ARTs + Change Conference

2026

Activate. Reimagine. Transform.

February 18-22, 2026

Select presentations available to view on YouTube.

ARTs + Change is a virtual conference hosted by the University of Rochester’s Institute for the Performing Arts, in partnership with the Office of Engagement and Enrichment, the Paul J. Burgett Intercultural Center, Create a Space Now, the Eastman Institute for Music Leadership, and the ESL Rochester Fringe Festival.This conference provided opportunities for artists of all disciplines, educators, community members, and community organizations to come together for five days of inspiring presentations, dazzling performances, and thought-provoking discussions on the intersection of arts, community, and changemaking.

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

SESSION ABSTRACTS AND PRESENTER BIOS

The Avatar: Practicing Contradiction

Participants will be asked to individually and collectively answer: TELL US A STORY ABOUT WHEN YOU FELT POWERFUL. Through a series of facilitator guided prompts, attendees will experience an uncanny circumstance where the separation between self and other, localized and far away, past and future, is collapsed and confused. Ultimately, the workshop might reveal obscured and quiet networks of power that could allow us to collectively build solidarities across difference during times of crisis.

Dawn Weleski

Named among “100 Artworks that Defined the Decade”, dawn weleski co-founded Conflict Kitchen, a restaurant that served cuisine from countries with which the U.S. government is in conflict. Their latest work, Refuse Refuse: Radio, is a speculative fiction radio series broadcast from a mutual aid ambulance that dramatizes impending climate catastrophe throughout the U.S. and is supported by an Anonymous was a Woman Environmental Art Grant. A finalist for the International Award for Public Art, Weleski has exhibited around the world and served as the 2023-25 University of Michigan Student Life Sustainability Artist in Residence where they initiated Noon at Night, a peripatetic classroom that prototypes creative adaptation to crisis. Previous work includes City Council Wrestling, a series of public wrestling matches where citizens, pro-am wrestlers, and city council members personified their political passions into wrestling characters and Fair Share Fare, a food futures research and climate emergency relief collective.

Story Seeds: Growing Home at the Farmers Market

“Story Seeds: Growing Home at the Farmers Market” takes workshop participants on a journey under and between the canopy tents of the 32nd Street Farmers Market in Baltimore, MD via the hundreds of stories that I gathered through a four-year storytelling project – Story Seeds. Based on the recent book of the same name, this session will guide participants through the storytelling methodology that emerged from the farmers market. This session is about more than the physical market space and explores how storytelling is a process of placemaking that invites people into a deeper relationship with the people and places that they call home.

Megan Lovely

Megan Lovely (she/her) is an Instructor and Program Manager for Community-Engaged Learning at the University of Rochester. Formerly in Baltimore, MD she worked at the intersection of education, community engagement, arts, and nonprofits. Her continued partnership with the 32nd Street Farmers Market in Baltimore has allowed her to document and promote local stories, illustrating the market as a community hub. Through this project, Megan has observed and experienced the transformative power of engaging directly with communities to challenge and enrich the prevailing narratives about cities. Through her community-engaged arts practice, Recipes for Community, she creates spaces to share these stories.

Tell A Different Story

Japan has developed a storytelling structure passed down from ancient Chinese storytelling, known as Ki-Sho-Ten-Ketsu. This "non-conflictual" story structure originates from the idea of examining all sides of the story to achieve a more complex and truthful narrative. This type of storytelling allows: villains to have complex lives; protagonists the space to understand the world around them instead of fighting it; and most importantly, it allows space for love to be still, present, and constant. I believe that the stories we tell have a great impact on our mental health, our community, and the way we perceive our environment. By taking a deeper look into the different ways other cultures tell stories, we gain a deeper appreciation of the world around us. And maybe when we see stories in our own lives, we can feel empowered to change the narrative.

Ryley St.Rose-Finear

Ryley St.Rose-Finear (they/she) was born and raised in Rochester, NY. Ryley has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from SUNY Purchase and screenwriting credits from Sundance Collab. Ryley would like to thank their friends and family for supporting them every step of the way.

Gestural and Embodied House: A Time of Spiritual Freedom and Historic Unrest

Gestural and Embodied House is a virtual movement exploration that examines the cultural, spiritual, and social histories that shaped House dance during a period of profound unrest and transformation. Focusing on the Black, Brown, and queer communities seeking freedom, connection, and release, House emerged as both a lifeline and a liberation practice. Participants will explore the foundations of House while learning how the movement is influenced by the expressive worship traditions of the Black Baptist church, the artistry and innovation of ballroom culture, and the rhythm, play, and coordination of double dutch and other social childhood games. This session blends historical context with embodied practice, allowing movers to experience House as a culturally rooted form of healing, joy, and resistance, even within a virtual space.

Hettie Barnhill

Hettie Barnhill is an award-winning Educator, Filmmaker, Director, and Choreographer, and the founder of Create A Space NOW, a platform using art to confront bias and systemic oppression. She is the Artistic Director of the Barnhill Movement Collective (BMC), a professional dance company creating socially conscious, movement-driven work. A 2025 NYS Choreographers Initiative grant recipient, Hettie has been honored with the NAACP “Top 21 Leaders 40 and Under Award,” the Shirley Chisholm “Women of Excellence” Award, a Rising Star recognition from Young and Powerful for Obama, and a California Senate honor for her film, A Love Letter to Brian, Lesley, and Michelle, which has won national and international festival awards. With over 20 years of professional performance experience, including Broadway’s Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark, FELA!, and Leap of Faith. Hettie has also directed and choreographed extensively and presents nationally on art and activism. She teaches theater and dance at Union College and holds an MFA from Goddard College. https://www.hettiebarnhill.com/

