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BIPOC Professional Dancer

MENTORSHIP

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Midday Movement Series is thrilled to relaunch 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.

 

2025-2026 BIPOC Professional Dancer Mentees:

Antonia Araya

Kasey Aguilar

Krista Lawson

Nicholas Mark Anthony

​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. 

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Program Description:

In this nine 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 in Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville over the course of the program;

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  • $500 personal stipend to use at their discretion;

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  • Bi-weekly mentorship consultations with MIDDAY director Marissa Molinar to help guide their individual growth (about 18 hours over the course of the program);

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  • Bi-monthly all-mentee gatherings and access to MIDDAY's Professional Development Workshop Series to encourage peer-to-peer networking, support, and learning (about 18 hours over the course of the program);

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  • Access to an all-mentee chat group to encourage connection between and beyond group gatherings.​​

 

The program will run from September 2025 - May 2026, 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,

  • live in Greater Boston,

  • not currently enrolled as student in a graduate or undergrad program,

  • 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 now closed for the 2025-26 season.

BIPOC Professional Dancer Mentees (2025-2026)

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Kasey Aguilar (she/her)

 Kasey Aguilar is a Filipino-American dancer and performing artist based in Boston. Originally from

Schaumburg, IL, she began her dance journey at five years old at her local ballet studio Northwest Ballet Academy. Kasey moved to Boston in 2019 to attend Boston Conservatory at Berklee, where she received a diverse dance education and graduated magna cum laude with a BFA in Contemporary Dance Performance. There she had the privilege to perform works by choreographers Gustavo Sansano, Brian

Brooks, Victor Quijada, Bradley Shelver, Paul Taylor, and many more. She has also received additional training at numerous intensives including Hubbard Street EXPLORE Summer Intensive, LINES Ballet Summer Intensive, Chicago Repertory Ballet Summer Intensive, and more. After graduating, she was a trainee at Boston Dance Theater for a year where she performed with the main company multiple times in a piece by Marco Goecke. In addition, she also performed in works by Yue Yin, Alessandro Sousa Pereira, Tushrik Fredericks, Levi Marsman and more during her time there. Kasey is currently a dancer and performing artist with Jo-Mé Dance Theatre and is freelancing in the Greater Boston area.

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Nicholas Markanthony (he/him)

Nicholas Markanthony is a queer, mixed-race, hispanic mover and artist born in Lowell, Massachusetts. He

spent his youth training in hip-hop and breakin' throughout the Greater Boston area as part of B.A.M. crew. In High School, he joined 2 Boston-based dance companies: Aurora Borealis Dance Company and Boston Tap Company, where he primarily trained and performed in contemporary and Tap improvisation. Nicholas

studied at Tufts University, where he graduated with a BS in Biology and a BA in Theatre, Dance, and

Performance Studies. While at Tufts he studied dance under the direction of Renata Celichowska, Kareem

Khubchandani, Jenny Oliver, Holy Stone, Taylor Travassos-Lomba, and Jacyln Waguespack. He performed in pieces created by Stefanie Batten-Bland, Daniel McCusker, Katie Pustizzi, and Ruka White.

Nicholas has an interest in exploring how movement creates accessibility through both vagueness and

specificity. They have explored throughout their works the reactive components within movement, and the

intensity of dance derived from a pedestrian lens. In one of his recent works, Nicholas both choreographed

the movement and created the sound score for a piece that examined the identities we form over

continuous interactions, reactions, and derived experiences. Nicholas hopes to continue advocating for dance and movement as an accessible form of communication throughout the coming years. He has also been accepted to attend the Master's in Animal and Public Policy program at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University in Fall 2026, where he will

continue to advocate for a more accessible and sustainable world.

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Antonia Araya  (she/her)

Antonia Araya is a dancer, performer and multidisciplinary artist. Antonia was born and raised in Santiago, Chile, where she trained as a rhythmic gymnast. After competing in Spain, Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia representing her country; she fell in love with Chile's theater and activism scene, where she developed and performed multidisciplinary work that spoke up against socio-political atrocities. She then moved to the

United States to begin her academic studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst graduating in

2024 with a BFA in Dance, a BA in Theater, and a minor in Biology. She has trained in dance styles such as

modern, contemporary, improvisation, and jazz, as well as in theater acting, dramaturgy, and design. In

addition to her training, Antonia has performed in dance and theater productions created by Jenna Riegel,

Lauren Cox, Molly Christie, Erin Kouwe, Dr. Priscilla Maria Page, Professor Judyie Al-Bilali, and others. She

has also choreographed her own works, including “Home”, “Memories”, “Nueva vida Horizonte” and the interludes of the production of “Twelfth Night”.

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Krista Lawson (she/her)

Krista Lawson (she/her) is a Boston-based performer, choreographer, and educator. She graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a BFA in dance in 2024. She has trained with Phunk Phenomenon Urban Dance Theatre and has collaborated with organizations such as Urbanity Dance and Boston Arts Academy. Krista has performed in works by Shakia Barron, Tatiana Desardouin, Barbie Diewald, Jeff Jean-Philippe, Miranda Lawson, and Jenna Riegel. She has performed at Jacob’s Pillow Community Day (2022) and the American College Dance Association conferences (2022, 2023). In 2024, Krista had the opportunity to perform in and work closely with Jenna Riegel on the restaging of Spent Days Out Yonder by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company.

Why Is BIPOC Mentorship
Necessary in Dance?

Relationship- and community-building pathways for newly arrived dance artists is crucial in our local dance sector in general. Metro Boston's professional dance sector --even among dance professionals-- is often described as "hidden" and "hard to find," as well as "deeply siloed" and difficult to navigate. Mentorship provides an opportunity for more seasoned artists to not only welcome new artists in and orient them within the local landscape, but also allows for resource sharing and "showing them the ropes;" formal and informal goal-setting; networking; encouragement and artistic growth; and more. Mentorship has proven to be a valuable resource across sectors, and the dance sector is no different.

For BIPOC artists, the need is even greater. Due to a lack of visibility across the sector and representation in sector leadership, BIPOC artists are prone to isolation, macro- and micro-aggressions, and a lack of a sense of belonging, dance artists of color have a hard time making Metro Boston their home, especially in predominantly white genres such as contemporary dance. This program seeks to addres some of these needs.

In addition, living as a person of color in Metro Boston is difficult enough on its own, due to issues including gentrification and cultural erasure; housing, food, and medical injustice; the historical and growing wealth gap, and more. Below are a few resources that provide more detail and data about these specific hardships:

The Weathering Hypothesis
As summarized by PubMed: "The weathering hypothesis states that chronic exposure to social and economic disadvantage leads to accelerated decline in physical health outcomes and could partially explain racial disparities in a wide array of health conditions." The weathering hypothesis was originally proposed in 1992 by public health researcher Dr. Arline T Geronimus to explain disparities she observed in health outcomes especially for Black women.  

WEALTH + OPPORTUNITIES 

ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM


MEDICAL RACISM 

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