IN THE SPACE BETWEEN
Dava Huesca, a graduate of SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance and an alum of Springboard Danse Montreal, she began her performance career as a member of VIM VIGOR Dance Theater Company. Her artistic journey includes works by esteemed artists such as: Yin Yue Dance Company, Johannes Weiland, Laja Martin, Rena Butler, Sidra Bell, and more. Beyond traditional stage settings, Dava's artistry transcends into impactful appearances at commercial ventures and festivals, including engagements at the McKittrick Hotel, Barclays Center’s Moonfest Festival for Karencici, and music artist Madisen Rose. She has been featured in campaigns for brands like Telfar, Parade, and Prom Girl, showcasing her versatility and depth as a performer. In 2020, she co-founded LLAB RATS, an interdisciplinary arts collective focusing on art as activism for the benefit of the Black community. Following the dissolution of LLAB RATS in 2022, Dava shifted her focus to pursue her career as a freelance choreographer. Dava’s compositions stem from a hyperrealist lens that grounds the viewers in a space that feels familiar, such as a train station, cave, living room, etc. before delving into an intricate exploration of time, space, and mood. Her compositions challenge conventional notions, weaving elements of realism with an underlying sense of instability to invite audiences to reconsider their perceptions. As a choreographer Dava she has received commissions from Whim W’Him Dance Company, Dance Lab New York, Yale University's Summer Drama Cabaret, Peridance Certificate Program Graduation Solo, and worked as an associate choreographer with Laja Martin for Gibney Pro. Dava was honored as the first Springboard Danse Montreal nominated recipient of Jonah Bokaer's Arts Foundation AIR Founder's Residency in 2021 and was among the first round of choreographic artists for Gallim's Moving Women residency in 2020. As an educator Dava offers a grounded contemporary floor work experience, emphasizing alignment, efficiency, and fluidity. Drawing inspiration from acrobatics, Graham technique, modern dance, and partnering, she prioritizes effective body alignment to ensure safety during high-risk movement. The The floor will become a friend and will aid the dancer in strength, stability, and agility.
Music Director | Desiré
Desiré Graham is a submerging Artist In-Practice from Harlem, NY and holds a BFA in Theatre Arts from Boston University and Minor in Black studies where she earned the Kahn Career Entry Award in 2018. Graham has appeared in productions with Speakeasy Stage, New Repertory Theatre, FreshInk Theatre, Hibernian Hall in Boston, MA and was a company member at the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, in Italy, from 2019-2022. Graham currently works with Double Edge Theatre, VLA Dance, and Wender Collective as a recurring collaborator. Additionally, Graham curates The Black Residency and hosts the workshop series entitled Somewhere in Between, for BIPOC and ALAANA peoples to discover the use of communal singing, give weight to their vibrational soul, activate, and call on others to join in. Graham is a 2024 Princess Grace Foundation Award winner, having previously received other various honoraria from MASS MoCA, American Repertory Theater, Connecticut Office of the Arts, and other cultural organizations.
Diovanna Obafunmilayo is an accomplished visual artist, choreographer/dancer, and poet, from Virginia Beach, VA with a BA in Dance Studies from Marymount Manhattan College. She has used the many hands of her artistic expression to direct award-winning short films, creative direct music videos, write songs with Grammy award-winning artists, dance and choreography in live and video performances, and become a successful working painter with work in private collections across the country. Her major debut as a performer came as the choreographer and dancer in Kehlani’s “Altar”. Her short film “When We Arrive As Flowers'' was screened at over 25 film festivals. She has also appeared in Tribeca film fest and spoken at an international panel on NYC Ballroom History. She is a priestess of the Afro-Cuban Lukumi religion and an avid spiritual advisor.