Embedded Memories + Community Imprints

"Embedded Memories + Community Imprints" is a hybrid session incorporating live performance followed by an experiential workshop. Setting the tone for the session, participants will first see an excerpt of the multidisciplinary illuminated dance work ("Embedded Memories") offering an artistic entry point into themes of healing, embodiment, and the stories held within our scars. By beginning as witnesses, participants are given space to reflect on their own resonances, emotions, and curiosities before transitioning into guided creative exploration. Without pause following the performance, participants will be invited to move in a gentle, trauma-informed workshop ("Community Imprints") that blends breathwork, grounding practices, and accessible movement. Through slow, intentional breath, participants will learn to settle into the body and create a sense of safety and presence. This embodied foundation becomes the starting point for exploring personal histories whether held in visible scars, internal memories, or emotional imprints. Participants will be invited to consider a scar or embodied memory of their choosing and explore it through simple gestures, improvisational movement, or sensory awareness. There is no requirement for dance experience; each activity allows for individual interpretation and adaptation. The process centers curiosity and respect rather than performance or perfection.

As participants move, reflect, and share (through movement, writing, drawing), the workshop cultivates a collective space where healing and creativity coexist. By framing scars as sources of insight rather than stigma, the workshop encourages participants to reimagine their own narratives through a supportive environment cultivating personal expression, meaningful connection, and deep engagement.

Marisa f. Ballaro

A proud Buffalonian, Marisa f. Ballaro is Founding Artistic Director of NYC-based Ballaro Dance. Passionate about bringing sensory-rich dance experiences to new audiences and MOVERS, she centers community-based, collaborative projects in her work. Marisa received her MFA in Dance from Montclair State University while selected to be the Convocation Speaker for the College of the Arts; she graduated summa cum laude from SUNY Brockport and recently received an Outstanding Service Award from the Alumni Association. Marisa taught at The Brearley School in Manhattan for 12 years; she is a certified Level 1 practitioner of Simonson Technique and a Breathwork and Movement Coach through The Embody Lab. This year, Ballaro Dance led residencies and performances touring across the Mid-Atlantic; she premiered "Goddess" with new composition by John Carroll (New York, NY) and her multidisciplinary work, "The Distance," was presented in Take Root at Green Space (Queens, NY.)

Personal Injury

"Personal Injury" is an interdisciplinary research presentation that asks how artistic practice can advocate for unseen wounds, whether physical, relational, political or ecological. Rooted in my recovery from a traumatic brain injury, the project draws from rehabilitation protocols, perceptual tests, expressive therapies and embodied memory to explore the tensions between rupture and repair, hope and grief, and the longing to return to what once felt whole. A catalyst for this inquiry is a perceptual test from a neuro-optometry protocol called Visual Closure. The test instructs patients to unify fragmented images and visualize closing the gaps within splintered objects. During my recovery, I found myself drawn not to the “completed” forms but to the ruptures that refused to be resolved. These missing pieces became metaphors for personal, relational and sociopolitical forms of injury, raising questions about whose wounds are acknowledged, whose are dismissed, which injuries receive attention, which remain hidden, and what it means to advocate for a broken spirit. This presentation integrates visual research, movement experiments and creative prompts from three related bodies of work: Visual Closure, Toward Return and my upcoming film Personal Injury. Together they examine the aesthetics and politics of repair through hybrid cinema, performance, participatory instruction and the poetics of fragmented imagery.

Through this research, I propose an emerging artistic language of recovery, one that values animate gaps, respects rupture and understands repair not as an idealized return but as a shared practice of witnessing, listening and attuning to wounds that have been rendered invisible.

Jennifer Laiwint

Jennifer Laiwint (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker whose work spans video, movement, drawing, and performance. Her practice examines the emotional, social, and political dimensions of transformation, concealment, and recovery, often through embodied and research-driven experimentation. Using narrative and documentary strategies, she investigates the cultural and psychosocial forces that shape how we mask, alter, or lose the self. In collaboration with performers, Jennifer often adopts fictional personas such as self-help authors or “manosphere” gurus to explore the tensions between sincerity and self-invention, aspiration and coercion. Recent projects have addressed parasocial relationships, post-injury healing, and the aesthetics of control, using improvisation and physical prompts as generative tools. She has developed work at the Banff Centre, Toronto Dance Theatre, and NARS Foundation, and presented at Western Front, SummerWorks, the Art Gallery of Mississauga, and the plumb gallery. She is currently completing her MFA in Film at York University.

Death and Taxes: a Clown Politician

Mikhail Bakhtin, a Russian philosopher and literary critic who worked as a professor and writer for several decades as a political exile in a remote town in the USSR, wrote a commentary on the books of the medieval French novelist François Rabelais. In his book, Bakhtin explores how Rabelais employs carnivalesque imagery and folk ritual (e.g. Mardi Gras, Halloween, and their folk precedents) as a humorous critique on the shifting powers at be in Medieval French: the Catholic church, the Protestant and anti-Protestant movements, and the various political and philosophical authorities of his day. Rabelais tells fabulous stories about the giants Pantagruel and Gargantua, filled with dirty humor about death, excrement, and sexuality. As a physical theatre enthusiast who has trained extensively in Bouffon methods, I'm exploring the humor of dark, distasteful, and disgusting through a planned campaign for national political office in Upstate, NY. Bouffon is sometimes described as a dark clown, someone who plays to fool not only for laughter and amusement, but also for political change, often using absurdist humor; the most famous working actor who has trained as Bouffon is Sacha Baron Cohen, who plays the character Borat, among other things. For this performance, I'll be focused on death, which is often equated in Rabelais with laughter. The performance is a reinterpretation of Edgar Allan Poe's poem The Raven in light of modern horrors of the bureaucracy of death.

John McDairmant

Born and raised a Hoosier, D. John McDairmant came to clowning from the corporate and non-profit world. With a BS in International Business, MBA in Finance and Accounting, and a Baby Clown certificate from One North Clown and Creation, John is calling it a career pivot, not a mid-life crisis. Depending on what happens in the next month, John is either a potential, current, or former candidate for national political office in Upstate NY.

