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Artist Biographies

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Natalie Green

Natalie Green’s choreography has been presented at Dance Theater Workshop, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Danspace Project's "Food for Thought," Roulette, Movement Research’s "About Town," Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and Catch. She has danced for Tere O'Connor, RoseAnne Spradlin, Heather Kravas, Anna Sperber, Levi Gonzalez, Daniel Linehan, Rebecca Lazier, and Juliette Mapp. Natalie graduated from the SUNY Purchase Dance Conservatory and is originally from Austin, Texas.

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Molly Lieber

Recent works of Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith: Rude World (2015 COIL Festival), Tulip (2013 Bessie Nomination), and Beautiful Bone (Chocolate Factory, 2012). They were 2015 guest artists at Connecticut College, 2014 BAC Artists in Residence, 2014 RAMP Artists (PS122), and received the 2013 NYFA Fellow Finalist Award. As a freelance performer, Molly works for luciana achugar, Keely Garfield, Neil Greenberg, Maria Hassabi, Melinda Ring, Brian Rogers, and Donna Uchizono. Recent projects include: True Love (luciana achugar, 2015), PLASTIC (Maria Hassabi, 2015), The Pleasure Project (luciana achugar, 2015), This (Neil Greenberg, 2014), Forgetful Snow (Melinda Ring, 2014), and OTRO TEATRO (luciana achugar, 2014). Prior to dancing, Molly taught ninth grade special education at P371K (Brooklyn).

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Joanna Kotze

Joanna Kotze is a Brooklyn-based, Bessie-award winning dancer, choreographer and educator. She currently dances with Kimberly Bartosik, Stacy Spence, and Donna Uchizono. Joanna danced with Wally Cardona from 2000-2010 and again in 2018, and has worked with Kota Yamazaki, Netta Yerushalmy, Sam Kim, Sarah Skaggs, Christopher Williams, the Metropolitan Opera ballet, Daniel Charon, Nina Winthrop and others. As a choreographer, she creates highly physical dance performances through a collaborative, multi-disciplinary process, presenting ways to look at effort, labor, humor, violence, unpredictability, and beauty through movement as well as the body’s relationship to sound, materials, light, and space. Her work has been supported by the Nathan M. Clark, Jerome, Mertz-Gilmore, and Harkness Foundations, City Artist Corps, New Music USA, NYFA Build, Brooklyn Arts Council, Yellowhouse, and FCA Emergency Grant. Her choreography has been presented at Wanås Konst Sculpture Park, National Arts Centre (Ottawa), Wexner Center, The Yard, Bates Dance Festival, Opera House Arts, Velocity, Baryshnikov Arts Center, ADI, The Space at Irondale, New York Live Arts, Danspace Project, Bard College, Jacob’s Pillow, Dance New Amsterdam, Movement Research, Roulette, and other venues and galleries. Joanna has had residencies through MANCC FSU, Dance Place, Movement Research, Baryshnikov Arts Center, LMCC, New York Live Arts, 92nd Street Y, Exploring the Metropolis, Jacob’s Pillow, Camargo Foundation, Bogliasco Foundation, Milvus Artistic Research Center, Dance Programme Malmö, The Yard, Marble House Project, Loghaven, Djerassi, Bennington College, and Mount Tremper Arts. Joanna has taught at Universities and dance festivals all over the world. She is originally from South Africa and has a BA in Architecture from Miami University

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Rebecca Serrell-Cyr

Rebecca Serrell Cyr has performed and toured with Donna Uchizono Dance Company since 2002.  She has danced for many other choreographers and appeared in multiple productions with Jeremy Nelson/Full Fat Dance, Amanda Loulaki/Short Mean Lady, Osmani Tellez, Anna Sperber, and RoseAnne Spradlin Dance.  She was recently nominated for a NY Dance and Performance Bessie Award for her role in Spradlin's beginning of something.  Over the years she has created a collection of solos as well as collaborative works with her sister, Lise Serrell.  They have been shown at many small production venues in NY whose facilitators wonderfully promote play and rigorous experimentation.

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Levi Gonzales

Gonzalez is a dance artist and native Angeleno. He collaborates regularly with luciana achugar, and has performed extensively with Donna Uchizono Company, John Jasperse Company, Juliette Mapp, ChameckiLerner, Daria Faïn, and Michael Laub's Remote Control Productions in Europe, among others. He was a founding editor of Critical Correspondence, an online publication of Movement Research, from 2006 to 2009. He served as Artistic Advisor for New York Live Art’s Fresh Tracks Residency Program from 2006 to 2014, and Director of Artist Programs for Movement Research from 2012 to 2016. He was a 2003-2004 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, 2006 NYFA Choreography Fellow, and 2012-2014 Brooklyn Arts Exchange Artist-in-Residence. His work has been supported by the Jerome Foundation and Mertz-Gilmore Foundation. Since 2003, he has taught regularly at Movement Research and various academic contexts in the US, South America, and Western and Eastern Europe. He received his MFA in Dance at UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance in 2019, and joined the Bennington faculty in Fall 2020.