Dancer | Diovanna
Dancer | Dava
Director | Ian
Ian Andrew Askew is an artist working in music, theater, and performance. Their research is concerned with historical absurdities, manufactured scarcities, and contrary negritudes. Recent projects include SLAMDANCE (Performing Garage, The Kitchen), Until Other Times (JACK), and Sorry John Henry the song has no end (developed in residency at Hubbard Hall, Baryshnikov Arts Center, and Wake Forest University). As a sound artist, they have created scores for live performance and sculpture works by Christopher Myers, Kaneza Schaal, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Joie Lee, James Gibbel, and Kamal Nassif. Ian co-sound designed and performed in KLII (Walker Art Center, REDCAT, Chelsea Factory). As an associate stage director for opera, they have presented work with Lincoln Center, The American Repertory Theater, The Metropolitan Museum, Detroit Opera, Spoleto Festival USA, LA Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, San Francisco Opera, and Carolina Performing Arts.
Dancer | Dominica
Dominica Greene is a movement-based conceptual artist, dancer, and facilitator based in Brooklyn, New York. She values dance as one of the purest forms of expression, utilizing it as an energetic entity capable of affecting real and palpable change. Her company and freelance experience is extensive, having collaborated with, performed, and toured the work of many notable choreographers domestically and internationally. She creates body and time-based conceptual art which aims to reflect movement as one of the most fundamental conduits of existential and ancestral knowledge. As a Queer, bi-racial, Caribbean-American woman, she is committed to dreaming up and world building alternative realities and more expansive futures with her BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ community.
ITSB Design Team
Costume Design | James Gibbel is an artist and fabricator from Brooklyn. Their costume work has been seen on small and large stages across the country.
Composer | Eden Girma is a multi-instrumental musician hailing from Madison, WI. Having grown up at the nexus of widely varying and vibrant musical traditions, Eden creates through a variety of audio-visual-technological media -- bridging realms such as popular music, improvisatory collaboration, expressionism, and experimental electronics. Through a genre-bending compositional ear and a poetic lyricism, Eden aspires to create art that not only resonates with individual hearts, but brings people closer together in a spirit of intimacy and empathy.
In The Space Between is a river towards care and liberation. Breath, expansive movement, and tactile fabric textures guide Victoria Lynn Awkward and collaborators as they carve space and transcend into joy, beauty, and pleasure, wading through the rifts and tangles of their efforts along the way. Crafted in collaboration with the dancers, Victoria’s choreography conjures new and ancient rituals of flight, weaving, and enacting love in community. Victoria invites audiences to stretch into the erotic as defined by Audre Lorde, a necessity for the realization of liberation in an often-vicious world.
In The Space Between builds on previous collaborations between Victoria and music director Desiré Graham, as well as dancer and rehearsal director Sasha Peterson. The project also features a new original score by multi-instrumentalist Eden Girma (also known as aden), vibrating across a lush world shaped by director Ian Andrew Askew. In The Space Between is performed by an ensemble of seven dancers including Victoria and Sasha Peterson, alongside Dava Huesca, Diovanna Obafunmilayo, Dominica Greene, Justin Daniels, and Maxi Hawkeye Canion.
In The Space Between is an in-progress work via residency with The Theater Offensive.
Atlanta native Justin Daniels began his artistic journey at Tri-Cities High School's Visual & Performing Arts Program in East Point, GA. He holds a B.F.A. in Contemporary Dance Performance with a minor in Psychology from The Boston Conservatory and abroad at The Central Academy of Drama in Beijing. Now as an New York based dance artist, choreographer, and photographer represented by BLOC NY. Justin has worked with world Grammy award winning artist Jon Batiste and recently with global sensation Serpentwithfeet on “Heart of Brick”, a groundbreaking production intertwining music, theater, and dance. Justin has also been a collaborator in choreographic incubators with Dance Lab New York and residences at Kampnagel Summer Festival, Kaatsban, and Turnpark Summer festival. Featured in DanceItalia! (Spring,2021’) and VoyageATL(Spring, 22’) Magazine Justin is committed to exploring and expanding the collectiveness of concert, commercial, and digital dance spaces.