Off the Island: Building Networks for Artistic Parents

When I became a parent, I felt creatively marooned—isolated and disconnected from the work that once defined me. A 2024 Ohio State study found that 66% of parents experience loneliness and isolation, and for artistic parents—especially mothers—the impact can be even greater. Many leave their creative careers entirely to care for their families, not because they lack talent or ambition, but because the arts industry rarely accommodates caregiving. This discussion draws on the work of Linda Nochlin, Emma Mahoney, and the Mothership Project, which all underscore a systemic issue: the arts often exclude parents due to cost, inflexible schedules, and inequitable division of labor. Too often, parents and caregivers are expected to sacrifice their careers—an outcome that is preventable through intentional community building and structural change. My vision is to create an arts space designed specifically for parents: a welcoming environment where you can pump, change diapers, and carve out an hour or two to work on projects without sacrificing your living room. It’s a space for connection—where parents can share ideas, collaborate, and support one another. Events would be scheduled with working parents in mind, and membership dues would reflect the realities of childcare costs. Creative parents shouldn’t be left feeling stranded on an island. Together, we can build a bridge—one that keeps artistry alive while honoring the responsibilities of parenthood.

Cami Handel

Cami Handel is an artist and new parent who recently moved to the Rochester area. Her earlier work explored themes of home and the self, reflecting on identity and belonging. After moving to Rochester for family support and deeper connection to the arts, Cami now focuses on creating inclusive spaces for artists and caregivers while reconnecting to her artistic practice.

Embracing Your Unique and Powerful Sound through Body-Based Voice for the Actor

"Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning?"- Maya Angelou. In this workshop participants will explore activities and techniques for discovering and exploring their unique and powerful voice. This workshop draws on storytelling, character work and vocal anatomy to invite participants to explore the nuances, capabilities and colors in their own instruments.  This workshop offers an alternative to solely Eurocentric biased Voice and Speech training and invites participants to recognize the plurality of the English language throughout the world and idiolects (individual speech habits). We will invite participants to consider the vocal classroom where all actors can take pride in their unique sounds and origins, recognize the resonance and production of different speech and vocal sounds and learn to make choices to meet the character, rather striving toward a single Eurocentric norm.

Sara Bickweat Penner

Sara Bickweat Penner (she/her) is an actor, director, intimacy director and voice and movement specialist who has worked extensively in theatre in NYC, Chicago, and regionally throughout the U.S. She is a full time Senior Lecturer in the University of Rochester's International Theatre Program, recipient of a Teaching Innovation Grant for Consent in Performance in 2022 and voted Professor of the Year in Humanities by SGA in Spring 2025. Learn more about her work at http://sarabickweatpenner.com

Millennial Rap: Hip-Hop Cultures Response to Spiritual Pluralism

In 2012, mainline churches across the United States—and many other faith-based communities—experienced a sharp decline in participation, especially among millennials, one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse generations in history. Born between 1982 and 2005, millennials’ departure from traditional religious spaces has raised a pressing question for theologians and sociologists: Where do young people now go to fill their “spiritual cup”? If the Greek term ecclesia refers to a gathering of people, then where is the gathering space for Hip-Hop–influenced youth? Ethnographic and mixed-method research reveals that millions of millennials are turning to Hip-Hop culture not just as entertainment, but as a vibrant space for meaning-making, communal identity, and spiritual inquiry. Hip-Hop culture's artistic expressions—emceeing, dance, graffiti, spoken word, knowledge and digital creativity—serve as contemporary forms of testimony, resistance, and healing. These art forms blur traditional lines between the sacred and the profane, revealing that spirituality can be found in the raw narratives of lived experience. Viewed through interpretive sociology, Hip-Hop emerges as a cultural movement that cultivates citizenship and critical consciousness. It provides a platform for confronting systemic inequities while empowering youth to voice their stories and advocate for justice. In the age of social media, millennials have amplified Hip-Hop culture's transformative power, using its aesthetics as tools of liberation theology—challenging oppression, affirming human dignity, and building communities rooted in equity and shared purpose. Art, in this context, becomes not merely expression but a catalyst for justice, belonging, and spiritual renewal.

Dr. Walter Hidalgo

Dr. Walter Hidalgo is a father, educator, coach, and world traveler whose work bridges faith, culture, and social transformation. He earned his Master of Arts in Church History and Sociology from Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University and later completed his Doctorate in Ministry there, specializing in socio-theology with a focus on the intersection of Hip-Hop culture and socio-spiritual movements. Dr. Hidalgo has taught across diverse settings—including universities, high schools, prisons, nonprofits, and faith-based institutions—both in the U.S. and abroad. His award-winning book, “Beyond the Four Walls: The Rising Ministry and Spirituality of Hip-Hop”, received the 2025 International Impact Book Award for Faith and Religion and has become a valuable resource for educators, artists, and youth activists. Dr. Hidalgo also hosts the podcast Know Thy s(H)elf, where he leads transformative conversations with guests from all walks of life, exploring identity, story, and spiritual growth.

Órasi, a divine vision

Laura D'Amico's lecture presentation of her multidisciplinary solo, "Órasi," is based on themes explored during her Fulbright Research Grant in Italy. Paying homage to Universal wisdom, "Órasi" is an invitation to witness the divine feminine in its uninhibited purest form: the birth of Venus. A sacred ceremony alluding to the Oracles of Delphi, it is a call to beckon remembrance of proto-Christian priestesses like St. Agatha and the unnamed women who came before her, who dedicated their lives to mystical indigenous prayer and were violently martyred for rejecting to be property of the patriarchy.

