Erin Yen (she/her) is a mixed-race contemporary choreographer, performer, and dance teacher. She is the founder and artistic director of Dragons Dance 501c3, based in San Francisco, CA. Erin uses choreography to communicate raw emotions with dancers and audiences alike. Her choreography, shaped by her lived experiences and diverse training, is defined by continuous, flowing pathways and seamless transitions in and out of the floor. Continuity is balanced with detail and precision: theatrical gestures, specific shapes, and intentional timing punctuate the flow to bring clarity to abstract compositions. Erin creates work that is rigorous yet playful, structurally clear yet emotionally open, offering a stage world where dancers balance precision with individuality and audiences are invited into both joy and contemplation. Erin’s choreography has been presented at the FACT/SF Summer Dance Festival, ODC’s State of Play, Yerba Buena Garden’s ChoreoFest, ODC Pilot Program 73, RAWdance’s Concept Series, and SAFEhouse Arts. She has also self-produced and co-produced shows throughout the Bay Area, creating spaces where artists across disciplines can engage more deeply with community. Beyond choreography and performance, Erin is an experienced lighting designer and stage technician. She holds a BFA with Distinction in Dance Honors from The Ohio State University. Erin teaches Contemporary, Contemporary Floorwork, and other workshops for adult dancers of all levels. In her classes, she welcomes dancers of all backgrounds to explore new pathways, discover unique fusions of contemporary styles, and find joy in highly physical movement.

Alma Esperanza Cunningham (she/her) is a choreographer, performer, educator, and public school teacher based in San Francisco. Her work has been presented in New York at Movement Research, Joyce SoHo, Dixon Place, and Dance Theater Workshop’s Fresh Tracks, and in San Francisco at ODC Theater, Cowell Theater, Z Space, and Yerba Buena Gardens. She has held residencies with ODC, Margaret Jenkins’ CHIME, CUNY Purchase Dance Initiative, and SAFEhouse AIRspace, and has been a guest choreographer at the University of San Francisco. She is a recipient of a Bay Guardian GOLDIE Award for Outstanding Local Discovery in Dance. Alongside her creative work, she teaches dance and composition to adults and youth across San Francisco, including at ODC, SAFEhouse Arts, and the Tenderloin Achievement Group. She is a feminist, queer, bicultural second-generation Latina artist committed to making work that reflects complexity, perception, and lived experience. almaesperanza.com

Clarissa Rivera Dyas (they/them) is a Black, Filipinx, Bay Area, Ohlone land, based movement artist, choreographer and arts producer. Her artistic practice flows from the truthfulness of improvisation, is rooted in her communities, and centered around movement as a spiritual practice and a conduit of change. They have had the honor to be a company member of Zaccho Dance Theatre, Robert Moses’ Kin, and Flyaway Productions and have performed in works by Lenora Lee Dance, Megan Lowe Dances, OYSTERKNIFE, Sarah Crowell, GRAVITY, Keith Hennessy and many others. Clarissa is a co-conspirator with black, queer artists in RUPTURE (2021) who premiered DIASPORADICA at Fort Mason Center August 2025. She is currently working with Sara Shelton Mann (2020), Embodiment Project (2023) and Zaccho Dance Theatre (2019). They have performed throughout the U.S. such as in New York, Jacob’s Pillow in MA; Seattle, WA and internationally in Berlin, Germany. They have presented work in REYES Dance, Dance Thrill Fest (2021), Dresher Ensemble Artist Residency (2022), Queering Dance Festival’s FROLIC! (2023), KH FRESH Festival (2024), Dance Up Close East Bay (2025), PUSHfest (2025) and in the Black Choreographers’ Festival in 2020 and 2025. They were awarded Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” and received ImPulsTanz’s danceWEB Scholarship in 2024. Clarissa is a member of the Queering Dance Festival Steering Committee, Co-Director of ROT (KH FRESH) Festival, and works as an Audio Describer for GRAVITY Access Services.

B Dean (they/them) is an earthbound and airborne dancer, white transboy, and queer world builder based in unceded Ohlone territory (the Bay Area). They perform with Flyaway Productions, Sean Dorsey Dance, Joe Goode Performance Group, Circo Zero, and Zaccho Dance Theater. For 12 years, B has been a performer and facilitator with BANDALOOP, performing and teaching across six continents on skyscrapers, cliffs, and cranes; in the American Music Awards with P!NK, and in a music video with Pattie Gonia and Imogen Heap. Under their dance project BODYSTORM, B centers queerness in physical thinking experiments that highlight the intelligent technology of nature and body. Under their dance project BODYSTORM, B centers queerness in physical thinking experiments that highlight the intelligent technology of nature and body. Their site-specific performances and workshops consider each site's histories and ecologies, interrupt patterns that keep bodies fixed or tamed, and invite multiple perspectives that create portals for imaginative futures. Their work has been presented by Queering Dance Festival (2026), Fresh Meat Festival of Queer and Trans Performance (2023), BANDALOOP's Vertical Performance Incubation Program (2024), and Joe Goode's Gathering Room Festival (2025).

Gabriele Christian (they/them) (b. 1991) is a Bay-based conceptual artist and descendent of stolen folk. Experimenting within somatic practices, language, performance composition, video production and community arts facilitation, they locate and center BlaQ (Black and Queer) experience, vernacular, and aesthetics as wellsprings for radical futurity. They perform original work and collaborate trans- and inter-nationally, most recently in Portland, Berlin, New York City, Vienna, and Amsterdam. They are a founding member of multiple Bay Area born performance collectives and land projects including: RUPTURE; OYSTERKNIFE; and BlaQyard. They have held residencies as a Zaccho Black Futures Fellow (2025), Watermill Center AIR (with RUPTURE) (2024), They currently serve as Co-Executive Director and Co-Artistic Director of Jess Curtis/Gravity, a body-based arts and accessibility non-profit living on in the wake of Jess Curtis' transition in March 2024. At the heart of all their work: exhaustive research into belonging, spirit, and desirability while living in the fangs of dehumanizing times.