Dance Place is excited to share the selected artists for the upcoming Exquisite Frame presentation in April!
Co-curated by Britta Joy Peterson and Katherine Lopes Zukeri, artists Greg David, Tori Youn & Jonathan Hsu, Sarah Beth Oppenheim/Heart Stück Bernie and Stephen Lyons II will be sharing new works virtually on Saturday, April 10th at 6:30pm EST.
Keep reading below to learn more about the artists. To learn more about the upcoming presentation, click here.
Photo above by Greg David
Greg David (he/they) is a movement artist based in the DMV area. The work and movement they enjoy making has always gone hand in hand with human emotion and experience and aims to capture that essence in motion. David joined Culture Shock Washington DC® in 2012 and became the Artistic Director for their 2015 and 2016 seasons where, nationally and internationally, they presented stage works and taught workshops. They have been so grateful to work with other DMV-based movement artists like Project ChArma, Haus of Bambi, and PearsonWidrig DanceTheatre. These experiences allowed them to understand how the art and freedom of dance can truly change a life.
Photos above by Hamza Bakkach and Jonathan Hsu
Tori Youn (she/her) is a Virginia native who started her dance journey in 2014 during college. In 2015, she moved on to be co-founder and operations director of the NoVA-based choreography team Hyperspace Command Force. She also founded the free monthly workshops series hosted at George Mason University called Spam Musubi Workshops to provide an accessible platform for dancers of choreography and street dance backgrounds within the DMV dance community. From 2018-2020, Tori led the house dance crew Highjackers to sow the seeds of love for house dance in the DMV area. Currently, Tori’s main focuses are in house dance, waacking, hip hop, and West African dance. She enjoys battling, teaching, and organizing street dance events.
Jonathan Hsu (he/him) has a BA in Dance and BS in Kinesiology from the University of Maryland College Park. Currently dancing with Orange Grove Dance, he has also performed with Rennie Harris Puremovement, PEARSONWIDRIG DANCETHEATER, Project ChArma, and Culture Shock DC. He also has extensive experience teaching hip hop in the DMV community and draws on his background in both street/club forms and modern to create a unique curriculum and pedagogy. Along with dance performance and teaching Jonathan is also interested in the intersection of dance and media through photography, videography, and projection design and used all of those skills as the digital content and social media manager at Dance Place from 2017-2020, and created a YouTube channel called “Dance Tech with JHsu” with the goal of helping dancers become more proficient in the digital space.
Photo above by Oliver Mertz
Sarah Beth Oppenheim/Heart Stück Bernie (she/her) likes to use scraps, abandoned tools, and painters tape to cut and paste curious inquisitions into everything from pelvis-motored bedroom choreography to burritos. She believes in deepest plie to bend traditions, antiracist pedagogy to bend academia, and dance as an everything salve. She has a love/love/exasperate relationship with a many-jobbed lifestyle, but loves every opportunity to make, teach, and engage in the DMV dance world. She forced her children and husband into this quarantine project, but they probably secretly loved it, and she looks forward to many more artistic procedurals and paper extravaganza reckonings as a family. Sarahbethoppenheim.com Instagram @heartstuckbernie
Photo above by Preet Mandavi (Alio Graphics)
Stephen Lyons II (he/him) is a DMV-based dancer, choreographer, and director. He began his dance journey with Aberdeen Dance Company in high school. Since then he has trained in hip hop dance styles with Phunktions Hip Hop Dance Company and Culture Shock DC. Stephen is now in his third year as Artistic Director of Culture Shock DC and works to enrich, educate, and entertain his community through dance. He was selected by Dance Place for the 2020 New Releases Choreographer’s Showcase. He was also a recipient of a Vital Signs Mini-Grant from UMD to create a project that affirms black lives. Stephen currently studies Theatre and Dance at the University of Maryland.