Laura D'Amico

Laura D’Amico is a multi-hyphenate performance artist with a formal background in STEM and agriculture. She is a 2023-2024 Fulbright Scholar, where she trained and performed for one year with the Anfibia Artist Program in Bologna, Italy. There, she closely worked on her breadth of creation tools with mentorship from artists of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Ultima Vez/Wim Vandekybus, Les Ballets C de la B, Compagnie Maguy Marin, Batsheva, Peeping Tom, CandC Company, and Artemis Danza. Both in Europe and North America, Laura has taken five Gaga Labs, including studying with Ohad Naharin, and continues this movement research remotely online. She has studied in multiple intensives and workshops with Andrea Miller/GALLIM, as well as five years with Garth Fagan Dance. At home in the Finger Lakes, she carried out a research residency sponsored by the DanceForce’s NYSCI grant in Summer 2023. In the Ithaca area, she collaborates with visual artists and is teaching a 20-week dance course to incarcerated men at Cayuga Correctional Facility. In Rochester, she works with Commotion Dance Theatre, practices her devising skills at The Auguste Roost, and teaches at the Hochstein School.

From a Tent in Gaza to the United Nations: Three Girls Tell Their Stories Through Art

Three Palestinian girls in Gaza—Remas (15), Enas (13), and Retal (11)—have experienced the unimaginable. And yet, despite ongoing displacement, bombs, starvation, dehydration, lack of emergency medical care, demolished schools, and psychological trauma, they are maintaining the courage and determination to draw. Through a two-year, ongoing art exchange with American artist Heather Layton, these brave, young women are using visual art to both document genocide and demonstrate the highest ideals of humanity. Using imagination as a tool for resistance, their drawings continue to bring comfort to the oppressed and truth to the leaders of the world.

Heather Layton

Heather Layton is an interdisciplinary artist, arts activist, and associate professor of art at the University of Rochester, where she teaches painting, performance, and community-engaged art. In her creative practice, she creates imaginary worlds as spaces for experimentation and possibility. If we could start from scratch, what communities would we want to live in? Once imagined, what can we do to move closer to that vision? Layton has presented her art nationally and internationally in countries including Pakistan, South Korea, Slovakia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. She volunteers for the US State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program and loves disappearing into the Adirondack mountains on hikes. Despite everything happening in the world, she remains stubbornly optimistic. http://heatherlayton.com/

A Breath of Fresh Air: A Philosophical and Practical Approach to Making Music in Correctional Facilities and Other Unusual Spaces

"One microphone can amplify a voice. 
A voice can tell a story. 
A story can change the world."

I believe everyone can write a song.

The One Mic Project uses portable recording technology to transform any space into a recording studio and any person into a songwriter. In these workshops, participants learn and practice the basics of songwriting and music production, gaining the foundation to create their own lyrics and music and accessing their own inner creative selves, using self-expression as a tool for self-empowerment. I started running songwriting and recording based workshops at the Lake of the Woods and Greenwoods Summer Camp in 2014. Since 2023, I have run One Mic Project at a NYS correctional facility in partnership with Wave Farm, NYSCA, and the Great Lakes Guitar Society. In that time, we have faced many challenges, from cultivating a safe space to be vulnerable, to writing, recording, and performing original music, to transitioning to an online class.

Throughout all this, we've successfully sustained a program that has become a "breath of fresh air". This experience has had a profound impact on my musical practice and personal understanding of the word empathy. In this presentation, I will discuss my philosophical and technical approach to making music in correctional facilities and other unusual places. I demonstrate songwriting techniques that allow participants, even those with little musical experience, to write their own music. I will share how some basic recording equipment can turn any room, from a community center to a virtual meeting, into a recording studio, and how to cultivate an environment that fosters creativity and self-expression.

Chris Cresswell

Room tone. Radio static. Sampled ephemera, field recordings, and no input mixers. Chris Cresswell is a composer and teaching artist who builds his musical worlds out of sonic artifacts and cultural refuse. With a practice equally rooted in his classical compositional training, his experience as a singer/songwriter, and his use of the recording studio as a creative sandbox, Cresswell’s music has been described by PopMatters as, alternately, “truly immersive, dreamlike” and an “eloquent, barely controlled nightmare.” It has been praised for its “unworldly atmosphere” (Vital Weekly) and “textural variety” (Gramophone) that “...blurs the boundaries between industrial and organic, soothing and suspenseful, and introspective and anxious.” (International Clarinet Association) An active educator, Cresswell’s educational philosophy is to meet students where they are at and elevate them from there. He currently works as an adjunct lecturer at Onondaga Community College and Syracuse University. An exceptional teaching artist, Cresswell has worked in Syracuse City Schools, with Red House Arts Center, CNY Jazz Central, and a variety of other settings. In 2014 he co-founded the recording studio at Lake of the Woods and Greenwoods Summer Camp. This work led him to start the One Mic Project, a songwriting and recording project that believes that “one mic can amplify a voice, a voice can tell a story, and a story can change the world.” Through Great Lakes Guitar Society, One Mic Project has received support from Arts in Corrections NYS, a regrant program of NYSCA, facilitated by Wave Farm with the support of NYS DOCCS. Previously Cresswell taught composition at the Birmingham Junior Conservatoire, ran the Young Composers Project (UK), Young Composers Corner (US), and has occasionally served an adjunct professor at Le Moyne College and Syracuse University. His passion for youth development led him to work for Fiver Children’s Foundation, a nonprofit that provides experiences that challenge and builds relationships that nurture so that youth from systemically under-resourced communities in New York can create their own positive futures.

A graduate of Syracuse University and the Birmingham Conservatoire, Cresswell is currently pursuing a PhD in Music Composition at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. When not doing musical things, he can be found running the streets and trails of Central New York, watching St. Louis Cardinals baseball or Syracuse basketball, and spending time with his wife Amber and their adorable kitty, Eloise.

