Artists Advisory Council

Karesia Batan is a modern dancer, and director of the Queensboro Dance Festival. Previously, she was co-founder and creative producer of Forward Flux, structuring residencies and exhibitions for interdisciplinary artists. She served as program producer for National Choreography Month, and curates performances for the LIC Arts Open. With her company The Physical Plant, Karesia’s choreography has been presented throughout NYC. Karesia founded the Queensboro Dance Festival in 2014, with the mission to strengthen the dance identity in Queens. She has been a guest speaker for Boston University, Pentacle, and is a grant recipient from Queens Council on the Arts.

Carol Dilley has been a choreographer, performer and teacher internationally for over 30 years. With significant time spent in New York, Barcelona Spain, Seattle Washington, Sydney Australia and at Bates College in Maine, she has worked with companies and independent choreographers such as Devito and Dancers, Sarah Pogostin, and Amiel Malale in NY, Bubulus, Nats Nus and Las Malqueridas in Barcelona, as well as her own companies, Radio Suec and Carol Dilley & Co. Her most recent collaborations include work with Headlong Dance Theater, Kathleen Hermesdorf and Rachel Boggia. In addition to creative performance work, Dilley was cofounding director of La Porta, in Barcelona; developed a performance series for independent choreographers, Dance Briefs, in Sydney Australia in 2001; and created the F.A.B. Dance Showcase in Lewiston, Maine. She has been Director of Dance at Bates College in Maine for 13 years, served as Chair of the Theater and Dance Department and was a founding member of the Bates Arts Collaborative. Carol served as a Visiting Professor and Interim Chair of the Department of Dance at Hunter College for the academic year 2016-17.

Ursula Eagly is a dance artist based in New York City since 2000. Her works are characterized by a “rabbit-hole logic” (New York Times), and her research considers relationship to audience, a disjointed physicality, and the potential of porosity. Works have been commissioned throughout New York City, and her interest in different artistic contexts has drawn her to work in several countries. Her current project, Piece with gaps for each other, was commissioned by The Chocolate Factory and takes place also in Japan and Mexico. Soon it will be released as record.

Annie Gosfield, whom the BBC called “A one woman Hadron collider” lives in New York City and composes music that is often inspired by the inherent beauty of found sounds, noise, and machinery. She was dubbed “a master of musical feedback” by the New York Times, who wrote “Ms. Gosfield’s choice of sounds — which on this occasion included radio static, the signals transmitted by the Soviet satellite Sputnik I, and recordings of Hurricane Sandy — are never a mere gimmick. Her extraordinary command of texture and timbre means that whether she is working with a solo cello or with the ensemble she calls her 21st-century avant noisy dream band, she is able to conjure up a palette of saturated and heady hues.” 
She was a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow, the 2015 Fromm Composer at the American Academy in Rome, and a 2012 fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. 
Gosfield’s most recent work includes “War of the Worlds,” an opera directed by Yuval Sharon that was performed by the L.A. Phil in Walt Disney Concert Hall and on the streets of L.A.; a concert of music about immigrant experiences; an orchestral cello concerto; and a sextet inspired by, and performed under, Diego Rivera’s “Detroit Industry” murals.

Judd Greenstein is a composer of structurally complex, viscerally engaging works for varied instrumentation. A passionate advocate for the independent new music community across the United States, much of Judd’s work is written for the virtuosic ensembles and solo performers who make up that community and is tailored to their specific talents and abilities. Judd’s philosophy as both a composer and a curator involves music that is an organic blend of multiple styles, sounds, and instruments, open to all influences. Standout groups that reflect this “post-genre” sensibility, including yMusic, Roomful of Teeth, and NOW Ensemble, all counted Judd among their earliest commissions and continue to perform his work to this day. As a national and international audience has taken notice of these and other like-minded artists, Judd has been increasingly in demand as a composer for the orchestra and the stage, with recent commissions from the Minnesota Orchestra, the Alabama Symphony, and the North Carolina Symphony, among many others. Current projects attest to the diversity of Judd’s output: an orchestral song cycle for indie rock vocalist DM Stith, an opera about Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, and an evening-length adaption of Shaun Tan’s The Arrival for the Minnesota Children’s Theater.

Kamala Sankaram has been praised as “strikingly original” (NY Times) and “an impassioned soprano with blazing high notes” (The Wall Street Journal.) Recent commissions include Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Memphis, Opera on Tap, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Awards, grants and residencies include: Kevin Spacey Foundation, Jonathan Larson Award, NEA ArtWorks, MAP Fund, Opera America, NY IT Award Best Musical, the Civilians, HERE, the MacDowell Colony, and the Watermill Center. She has performed and premiered pieces with Beth Morrison Projects, Anthony Braxton, and the Wooster Group, among others, and is the leader of Bombay Rickey, an operatic Bollywood surf ensemble.

Claudia Schreier has been commissioned by organizations including the Vail Dance Festival, New York Choreographic Institute, Ballet Academy East, and The Ailey School. She was the 2017 Virginia B. Toulmin Fellow at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU and received a B.A. from Harvard University in 2008. She has served as rehearsal assistant to Damian Woetzel at the White House, Jazz at Lincoln Center and NY City Center. Her awards include the 2017 Lotos Foundation Prize and 2008 Suzanne Farrell Dance Prize. In July 2017, Claudia Schreier & Company will make its debut at the Joyce Theater.

Composer Robert Sirota’s works have been performed by the Washington Square Contemporary Music Society, Sequitur, Chameleon Arts Ensemble, Left Bank Concert Society, Dinosaur Annex, the Chiara, American and Blair String Quartets, Ethel, The Peabody, Concord, and Webster Trios, and the Fischer Duo, and at the Tanglewood, Aspen, Yellow Barn and Cooperstown festivals. Orchestral performances include the Seattle, Vermont, Virginia, East Texas, Lincoln (Neb), Meridian (Miss), New Haven, Greater Bridgeport, Oradea (Romania) and Saint Petersburg (Russia) symphonies, as well as conservatory orchestras of Oberlin, Peabody, Manhattan School of Music, Toronto, and Singapore. He has received composer grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the United States Information Agency, the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, and the American Music Center.

Gus Solomons jr is a dancer, mentor, actor, and writer, who danced with Donald McKayle, Pearl Lang, Martha Graham, and Merce Cunningham before founding Solomons Company/Dance (1972-94) and PARADIGM (1996-2011). Currently, he continues performing as a guest artist in the U.S. with art makers John Heginbotham, Lawrence Goldhuber, and others, and in Europe with Richard Siegal, Johannes Wieland, and Alexandra Bachzetsis, et al.

Christopher Williams, dubbed “one of the most exciting choreographic voices out there” (The New York Times) is a “Bessie” award-winning choreographer, dancer, and puppeteer working in New York City and abroad since 1999. His work has toured in France, Italy, Spain, England, Holland, Colombia, and Russia, and has been presented in Philadelphia, Princeton, Los Angeles, Kalamazoo, as well as in local venues including Lincoln Center, City Center, DTW, Danspace Project, P.S. 122, 92nd Street Y, Joyce SoHo, and La Mama. He holds degrees from Sarah Lawrence College and the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, and has performed for many distinguished dance and puppetry artists.