusiast.


"I am committed to being a dance artist working in New York City for the long term - and as a woman of color, without a partner, without family wealth and without major institutional support - answering these questions through my creative/advocacy work for myself and for other often marginalized artists is urgent."