Ethics of Care

Care: practice, virtue, disposition, value. In four acts, Max Laszewski and Amya Brice explore the ideas of care through contact improvisation. Influenced by Trisha Brown and Elizabeth Streb, they use movement exercises to understand the tension between social transactions. Walking the fine line between crossing a boundary and making a connection. Laszewski and Brice use weight as negotiation, considering their needs and the needs of the other. With a rope wrapped around their waists, keeping them both connected and at a distance from one another. Laszewski and Brice have a physical conversation to create and maintain a balance between them.

Amya Brice and Max Laszewski

Amya Brice (she/they) and Max Laszewski (they/them) are queer movement artists based in Rochester NY. They are creative partners in search of a vibrant creative arts community. Amya and Max are motivated to build this community through accessibility and authenticity. Both artists have a strong individual practice that is true to their respective identities. This partnership only enhances the unique perspectives of their individual politicized bodies. Their creative endeavors begin with questioning and analyzing the current dynamics of society and their environment. Amya and Max make dance that comes out of an attempt to understand and form a community to honor both the individual and the group.

Arts, Adolescents, and HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe

Join musician, scholar, and activist Jennifer Kyker for a participatory workshop illustrating how music and dance-based interventions are reshaping the lives of adolescent girls in Zimbabwean communities affected by HIV/AIDS. In this workshop, Jennifer will share her work with the traditional Zimbabwean music and dance group Ngoma yeKwedu, or "Our Songs." This performing group is administered by the organization Tariro: Hope and Health for Zimbabwe's Orphans, which works to provide educational and social opportunities for orphaned and vulnerable girls, with the specific intent of reducing their risk of contracting HIV. Participants in this workshop will learn one of the traditional musical genres performed by Tariro students, which incorporates elements of movement, rhythm, and song. Along the way, we will discuss what makes for successful performing arts interventions, particularly when dealing with sensitive social issues such as HIV/AIDS.

Jennifer Kyker

Jennifer Kyker began playing Zimbabwean music as an elementary student growing up in the Pacific Northwest and is currently Professor of Ethnomusicology in the University of Rochester's Arthur Satz Department of Music. As a musician, scholar, curator, and activist, Jennifer has been involved in numerous collaborative and public-facing performances, residencies, exhibits, and digital projects. Most recently, she spent a year in Zimbabwe as a Fulbright Fellow, where she worked with Veronica Fadzai Muchemwa to co-curate the exhibit "Chicago Dzviti: Portrait of Zimbabwe" at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe. In 2003, Jennifer co-founded the organization Tariro: Hope and Health for Zimbabwe's Orphans, which works to educate and empower adolescent girls in Zimbabwean communities affected by HIV/AIDS (tariro.org).

Transcending Language Prejudice Through Movement

Let's have a conversation about language, being bilingual, having an accent and how language and body language connect. Let's listen to each other’s stories about language and its effects. We will explore the stories through movement. Be creative and explore the power that language has on the world through movement. My goal is that we find our respect for the languages of the world and to bring awareness that languages bring us together. My aim is to help the community to see that language is a unifying force. To find mutual respect and empathy of the stories we hear from each other. And that language is one of the most powerful forces in the world to respect and let go of our biases and realize that we are connected. I'll also share how this education program was developed inspired by a choreography I created influenced by my life growing up Bilingual in Chile and the stories of Hudson NY latinx community members in dealing with linguistic prejudice. A music composition was created with our stories. I'll share part of this choreography. This workshop is interactive with movement and conversation and is for everyone, regardless of dance or movement experience.

Anna Mayta

Anna Mayta grew up in Chile, has been living in the Hudson Valley, NY area for many years. Anna is a teaching artist, dance improviser and choreographer. She graduated from Empire State College in June 2001 with a BA in Dance in Education. Anna has been teaching, performing, and choreographing for over 20 years. She has taught at places such as Art Omi, Bethel Woods, River Arts, Caramoor and more. Anna's signature programs are her Spanish language through movement, Fusion dance which incorporates African, Bharatanatyam, Flamenco, Latin and modern dance styles coming together as one and transcending linguistic prejudice through movement. She has choreographed, taught dance, for the National Ballet of Zimbabwe in Africa, England, India, NYC, and in Boston Area. She was awarded a grant from CREATE Council of the Arts in Hudson NY, a residency at Bethany Arts Community Center in Ossining NY, and NYC Arts in Education Roundtable awarded Anna a mentorship award to strengthen her managerial skills. She is currently teaching, choreographing and performing all over the Hudson Valley, NY area. Plus directing choreographing with her project-based dance company called Mayta Fusion Dance. https://www.maytafusiondance.org/

WALL\THERAPY - A Visual Intervention through Muralism

Join WALL\THERAPY Co-curator and Lead Organizer Erich Lehman as he discusses the story and lessons of WALL\THERAPY, an art and community-intervention project based in Rochester, NY that uses public murals as a means to transform the urban landscape, inspire, and build community.  Learn about how a scrappy team of like-minded individuals banded together around a vision to give back to the community through art and muralism.

Erich S. Lehman

Erich S. Lehman is a curator/creative/tech geek/workaholic who simply finds the world far too interesting to sit still for long. He has been an arts activist in Rochester, NY for over 17 years, primarily as curator/owner of 1975 Gallery (est. 2008) as well as serving as co-curator and lead organizer of the WALL\THERAPY mural intervention project since 2012, helping kickstart a resurgence and newfound appreciation of muralism in Rochester. Erich also serves on the board of the Friends of the Roc City Skatepark, working to build a system of free public skate parks in the City of Rochester, NY. www.1975ish.com | www.wall-therapy.com | www.roccitypark.org 

Embodied Climate Literacy: Intercultural Mindfulness in Theater Pedagogy

This presentation explores how theater pedagogy, informed by intercultural mindfulness practices, can activate climate literacy through embodied, emotionally resonant, and ethically responsive learning. Drawing from interdisciplinary research and classroom-tested strategies, it introduces a focused framework for climate-responsive performance education that invites students into presence, movement, breath, and reflective attention. Rather than treating climate literacy as the transmission of information, this approach reimagines it as a relational, emotionally attuned process. Students engage ecological understanding through personal agency and collective responsibility. Through mindfulness-informed performance exercises, they learn to sustain attention, navigate layered emotional and ecological narratives, and respond with ethical sensitivity across lived experiences. The inquiry highlights theatrical strategies that deepen ethical engagement with climate narratives. By reimagining ecological knowledge through performance, students transform abstract concepts into embodied, affective experience. This offering contributes to ongoing conversations in climate-responsive performance and ethical pedagogy, inviting educators, artists, and scholars to reflect on how presence, emotion, and embodied ethics shape ecological awareness and shared responsibility. 

