Current & Recent Resident Artists

June 2026

Alys Ayumi Ogura [オグラ　アリス　ア有美] (She/Her/Hers) is a storyteller and performance maker through her movements, voice, and quirky humor. A native of Japan, now based in the Twin Cities, Ogura has been performing since 2010, and she has worked with more than 40 artists—near and far—including Company Blu (Italy) Hauser Dance, Emily Johnson/Catalyst, April Sellers Dance Collective, Kinetic Evolutions Dance Company, Emily Gastineau, Sandrine Harris, Kata Juhasz(Hungry), Pam Gleason, Pramila Vasudevan, and Laurie Van Wieren. 

Ogura has created about 20 original works—from 5 to 50 minutes, in length—performed at Twin Cities venues and several U.S. cities, including formal performance spaces, such as the Southern Theater, Walker Art Center, Red Eye Theater, Keshet Dance & Center for Arts (New Mexico), the Epic Center (Michigan), and at site-specific spaces, such as the Mississippi riverbank, streets in the Twin Cities and the Lanesboro Arts Gallery. Anywhere between, she creates her own stories or delivers stories (messages) by others. 

Notable highlights include the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship (2025–2028), Arts Organizing Institute Fellowship through the Pangea World Theater via NEA Our Town Program (2017–18), Naked Stages fellowship through Pillsbury House + Theatre (2021), Lanesboro Arts’ Early Career Artists-in-Residence (2025) and Rosy Simas Danse (RSD) Artist in Residency (2025–2026). Ogura is also a steering-committee member for DanceMN.

Photo: Russell Cooper

August 2025

Akiko (She/Her/Hers) is a Twin Cities-based interdisciplinary storyteller, teaching artist, curator, and activist. The mediums she most commonly works with include poetry, music, dance, collage, and puppetry. Her work often includes themes of anti-oppression and social change. A native of Osaka, Japan, Akiko tells stories that reflect the narrative of immigrant women of color that are often underrepresented in white eurocentric society. For seven years, Akiko has worked as an activist creating both visual and performing art pieces that center around social issues. Telling stories for social change is a crucial part of Akiko’s artistic practice. In addition to creating and performing, Akiko has worked closely with the Minneapolis community through teaching at schools and museums, working for large-scale community art projects, and curating shows.

May–June 2025

In their dance practice, Gayatri Narayanan (They/Them) investigates the Brahmanical appropriation of Bharatanatyam and the embodiment of purity politics by oppressor-caste dancers. Connecting dance, caste, gender, and land relationship, Gaya is committed to understanding the ways in which we consume and regenerate violent stories through our bodies in relationship to the land. Parallelly, Gaya dances as a form of deep listening, a sacred expression of suffering, and most importantly, as a primary site of engagement with what remains unknown to them.

Their dancing is a site of burning, birthing, and all the magical muckiness in between. Currently, their practice is shaped by studying narrative practice, internal family systems therapy, Silvia Federici's work on feminism and the commons, the poems of Akka Mahadevi and Basavanna, Alexis Pauline Gumbs's experimental triptych, and Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez's book Let's Become Fungal! Gaya is focused on dancing to cultivate a sense of inner neutrality as a strategy of holding multiplicity, resisting ideas of reconciliation, and getting comfortable holding deep pain.

Gaya graduated with their Masters in Environmental Justice from the University of Michigan, towards which they wrote a thesis on Brahmanical Bharatanatyam as a Site of Embodied Environmental Casteism. Their thesis combined auto-archaeology, feminist political ecology, facilitation, performance, and zine making. They were guided by Dr. Kyle Whyte, Prof. Michelle Martinez, Dr. shakara tyler, Dr. Petra Kuppers, and Dr. Clare Croft in this work.

Deeply informed by their dance practice, Gaya offers deep listening and healing as a bodyworker in South Minneapolis. Their Patreon page is a great way to access consistent healing and support their work. Or, directly book a session with them! Gaya is also a facilitator, coach, and educator with Spring Up, a worker-owned co-op of queer and trans care workers and transformative justice practitioners.