Dancer | Justin
Maxi Hawkeye Canion (they/she), originally from El Paso, TX, is a versatile artist specializing in durational performance, movement, and improvisation. In their creative process, Maxi materializes sensory experiences, guiding viewers to the intersection where the hyper-surreal and ordinary harmoniously meet. Collaboration and community are integral to their work as they investigate the intricacies of identity, intimacy, and failure. Their focus is on intricate character design, developing personas that synthesize broader socio-political stances and incorporate maximalist references from subversive niche media. Recently, they held residencies at Leimay: CAVE, Art Omi, MOtiVE Brooklyn, Otion Front Studio, New Dance Alliance, Gibney, and the GALLIM Moving Artist Residency. During these residencies, they nurtured "willing to eat stars," a work in process that weaves a hyper-surrealist horror with the bleak and mundane. Along with this, they have performed their work at SFX Festival 2024, Performance Space x Spectrum, Momenta #002, FUERZAfest, Performance Mix Festival 37, JACK, BOFFO Performance Festival, Pageant, Triskelion Arts, Arts on Site, Judson Church, BAAD!, CPR, and Chelsea Factory. As a performer, Maxi has collaborated with notable artists such as Eve Tagny, Alexandra Waierstall, Ryan Ponder McNamara, Miles Greenberg, Sigrid Lauren, J. Bouey, slowdanger, Shikeith, Monica Mirabile, Richard Kennedy, Young Boy Dancing Group, and Sidra Bell, among others.
Sasha Peterson currently lives and grew up dancing in the Boston area. In 2016, she completed a dance major at Connecticut College, through which she had the privilege of learning from and performing works by renowned dance faculty and guest artists. Sasha has worked with Ali Kenner Brodsky & Co., Audrey Maclean, Betsy Miller Dance Projects, Boston Lyric Opera, Grant Jacoby & Dancers, Jessy Zizzo & Dancers, Laila Franklin, Lisa Race, Shura Baryshnikov, and apprenticed at David Dorfman Dance. She is a company member at Ruckus Dance and VLA DANCE, and is also in process with Continuum Dance Project. She currently teaches at Midday Movement Series and is also a licensed massage therapist.
Rehearsal Director + Dancer | Sasha
Choreographer + Dancer | Victoria
Dancer | Maxi
Victoria Lynn Awkward is a multi-hyphenate creator, administrator, educator and the Director of VLA DANCE. She pursued her multiple interests at Goucher College and graduated with high honors in Dance, Visual Art and Secondary Education. As the Director of VLA DANCE she is researching how to lead with joy, pleasure, and breath in and outside of art making practices. This work is guided through the lineage of Black and queer liberation practitioners. Alongside directing VLA DANCE, Victoria is a freelance artist, who most recently choreographed for Huntington Theater, Company One Theatre, Boston Lyric Opera, and Commonwealth Shakespeare. As a performer she has worked for Jasmine Hearn, Shura Baryshnikov, Jenna Pollack, and others. Victoria is also an educator having worked at Salem State University, Brown University, West End House, Middlesex School, and Urbanity Dance. She continues to deepen her teaching practices as a mentee with Midday Movement Series. Victoria is currently a Brother Thomas Fellow, and recipient of the Next Steps for Boston Grant Dance Program as well as a recipient of the Queer (Re)public Theater Offensive Residency. Through her work she aims to inspire people to pause and reflect on their actions towards themselves, their community and their environment.
Rehearsal Photo Credits
Photo 1: Courtesy of VLA DANCE
Photos 2 - 7: Victor Figueroa courtesy of Double Edge Theater
Videos: Courtesy of VLA DANCE
IN PROCESS
Eden Girma and Desiré Graham composing music for the show. Brooklyn, NY
Dancers in rehearsal in the barn at Double Edge Theater. Ashfield, MA
“[An] important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy. In the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, heartening to its deepest rhythms.”
- Audre Lorde
“You do not have to be fire / for / every mountain blocking you. / you could be a water / and / soft river your way to freedom / too.”
- Nayyirah Waheed