Rodrigo Arenas, He/His/Él/Fey
raren008@ucr.edu
M.A. in Literature, Universidad de Playa Ancha de Ciencias de la Educación
Latin-American artist, activist, arts manager, author, and researcher. His work has been focused on multidisciplinary performance art, being exhibited in several territories across and beyond Abya Yala, obtaining the Third Place in the Paris Biennale at Guatemala (2017). Rhizome Microgrant, Global Connectors, Fondart Nacional (Chile), Fundación YAXS (Guatemala), and Experimenta/Sur 2016 (Colombia) are some of the grants he has received. Currently he is a member of IETM (International Network for Performing Artists). As an activist, he co-founded and co-directed the LGBT+ project Cuipoétikas (2016 – 2022). Additionally, he has published three collections of poetry, being translated to English and French.

Samuel Briseno-Jimenez
sbris001@ucr.edu
Sam is a queer and trans, interdisciplinary performance artist who explores the infinite liminal space that resides between borders. Sam is a descendant of immigrant land laborers who sprouted new life in the twin-border cities located near the Mexican-US border, Imperial County and Mexicali, Baja California. Sam’s work brings light to the taboo, encourages curiosity, and disrupts space (time+place). The multidisciplinary work Sam creates, integrates materials, and movement scores to transform space, generate community conversations, and investigate how bodies move through space. Sam enhances any space they’re in, through their capacity to transform, their flexibility to adapt, their groundedness and through their intentionality. Sam leads every movement with love.

Megan Fowler-Hurst, They/Them
mfowl020@ucr.edu
B.F.A. in Dance, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA
Megan Fowler-Hurst is a queer multidisciplinary artist whose work can be seen, heard, felt and worn. Their performance practice is a visceral exploration of the human experience in a digital age, where identity and emotion are constantly distorted by technology. Megan’s movement exploration includes floorwork, body communication through gesture and improvisation. They are drawn to dance in unconventional spaces, expanded cinema and vocal expression which is often present in their artmaking. In 2021, Megan founded the Riverside based dance film festival, Some Dance Screen Fest. As director they developed a mentorship program that provided community members with tools and equipment to create dance films. In 2024, Megan co-founded Merge Performance, an experimental artist collective based in the Inland Empire/SoCal. As a filmmaker, their films have been screened at the Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art (2022), Inland Film Festival (2024), Riverside Art Museum (2024) and Film Maudit 2.0 (2024).  Megan teaches Creative Dance for the Camera to K-12th graders throughout the Inland Empire.

Negar, She/Her
negar.hajikamali@email.ucr.edu
BA in Architecture, Qazvin Azad University
Negar Kamali is a multidisciplinary artist with experience in dance, theater, photography, videography and woodworking. She has formally taught Persianate and Iranian dance forms since 2011 and enjoys playing Daf percussion. Over the past few years traveling to different regions in Iran, she choreographed dances inspired in Iranian geography, history, and literature. She is an active member of the Iranian Dance Studies Working Group (Dance Studies Association) and hopes that by weaving together contemporary dance, theater and photography, she can continue to create paths for expressing the realities around her.

Maryam Malmir, She/Her
maryam.malmir@email.ucr.edu
BS in Pure Mathematics, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
Maryam Malmir is a Contemporary Dancer and Choreographer from Iran. Her works are mostly conceptual, and due to her background in Mathematics, she uses Mathematical patterns as her choreographic language to convey meanings. She has produced her last choreographic piece, The Loop, in Cyprus collaborated with the dancers from Brazil and Colombia with the support of European Union. She has been awarded ISPA, International Society for the Performing Arts, global fellowship 2020,2021 and 2022, IETM, global network of contemporary performing arts, Global Connectors 2023-2027, GCRP, global Cultural Relations Program 2022, ATSA, Arthink South Asia fellowship 2019-2020 and internationale tanzmesse NRW professional visitors 2024.

Hannah McClean, She/Her
hmccl005@ucr.edu
B.F.A in Dance, Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle, WA
Hannah McClean is a dance artist who creates interdisciplinary art that utilize innovative methods of song, dance and narrative to create performances that are rich with humanistic themes. From 2017 to 2023, Hannah collaborated and performed with the New York City based dance companies Amirov Dance Theatre and Beth Soll & Company, as well as with choreographer Nathan Trice, Sommer Ulrickson and Devo Nelson. Hannah is also an arts educator, she specializes in teaching outreach creative movement, interdisciplinary arts, and modern technique for young people.