About BIPOC Professional Dancer Mentorship

Midday Movement Series is thrilled to launch BIPOC Professional Dancer Mentorship, a mentorship program supporting early-career BIPOC professional contemporary dancers to establish their dance paths in Greater Boston. This program aims to empower and celebrate early-career BIPOC dancers by creating a sense of connection and community, and by providing a space to address the impacts of structural inequities and strategies to help navigate and overcome them.

​This program is a crucial next step in MIDDAY's current racial justice work. By providing a new generation of BIPOC dance artists with resources to create their own sense of purpose and belonging in the Greater Boston dance community, MIDDAY will continue to cultivate a sustainable and vibrant local dance sector. 
Program Description:

In this eight month program, four early-career professional contemporary dancers (4 years of experience or less) will receive and commit to the following:
  • class stipends to take a minimum of 60 hours of dance classes over the course of the program (equivalent to one MIDDAY class and one additional Boston, Somerville, or Cambridge-based dance class of their choosing per week for 18-20 weeks);
  • $500 personal stipend to use at their discretion;
  • Bi-weekly mentorship consultations with MIDDAY director Marissa Molinar to help guide their individual growth (about 18 hours over the course of the program);
  • Monthly all-mentee gatherings to encourage peer-to-peer networking, support, and learning (about 18 hours over the course of the program);
  • Access to an all-mentee chat group to encourage connection between and beyond group gatherings.​​
The program will run from August 2022 - March 2023, culminating with a small celebration in which each mentee will present their top takeaways from their training and mentorship experiences. Mentees and guest dance artists will be invited to show work and works-in-progress at this celebration.
Eligibility Criteria

This program is open to contemporary dancers of color who are:
  • at least 18 years old,
  • self-identify as a professional or pre-professional dancer,
  • are developing a professional career as a dancer,
  • and have four (4) years or less of professional experience.
Applications Are Closed!
Applications for this cycle closed June 30, 2022. 
Questions? Email us for more information.
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BIPOC Professional Dancer Mentees (2022-2023)

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CASSIE WANG
Cassie Wang (she/her) is a Boston-based multidisciplinary artist with
a focus on contemporary dance performance. Originally from Kansas City, she grew up training at the American Dance Center under the direction of Kristopher Estes-Brown
and Jennifer Tierney. She graduated magna cum laude in 2021 from Pomona College with a B.A. in Computer Science and minors in Dance and Media Studies. There, she had the opportunity to originate works with choreographers such as Derion Loman, Becca Lemme, Iyun Ashani Harrison, and Ronit Ziv. She has also trained with the San ​Francisco Conservatory of Dance, BODYTRAFFIC, GagaLab, and the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. Cassie was the recipient of the DanceJerusalem Scholarship and the Virginia Princehouse Allen Dance Award. Currently, Cassie is a company member with VLA DANCE and KAIROS Dance Theater and freelances with local choreographers— most recently Jessi Stegall, Luminarium Dance, Dara Capley, and Chavi Bansal. Her choreographic works have been presented at the Solstice Dance Project, ACDA Baja, and NACHMO Boston. As a 2022 Emerging Artist Fellow with Dunamis, she recently presented her first multidisciplinary project for her capstone involving choreography, animation, and painting. Working to combine her backgrounds in dance, digital art, animation, and tech, Cassie is intrigued by the creative possibilities that lie at the intersection of art and technology.
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IMANI DEAL
Imani Deal was born and raised in the Greater Boston Area. Deal is a graduate of Montclair State University, where she
received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance and a minor in Business. During her training at MSU, she had the privilege of dancing in works by Camille A. Brown, Earl Mosley, and Charles Weidman. Deal maintained a position on the Dean’s List throughout college and is a member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars.

Since graduation, Deal has danced in local projects by Jenny Oliver and Rachel Linsky. She also has been a member of Roots Uprising Dance Company since 2020 under the direction of Nailah Randall-Bellinger. The pieces that Deal has recently performed amplify topics such as Holocaust remembrance and the Middle Passage. Deal’s goal is to open an Arts Center that gives back to the inner city through the arts while also expanding her dance career through traveling around the world.
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MIRANDA LAWSON
Miranda Lawson (she/her) is originally from Somerville, MA where she trained primarily in contemporary and Hip-hop at The Studio Dance Complex (TSDC). She participated in regional and national level dance competitions with TSDC for ten years and frequently returns there to teach. Miranda recently graduated from Mount
Holyoke College and during her time there, performed in works by Shakia Barron, Barbie Diewald, Katie Martin, Jenna Riegel and in TU Dance’s “One” restaged by Kaitlin Bell. She has also worked professionally with Boston based company Urbanity Dance and has had many ​collaborations with Contemporarily Out of Order. Miranda has attended Bates Dance Festival, was the recipient of the Leadership Scholarship from American Dance Festival, has
been an intern for Boston University’s REACH Summer Dance program, and has had her work selected to be shown at the American College Dance Association Conference. She is currently a choreographic resident through the Urbanity X Residency program for the 2022 season and is working professionally on “Concourse” with Barbie Diewald and Shakia Barron, which was most recently in residence at Jacob’s Pillow and MAGMA.
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PEARL YOUNG
​Pearl Young (she/her) is a Waterbury, CT native, a recent graduate of Tufts University with Magna Cum Laude honors and was the recipient of the Alice E. Trexler Dance Studies award for the Class of 2022. Her choreography and goals as a dancer have consistently revolved around creating space for and demanding attention toward Black American styles. Growing up dancing in predominantly white competitive studios disjointed her identities as a Black woman and as a dancer based on the priorities of the studio. When she began choreographing dances in high school, she dedicated her choreography to representing the journeys through social injustices Black people have taken. Pearl had the honor of receiving the rights to perform Pearl Primus’s “Strange Fruit”, taught by Kim Bears-Bailey of Philadanco, as her culminating senior thesis piece. In college, she became an active
member of the dance community. Pearl's passion for
immersing herself in Black American Dance manifested in her founding of Harlem Grooves, a collegiate dance company dedicated to Black American dance, and her work as the lead choreographer in Tufts’ recent production of “Almanac: The Musical”. Additionally, Pearl became a dance minor and a dance department ambassador—a position that fueled the creation of a dance major as Tufts previously only offered minors. Most recently, Pearl was invited to reset a piece as a freelance choreographer at the Taft School she looks forward to a piece of hers being performed in the Onstage 360 show on July 30th.
This program is supported in part by a grant from the following:
The Somerville Arts Council
Cambridge Arts, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency
The Boston Cultural Council, administered by the Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture
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