RSD’s production of Weave company and community cast at Maui Arts & Cultural Center, 2019.

After spending the first six years in Japan, DJinza Thayer grew up in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University and received an MFA in Dance at George Mason University. Based in the Twin Cities, she presents her work as Movement Architecture (MA).

Through public art collaborations across Minnesota, Moira Villiard is a multidisciplinary artist who uses art to uplift underrepresented narratives, explore the nuance of society’s historical community intersections, and promote community healing spaces.

Friday, May 3rd, 2024 | Doors 4pm | Artist Talk 6pm

Opening reception and program with social practice artists-in-residence Moira Villiard with collaborator Carla Hamilton and their project Waiting for Beds. This exhibition highlights youth artists and stories and explores what happens to individuals in crisis when they are made to “wait” for support, shelter, healthcare, and other services.

Yoni Light is a captivating and multifaceted performing artist known for seamlessly weaving together the realms of dance, film, and music to craft immersive storytelling experiences.

Sarah Abdel-Jelil is a Mauritanian-American filmmaker, dancer, and choreographer. As a dancer/movement artist, her artwork centers the body as a primary way of knowing and experiencing the world.

Songs in your Body on this Land February 16th (studio 331) & March 8th, 2024 (studio 240)

Led by GOOD TROUBLE, aka Conie Borchardt and Liz Digitale Anderson. We teach songs for joy, courage, grief, hope, and justice in the oral tradition, call and echo.

Conie Borchardt is a Mixed Asian Public Heart Artist and Cultural Catalyst, a listener and vibration holding space for truth, pain, and delight while inviting expression in sound, movement, and color within themselves and in others.

Sam Aros-Mitchell is an enrolled member with the Texas Band of Yaqui Indians. As an art-maker, dancer, and scholar, his work spans the disciplines of performance, sound/light/scenic design, choreography, and embodied writing.

Demian DinéYazhi ́is born to the clans Naasht’ézhí Tábąąhá (Zuni Clan Water’s Edge) and Tódích’íí’nii (Bitter Water). Their practice is a regurgitation of purported Decolonial praxis informed by the overaccumulative and exploitative supremacist nature of hetero cisgender communities.

NAKA Dance Theater’s José Ome and Debby will reflect on the creative process and why they were inspired to create Y Basta Ya! In collaboration with the women of Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA). The performance will feature performances by two women, Sarita and Maria, originally from Guatemala, who perform their stories through movement, storytelling, art objects and dance.

Founded in 2001 by co-directors Debby Kajiyama & José Ome Navarrete Mazat. NAKA Dance Theater creates experimental performance works using dance, storytelling, multimedia installations and site-specific environments. NAKA builds partnerships with communities, engages people's histories and folklore and expresses experiences through accessible performances that challenge the viewer to think critically about social justice issues.

"Between" is a video series seeking to sit, explore, and expand the often condensed, and unsettling space/state/site of "in betweenness."

Lela Pierce (she/they) is a Black multiracial artist, born and raised in rural MniSota Makoce - the ancestral and current homeland of the Dakota and Anishinaabe people. Lela has danced extensively with Ananya Dance Theatre as a founding member (2004-2016) as well as Rosy Simas Danse and Pramila Vasudevan of Anichha Arts (both 2015-present).

Drop-in session for self-identifying Black women

Arneisha’s Invitation:

If you want to come by, talk a bit about the upcoming sharing - a workshop for Black Women on May 27, 2023 - and vibe out with an informal peek-in of what we'll share in more detail on the 27th, come on by. It'll be flow-n-go and you'll move with us. And Black Women, you're invited to the in-person workshop on the 27th. Details forthcoming on my website

Arneshia Williams is a weaver and mover who co-builds to create cultures of belonging from community to community. She views her artwork as snapshots into the social, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of life. She is interested in dance, vocality, sound, and media, and is particularly invested in Black American and African Diasporic forms of expression.

Valerie Oliveiro is a dance and performance maker based in the Twin Cities and from Singapore. While they currently engage movement as their primary motor for expression, they also engage in other expressions, such as design, writing, drawing, and photography, as generative, complexly relational proposals.

Taja Will (they/them) is a queer, chronically ill, Latinx (Chilean) adoptee, performer, choreographer, somatic therapist, and Healing Justice practitioner based in Mni Sota Makoce, on the ancestral lands of the Dakota and Anishinaabe.

Leila Awadallah ليلى عوض الله (she/her) is a dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker based in Minneapolis and partly in Beirut, Lebanon. Dancing with a body of Palestinian, Arab-American, Sicilian, and diasporic Mediterranean ways and waves.

nouf saleh (she/her) is an artist, cultural worker, organizer, and arts administrator who has been studying and working at the intersections of arts and culture for over ten years. Most recently, she was an artist assistant at Dyani White Hawk’s studio and co-founder and member of Wild Path Collective. She is also part of the Public Functionary studio artists.

"The award is, for me, a real recognition of my work cumulatively over the last 30 years," said Simas, 55, founder of Rosy Simas Danse.

Rosy Simas Danse (RSD) gives a warmest welcome to Masanari Kawahara 川原正也 as artist in residence January 15- January 29, 2022.

Masanari Kawahara 川原正也 is a Butoh doer, theatre artist, puppeteer, and teaching artist. Please refer to welovemasa.com for a list of his past and present works. Masanari is a resident teaching artist and Director of the Naked Stages program at Pillsbury House + Theatre.

During this residency, Masanari will be working with his collaborer Sho Nikaido.

Sho Nikaido is a Japanese musician. He has played in various bands for over two decades in the Twin Cities music scene. Also, he composes the soundtrack for film and stage performances. welovemasa.com

StarTribune Variety Friday December 30, 2022. The Best of 2022. Rosy Simas’ she who lives on the road to war.

Rosy Simas Danse (RSD) welcomes to Marcela Michelle as our next artist in residence in the three thirty one space December 5th-22nd, 2022.

Marcela Michelle is a transdisciplinary artist, educator, facilitator, and producer living and working primarily on the occupied and ancestral Dakota land colonially known as the Twin Cities. She is the former Artistic Director of 20% Theatre Company and is currently the Executive Artistic Director of Lightning Rod - a QTPOC-led arts organization focused on legacy, development, and opportunity for QTGNC Artists and Activists. Marcela's work frequently deals with the simultaneity of being and the malleability of identities, informed in part by her ever-shifting childhood growing up in Texas, her foster care experiences in the midwest, her Afro-indigenous Chicanx heritage, and her queer transgender being.

Rosy Simas Danse (RSD) is excited to welcome Sequoia Hauck for their first three thirty one space residency October 24-November 5, 2022!

Sequoia Hauck is a Native (Anishinaabe/Hupa) queer multidisciplinary artist based in the Twin Cities on the stolen and ancestral Dakota lands of the Wahpeton, Mdewakantonwon, Wahpekute, and Sisseton peoples. Sequoia's focus is on creating theater, film, poetry, and performance art that decolonizes the process of art-making. They make art surrounding the narratives of continuation and resiliency among their communities. They are a graduate from the University of Minnesota -Twin Cities with a B.A. in American Indian Studies. Sequoia has worked on and offstage with organizations such as Aniccha Arts, Art Shanty Projects, Exposed Brick Theatre, The Jungle Theater, Māoriland, An Opera Theatre (AOT), Pangea World Theater, Patrick's Cabaret, Poetry and Pie, The Southern Theater, and Turtle Theater Collective. Sequoia recently co-directed a documentary, “Never Turn Your Back to the Wave: The Travis Jordan Story'' which was in the 2021 Mpls-St. Paul International Film Festival. www.sequoiahauck.com