Dr. Kin-Yan Szeto

Dr. Kin-Yan Szeto (Ph.D., Northwestern) is Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Appalachian State University. Previously, she taught performance studies at Northwestern University and film studies at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Szeto is the author of The Martial Arts Cinema of the Chinese Diaspora. Her writings have appeared in scholarly sources including Oxford Bibliographies, Visual Anthropology, Adaptation, Critical Stages, Dance Chronicle, Journal of Dance Education, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Jump Cut, and elsewhere. She has also written for edited volumes on film and media studies. Dr. Szeto formerly served on the boards of the Congress on Research in Dance and the Dance Studies Association. She is a fellow of both the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Leadership Institute and the University of North Carolina’s BRIDGES Academic Leadership Program. In addition to her scholarly work, she is a director and choreographer.

The Singletons

Arts teach us the value of collaboration, and the transformative impact collective practice has on our communities. Yet performing artists may still struggle to engage in collaboration when the goal is to improve their professional practices. Grounded in a mixed-methods research study, this session introduces a model for collaborative professional learning that supports diverse artistic identities and expands teachers’ capacity to engage in meaningful changemaking. Participants will explore an equity-minded approach to collaborative professional learning designed to strengthen teaching practices across artistic disciplines. Through guided reflection and shared discussion, we will consider how educators can build sustainable, inclusive professional learning structures that impact students, colleagues, and our communities.

Emma Lepore

Emma Lepore is an educator, choreographer, and researcher originally from Rhode Island, where she began dancing shortly after learning to walk. She holds a B.A. in Dance from DeSales University and an M.A. in Dance from Texas Woman’s University, where she explored the integration of dance in end-of-life care. Lepore earned her Ed.D. in Leadership and Innovation from Arizona State University, with research focused on collaborative professional learning for singleton teachers—those who are the sole instructors in their subject area within a school. Lepore has developed standards-based dance curricula and supported educator growth through data-informed, inclusive practices. Her teaching career spans diverse settings across Colorado, Ecuador, Hawai‘i, South Africa, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Through her work, she remains committed to fostering equity, creativity, and community in dance education.

Reframing Art Projects with Gift Economy

Gather to discuss a different philosophy behind backing art projects - that of a gift economy. A gift economy is a system where goods and services are given freely, without immediate expectation of monetary payment. Instead, this approach values building social bonds through generalized reciprocity that help strengthen the community found behind most art projects. Sam Stone discusses her own experience with initiating and nurturing ‘Dance Class for Humans,’ an affordable dance class series in Salt Lake City, Utah that relies on a cooperative of caretakers who practice gift economy. While giving freely is modeled by the generosity of the cooperative, the community in turn steps up and recognizes the value of their care by donating their own resources. These seeds of care have sustained the class series for three years and strengthened its community bonds making the project more organized and steady for additional grant support. The question still lingers if art projects ought to fight for monetary payment as an equitable exchange for services rendered. Can gift economies work in tandem with capitalistic realities? Are we willing to trust in the community’s support? What does it mean to put community focused projects before individualized art making? What can our generation of art builders offer? IG @dance_class_for_humans

Sam Stone

Sam Stone is a dance performance artist, teacher, community organizer, and creator. She is a Professor of Dance at Appalachian State University, a certified Axis Syllabus teacher of anatomy and biomechanics, and a dance education specialist. Sam has founded several outreach programs, including Dance Class for Humans, a Salt Lake City-based Contemporary class series offering affordable training for local freelancers, and Peer Practices, a nationally recognized peer-exchange dance class model. Sam is responsible for choreographing over 50 original dance theatre works. She founded and danced in the vîv dance company, as well as for Bianca Cabrera’s Blind Tiger Society, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Joanna Kotze, Ashley Trottier, and Rosemary Hannon. She has performed and/or shown work at theatres including CounterPulse, Mission Theatre, Temescal Art Center, SAFEarts, and Hayes Christensen Theatre. As a guiding principle, Sam follows art’s potential to rebel and rouse. Samstonedance.com

Ungrading in the Arts: What Intimacy Coordination  Taught Me About Grading

While training to be an Intimacy Director and Coordinator, I recognized that grading was a perfect example of how power dynamics influence consent and personal agency, affecting students’ trust in me, each other, and their own creativity. I began co-grading with middle and high school students in 2018 in dance and theatre classes. In 2020, I carried these formulas over to higher education. In 2022, I went fully to contract and ungrading practices in both dance technique and lecture courses. Using the principles of Consent and Trauma-Informed Teaching as guides, this session will support educators in both flipped and traditional classrooms, with class sizes from 16-160,in developing upgrading practices that work for them, and their students.

In this session we dispel ungrading myths like: “Everyone gets an A!”, “The teacher doesn’t do any work now.”,“Ungrading practices are only for ‘traditional’ classes and not for the arts.” We celebrate: The “why” and “how” of ungrading practices. Talk about goal setting, rubrics, reflective prompts. See and hear examples from students who have experienced these processes. This session will benefit educators looking to: Center student agency, consent, voice and choice. Provide more transparency around grading. Increase students’ reflective processes and ownership of learning. See also: "Assessment of Care" in the JODE special issue on Trauma-Informed Pedagogy, "On Teaching- and not grading- in Higher Ed" in Dance Teacher Magazine, and "Care-full Creativity in Theatre and Dance Education" from Routledge, all written by Nicole Perry.

