Manhattan Theatre Source presents the 2025 EstroGenius Festival: ALL IN, a performance festival celebrating dynamo women, trans and gender non-conforming artists, May 8-24, 2025. Performances will take place at Judson Church, (243 Thompson St, NY NY 10012) The Cell Theatre (338 W 23rd St, New York, NY 10011), UNDER St. Marks (94 St Marks Pl, New York, NY 10009), The Rat NYC (68-117 Jay St, Brooklyn NY 11201) and Downtown Art Theater (70 E. 4th St, NY NY 10003). Tickets ($5-$20) are available for purchase atwww.estrogenius.nyc.

EstroGenius presents its 24th year of commitment to breaking the mold of a womxn’s festival. Estrogenius 2025: ALL IN is that commitment at full throttle offering three weeks of experimental performance, dance, theater, music and poetry across New York City. The Festival is curated by Portia Wells, Sabrina Canas, Melissa Riker, John C. Robinson, short play producer Vincent Marano along with a stellar Short Play adjudication panel.

2025 ALL IN offers the EstroGenius Short Play Series at a hot new venue, The Rat NYC (the short plays sold outin 2024!) partners with the historic Judson Church, and features stellar independent New York City dance artists like Rokafella, Verbal Animal, Movement of the People, Valentina Bache, Dorchel Haqq and Petra Zanki, plus the fierce work of long-time EstroGenius producer, maura nguyen donohue, a very special solo show by a brilliant mother/daughter team and welcomes Seattle artist Kara Beadle and their wild, bicycle focused world.

Offering a wide variety of performances throughout the festival audiences can see up-and-coming and award winning New York City artists plus Seattle, Chile, Colombia and Vietnamese artists. The Festival invites ticket buyers to experience performances in theaters, a townhome, a new DUMBO theatre and a historic church. EstroGenius 2025 is not to be missed!

Audiences are welcome to bundle up as many shows as they’d like, or pick from our pre-made bundles. Discounts are available and for our audiences with more resources, a Patron bundle takes into account the real cost of creating a festival in 2025.

EstroGenius 2025: ALL IN

Shows and Experiences May 8-11

COMPOUND!

by Em Papineau + Sofia Engelman

Thurs May 8, 7pm, Judson Church Gym

Curated by Portia Wells

Part dance and part talkback, “ATTENTION: once again” flirts with questions of artistic identity, partnership, and indulgence.

Sofia Engelman + Em Papineau are Brooklyn-based choreographic collaborators and life partners. ​Their work, which engages queer improvisation practices, is effortful, conversational, and fleshy. Sofia + Em’s first project together was presented at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts while they were students at Smith College. Since then, they have held choreographic residencies at spaces including Mana Contemporary, Ponderosa (Germany), The Dance Complex, MOtiVE Brooklyn, Sky Hill Farm Studio, The Croft, The Floor, College of the Atlantic, and The School for Contemporary Dance & Thought. In addition to presenting their work at these residency spaces, the pair have performed at venues including Judson Church, FRESH Festival, EstroGenius Festival, and ICA/Boston. Their individual performance credits include projects by Kathleen Hermesdorf, Tyler Rai, Michael Figueroa, David Appel, Claudia-Lynn Rightmire, Simon Thomas-Train, Angie Hauser, and Alice Gosti. From 2020-2022, they founded and directed freeskewl, a platform for dance, discussion, education, and reparations.

On Adoration

Choreographed by Sheer Spectacle

Thurs May 8, 8:00 PM, Judson Church Meeting Room

Curated by Sabrina Canas

Sheer Spectacle’s, “On Adoration” explores power, intimacy, and vulnerability through light and shadow. Flashlights illuminate moments of exposure, manipulating control and perspective to heighten emotional tension and relationships of performers.

Kali Petrizzo and Lily Mello are Brooklyn-based artistic collaborators. They received their BFA in dance from UArts in 2019 and 2020, respectively. Their highly expressive dance theater uses vocal performance, grandiose movement, and drama as action. In early 2022, they founded the dance theater company, Sheer Spectacle, and premiered their first evening-length work, Ripped Tights, Stoned Heart, in the spring of 2022 in Philadelphia, PA. Their work explores queer intimacy and relations, fantasy, dedication, and the spaces between living, losing, and winning. In 2022, UArts invited Mello and Petrizzo to guest choreograph their second work, I Spit Out the Gold, at the Annenberg Center for Performing Arts. Sheer Spectacle has performed at Mascher Space-Stage Gaps, Philadelphia Fringe Festival and Fresh Juice Festival, Philadelphia Dance Theater, IceBox Project Space, the 92NY Future Dance Festival, The Center at West Park, Evolution Dance Festival at Gibney, and That Show NYC.