Former Artists

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Heather Olson

Heather Olson is a dancer, choreographer, and mom. She has received Bessie Awards for sustained achievement with Tere O’Connor and for her performance in Yanira Castro’s Dark Horse/Black Forest. She has also appeared in the work of Jennifer Allen, Ivy Baldwin, Faye Driscoll, Levi Gonzalez, Stacy Grossfield, Susan Rethorst, Vicky Shick, and Larissa Velez-Jackson. Olson’s choreography has been commissioned by The Chocolate Factory, Olgas Zitluhinas Dejas Kompanija in Riga, Latvia, Sugar Salon, and Dance Theater Workshop, and been presented by Danspace Project, Dance Roulette, Galapagos Art Space, La Mama, Movement Research at Judson Church, Catch!, Solonova Arts Festival, 100 Grand, and Creature Feature in Berlin, Germany. Olson received a BFA in Dance from The North Carolina School of the Arts. Upcoming projects include performances with Vicky Shick (Danspace Project) and Heather Karvas (The Chocolate Factory in April).  

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Hristoula Harakas

Hristoula Harakas is a performer, movement teacher and Pilates instructor based in New York, since 1996. She was a member of the Donna Uchizono Co from 2003-2010.  Hristoula currently works with Maria Hassabi (since 2002) and teaches at BodyTonic and Movement Research. She is a 2006 "Bessie" performance award recipient as well as a scholarship recipient of the A. Onassis and the M. Cunningham Dance Foundations. She has had the pleasure of being a regular faculty member of the M. Cunningham Studio (2002-2012) and working with such inspiring artists as Jodi Melnick, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Judith Sanchez Ruiz, Chamecki/Lerner, Levi Gonzalez, Amanda Loulaki and Jeremy Nelson and Louis Lara among others.

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Pareena Lim

Pareena Lim loves dancing. To survive in New York, she works as an administrative assistant and a Pilates teacher.

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Brittany Engel-Adams

Brittany Engel-Adams is a performing artist, teacher, and choreographer based in New York. In 2007 she attended the Alvin Ailey School and was the recipient of the Oprah Winfrey Fellowship. She performed with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater during their New York City Season, and later toured nationally and internationally with Ailey II. Brittany performed across disciplines for Naomi Goldberg Haas’s site specific work, Orit Ben-Shitrit’s dance film, Dance the Yard, Company Stefanie Batten Bland and Sleep No More immersive theater. She is featured in the film Chiraq directed by Spike Lee, and was a co-star in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire. Brittany currently dances for Netta Yerushalmy and Donna Uchizono Company. She has set works on the Joffrey Ballet school and Brooklyn Ballet. Brittany is on the faculty at Rutgers University.

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Nola Sporn Smith

Nola Sporn Smith is a dance and theater artist from Brooklyn, New York. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan where she received a BFA Dance degree and a minor in the School of Kinesiology. Since returning to NYC, Nola has performed with cakeface, Stacy Grossfield, Kensaku Shinohara, Emily Smith/NOT for reTAIL and others at venues including Danspace Project, Dixon Place, The Queens Museum, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, HERE Arts Center, Center for Performance Research, and Gibney Dance Center. She has worked in assistant director and stage manager roles for downtown theater artists including Jim Findlay, and has choreographed for students at Queens College. Nola also creates solo performance art for theatrical spaces and music venues, and has been making work with collaborator Molly Ross as MOLLY&NOLA since July 2017.

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Angie Pittman

Angie Pittman is a Bessie award-winning dance artist, dance maker, and dance educator. She has performed her own work at The Kitchen, Gibney Dance, Movement Research at Judson Church, BAAD!, Danspace Project, among many other New York spaces, and has performed in work by Tere O'Connor, Jennifer Monson, Antonio Ramos, Jasmine Hearn, Tess Dworman and others.  As a freelance performer, Angie is currently working with Stephanie Acosta, Anna Sperber, devynn emory/beast productions and Donna Uchizono Company. Angie holds a MFA in Dance and Choreography from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a graduate minor in African American Studies. Angie’s work resides in a space that investigates how the body moves through ballad, groove, sparkle, spirit, spirituals, ancestry, vulnerability, and power.

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Aja Carthon - Apprentice

Aja Ariel Carthon began her dance career in grade school at the age of seven. She has danced under scholarship with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, The Dance Theatre of Harlem, The Kirov Ballet and The Joffrey Ballet School. Aja attended the Juilliard Summer Intensive in 2012. She has taken Graham, Horton, Tap, Jazz, Paul Taylor, Limon, Flamenco, Ballroom and of course Ballet. Aja graduated from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in 2014. Aja now attends Long Island University which she will receive her B.F.A. in dance on May in 2018. In college, Aja has performed works by Donna Uchizono, Ron K. Brown, Stephen Petronio and many more. After graduation, Aja hopes to continue working with Donna Uchizono and wishes to take her dance career to the next level.

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