Nicole Perry

Nicole Perry, MFA, CLMA, CID/C is a 3-time Silver Palm award-winning movement professional, working as an intimacy director, intimacy coordinator and dance choreographer in South Florida. Career highlights include 3 Broward County Artist Investment Grants for dance, intimacy coordination for God Forbid on Hulu, and a Carbonell nomination for the intimacy direction of To Fall in Love at Theatre Lab. Her intimacy work can be seen on Netflix, Showtime, Peacock, and more. She is on the SAG-AFTRA Intimacy Coordinator pre-registry, with 25+ days of eligible work.
Nicole has taught movement and dance for several South Florida institutions including the Palm Beach County School District and the University of Miami. With Momentum Stage, she was a recipient of the Doris Duke Foundation Performing Arts and Technologies Grant. Her book on consent in movement pedagogy will be published by Routledge in 2026.

Invitation to Protest in Performance

In January of 2025 Joanna and Esther launched 'The Goodness of Stepping Outside', a new work for cello and dance centered on answering the question 'What is Goodness?'. They sought to blur the lines between mover and musician and find what truly felt good as collaborators. As the work evolved over multiple performances in different spaces throughout the year, an element of protest began to pop up in the goodness, a need to say 'no', 'stop', 'wait' as well as listen, appreciate.

'Invitation to Protest in Performance' is an invitation for attendees to explore processes that Joanna and Esther used to find new material and new meaning to their questions about goodness and protest. Attendees will move and create sound in response to specific prompts, view a performance of 'Heal, Strike, Swipe, Feel' movement III performed by Esther and Joanna, and discuss protest through acts of goodness and appreciation, and protest within live performance.

Attendees will be given the opportunity to dance within their home space in collaboration with others across the internet, write into the group chat, volunteer a public share, listen to sounds and music that may inspire them to action, and be challenged to think about their own acts of resistance personally and publicly.

Joanna Rodriguez

Joanna Rodriguez is a dancer, choreographer, and educator who brings classical ballet and modern dance training—and the lived experience of raising and homeschooling four children to her creative work. She earned a B.A. in Dance Performance and Choreography from Hope College and now teaches, performs, and collaborates with companies across Rochester. Rodriguez is passionate about using dance as a catalyst for connection, imagination, and transformative change.

Esther Rogers Baker

Esther Rogers Baker, cellist, is a Rochester native. Baker has specialized during her career in small ensemble chamber music, new music, and teaching. She is currently researching collaborative multi-disciplinary practice in the arts and exploratory performance and is developing work for string quartet and dance. Baker is an adjunct lecturer at SUNY Geneseo in cello and teaches at the Kanack School of Musical Artistry.

Developing Community through Dance in Lebanon

During the Lebanese Civil War, many artists continued to create and teach dance and theatre, crossing borders and risking their lives to bring art to the people in the region, both giving opportunities to perform and to witness.  In looking at the current political unrest within this region, how does art play a role to create a certain sense of normalcy, a sense of hope, and a sense of balance when everything else seems to be imbalanced? The International Dance Day Festival in Lebanon, for which I am a co-founder, is going into its sixteenth year. It began with the intention of expanding the awareness of concert dance in the region and increasing opportunities for local dancers to work with international professional artists. The decision to continue the festival in the midst of regional instability comes from a recognition of the need for artistic expression to maintain humanity. With the continued attacks in the region, we are faced with asking if dance can help create change in the everyday lives of people in Lebanon. Does developing community through dance help in the face of struggle? What does an international festival, with the hope of bringing Lebanese dance into a more global sphere, do for local hope and morale? Using video documentation and narrative papers, this presentation will discuss how the arts, specifically how dance, helps to bring a certain amount of stability in the midst of political crisis.

Rain Ross

Rain Ross has worked with a diverse range of choreographers including Toni Pimble, Wade Madsen, Deanna Carter, David Dorfman, Catherine Cabeen, and Hannah Wiley, and has performed with The Playhouse Dance Company in South Africa, and Arc Dance in Seattle.  Ms. Ross has presented her work at the Between the Seas Festival in New York, The A.W.A.R.D. Show – Philadelphia, Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, SB-ADaPT Festival, DUMBO Dance, et al, and has been commissioned by Seattle Art Museum and Ohio Dance Theatre, among others. In 2011, she participated in the first annual International Dance Day Festival in Lebanon, for which she is now the International Guest Artist Coordinator. Ms. Ross has also presented papers at Congress on Research in Dance and The Association of American Geographers.  Currently, Ms. Ross serves as Professor of Dance at Stockton University in New Jersey.

Beautiful, Useful, True and Beyond:  How do we keep change alive?

This three-part presentation examines the 2025 Appalachian State University theatre production of Beautiful, Useful, True and the questions which emerged after the performance. This devised, ecofeminist production investigated and (re)envisioned the life of Eunice Newton Foote. In 1856, Eunice discovered what became known as the greenhouse effect, yet John Tyndall received the credit. A mosaic of voices, this production wove together moments of Eunice’s life with the climate hopes of student devisors and interview excerpts with regional female climate activists and faculty. This production asked audiences to consider: What lessons in resilience, equity, climate justice, and community can be gained from the life and work of Eunice Newton Foote and the “Eunice's” of our community? Part one of this presentation will detail the conception, rehearsal process, interdisciplinary development process, and talk-back series created during the run of the show. Part two will include future plans for this production and a short reading of the development script. Part three of this presentation will focus on the looming questions for the future: While creating a production can feel meaningful, and creating conversation immediately after a performance can feel impactful, how do artists KEEP the conversation going? How do we continue creating enduring change after the final curtain call? Participants will be invited to collaboratively engage in these questions. This session will close with an invitation for collaboration in hopes of working together to create lasting change through performance. 

Elizabeth Parks

Elizabeth Parks is an actor, director, devisor, and voice and movement coach. She is a Lessac Kinesensics Certified Trainer, a Level III Margolis Method Certified Educator, and trains with Theatre Nohgaku in the Kita School tradition of Noh theatre. She currently serves as Assistant Professor of Acting/Stage Movement at Appalachian State University where she teaches Acting, Movement, and Voice. Elizabeth’s creative research centers on the use of Noh, Margolis Method, and Lessac Kinesensics to create social justice and equity-focused devised, pre-scripted, and solo works. Scholarly research explores Margolis Method as a new paradigm for actor training, uses of Lessac Kinesensics for neurodivergent students, and contemporary practices and development in Noh performance. www.elizabethparks.org

Play in the Grey: Navigating Ambiguity, Uncertainty, and Overwhelm with Joy

Our present day is shaped by overwhelm, polarization, and rapid change, many people find themselves caught between rupture and repair, burnout and hope, action and frozen. Play in the Grey is a lecture/workshop session that invites attendees into the generative potential of the messy grey area of life. Drawing from Trauma-Informed Creative Practices, embodied leadership, and somatic movement practices, this session offers accessible tools for navigating ambiguity with curiosity, care, and compassion. Participants will learn key concepts related to nervous system regulation, interpersonal neurobiology, and the importance of getting in your daily reps of joy. From there, the workshop transitions into guided activities designed to increase somatic awareness in spaces of embodied activism and social transformation. Rather than seeking definitive answers, Play in the Grey cultivates a practice of observing with noticing how the body responds when we get out of our own way, where pockets of joy arise, and what becomes possible when we release the need for certainty. The session offers multiple entry points for participation across bodies, experiences, and comfort levels. Together, we will explore what becomes possible when we meet uncertainty as a catalyst for more relational, expansive, and joyful ways of being, one moment of playing in the grey at a time.

Molly W. Schenck

Molly W. Schenck (MFA, MEd.) is a multi-hyphenated artist and somatic practitioner who is fascinated with human movement and what interrupts its full expression. She specializes in the intersection of creativity and trauma. She is the author of Trauma-Informed Teaching Practices for Dance Educators. She has presented workshops and trainings for individuals, organizations, and arts leaders locally, nationally, and internationally including San Francisco Opera, Actors Equity Association, and the Association of Theatre Movement Educators. She is also a ISMETA Registered Somatic Movement Therapist and Educator. She is a certified Trauma Support Specialist and a Registered Somatic Movement Educator/Therapist. In 2016, she founded Grey Box Collective - an arts organization that makes weird art about tough stuff. The performances produced through GBC act as vehicles for embodied activism and social transformation that are designed to spark socially relevant dialogue within the community. For more information visit mollywschenck.com

Northbound

Northbound is a documentary and movement-based project exploring the paths that freedom seekers followed into Canada and how these histories continue to shape Black identity, imagination, and community today. With a cast traveling from the United States, we journey through Toronto, the Niagara region, and St. Catharines to engage directly with locations connected to the Underground Railroad and the transition from enslavement to freedom.

Through movement, filmmaking, interviews, and place-based storytelling, Northbound connects past and present, tracing both the physical and emotional crossings that continue to influence the lives of Black artists. The work frames freedom not only as a historical event, but as an ongoing, creative act of becoming. For the ARTs + Change Virtual Conference, we will share a 15–20 minute video presentation featuring an excerpt from the documentary, including movement studies, site-specific film footage, and a dance work set to “Page 5” by Steven Julien and Kyle Hall. This segment offers a contemporary interpretation of arrival, hope, and the continuing journey toward liberation across borders and generations.

Jarid Polite

Jarid Polite is an artist, director, and founder of Melanin Mosaic Performance Ensemble. His work blends dance, film, color guard, and community-centered storytelling to explore identity, history, and creative freedom. With a background in performance, education, and mental wellness advocacy, Jarid creates projects that illuminate Black narratives through movement and visual narrative. His work bridges past and present, inviting audiences to reflect on lineage, liberation, and the power of collective creativity. Northbound continues his commitment to building cross-border artistic connections through embodied storytelling and historical exploration.

In Our Beautiful New World

Urgent calls for change abound in these heady, unnerving times. These calls are warranted and needed—AND—in the words of Chrissy ‘Joy’ Jones, “You can’t change what is with the energy of what is.” One key step in sustaining changemaking is having a clear, flexible vision of the change we want to experience. Creativity is essential for dreaming up a world that so many of us want: one where all people feel safe, cared for, and liberated to be exactly who they are. Once we cultivate a sense of what our desired systems, environments, and communities feel like, we’re better equipped to usher ourselves and those around us into a future where justice and joy coexist. This collaborative workshop invites participants into somatic movement, breath practices, and guided imagining. By anchoring in our felt-sense of the environments, systems, and communities we yearn for (including what’s already working well), we activate our ability to hold the energy of possibility in our bodies. This practice is at once grounded and limitless, offering a method to challenge systems of oppression without burning out. Thinking through solutions is important; feeling into them is a powerful, essential magic that serves as a beacon for transformation during dark times.

Adair Finucane

Adair Finucane (she/they), LMSW, is a trauma-informed facilitator, speaker, and coach who delights in co-regulated nervous systems. Passionate about the intersections of self- and collective care, Adair supports people who give deeply of themselves. Her offerings are informed by her professional background as a trauma researcher, somatic practitioner, therapist, multidisciplinary artist, and yoga and meditation teacher. Her lived experience as a queer, neurodivergent mom brings depth to her work. For more info, visit www.withadair.com.