Angel Mid-Swing// it boils from within

by Valentina (VACA) Baché

Thurs May 8, 9:00 PM

Judson Church Gym

Curated by Portia Wells

in the destruction change leaves behind

an addiction to chaos

à cup that’s always leaking

à rage that’s never quenched

under blankets of smog

Spins stilling time

Hurricane of my past,

What can you teach us about what’s to come?

Valentina Baché Rodríguez(they/them) was born and raised in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. At 15, they skipped high school to attend Bard College at Simon’s Rock, and obtained an associate degree in Biology and dance. Then, with a deep yearning for more, they moved to NYC to attend Hunter College for a BA in Dance, graduating in 2020. Their works have been featured throughout NYC, including MR at Judson Church, BKArtHaus, Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center, Chelsea Factory, Dixon Place, Recess, The Tank and their pedagogy shared at Performance Space NY. A 2024 Gallim’s Moving Artist Residency Recipient.Triskelion Arts Split bill April, 2025. Valentina is constantly rediscovering their ancestral bodily archives to best inform how change happens within the body first, through recognizing and witnessing profoundly effective energies such as rage, discomfort, and sorrow. They showcase the power of pleasure and joy through resilient, stubborn, and unbound honesty.

show!

created by Claudia-Lynn Rightmire and Aya Wilson

with cs movement projects

Fri May 9, 7:00 PM, The Cell Theatre

Curated by Melissa Riker and John C. Robinson

show! explores identity, masking, and the countless layers we inhabit and exchange throughout our lives. This work unravels the shifting identities we embody – how we molt and mold ourselves to fit each space, each expectation; each unseen rule.

Who are we when no one is watching? Do we remember?

Claudia-Lynn Rightmire creates within mediums of dance, writing, theater, and visual art. Claudia holds an Honors summa cum laude BA from Roger Williams University and is currently teaching at Gibney Dance. She is an artist with Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre, David Dorfman Dance, and INSPIRIT Dance with Christal Brown, and has worked with NYC Children’s Theater, Third Rail Projects, Kinesis Project, Sarasota Contemporary, and Moving Ethos. In 2021, Claudia formed cs movement projects alongside her partner, Simon Thomas-Train.

cs movement projects has performed evening-length works in Florida, hosted by Sarasota Contemporary Dance, Massachusetts, with School For Contemporary Dance And Thought, New York with the EstroGenius Festival and Green Space, among others. They have been guest artists at East Carolina University, Roger Williams University, Smith College, Dancewave, and others.

Aya Wilson is a dance artist, performer, teacher, and administrator. She was a company member of Doug Varone and Dancers from 2015 to 2022, also serving as the company’s tour manager, and has staged Varone’s works at various universities. She has also danced with artists including David Dorfman Dance, Kendra Portier/BANDportier, the A.O. Movement Collective, Mariah Maloney, Nadia Tykulsker, Sarah Council, Tara Aisha Willis, Kensaku Shinohara, and Amelia Heintzelman and Leah Fournier. Her teaching practice of dance, improvisation, partnering, and contact improvisation includes SUNY Purchase, Gibney Dance Center, and Peridance. Originally from Normal, Illinois, Aya earned her BFA in Dance from the University of Iowa.

Still. Here.

Created and performed by Ana Rokafella Garcia

Fri May 9, 8:00pm

Sat May 10, 8:00pm

The Cell Theatre

Curated by Melissa Riker and John C. Robinson

An invitation to witness and partake in the act of blending yet being unique.

Created by a multi-award winning icon of NYC dance.

Ana Rokafella Garcia, co-founder of Full Circle Souljahs, a Bronx based non profit dance company, is an Afro Nuyorican street dance icon who has represented Women in Hip hop as a Bgirl for over 3 decades helping to preserve and evolve the legacy and roots of NYC street and club dance.

AHHHHHHHHH! An Evening of Sing-A-Long without God or Country

Led by Jarbeaux of The Bearded Ladies Cabaret

Fri May 9, 9:00 PM

The Cell Theatre

Curated by Melissa Riker and John C. Robinson

John Jarboe(she/her) is a director, producer, singer, writer, cabaret historian and host. She is the founding Artistic Director of The Bearded Ladies Cabaret, Philadelphia’s most visible and prolific queer performing arts organization. Over the past fourteen years Jarboe has created resourced platforms for hundreds of queer artists, administrators, and technicians to perform, collaborate, and commune as well as spawned lasting collaborations with queer artists in New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, Paris, Berlin, and nationally. She has written, performed, and directed original work for La Mama ETC, Joe’s Pub, Opera Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Wilma Theater, Lincoln Center, and The Guggenheim’s Works & Process series. See her upcoming work at www.beardedladiescabaret.com and @johnjarbeaux on instagram.

Unstable States: The Children of Frogs

Directed by Beth Graczyk

Sat May 10, 4:00pm

Sun May 11, 2:00pm

The Cell Theatre

Curated by Melissa Riker and John C. Robinson

What does it mean to prolong the life of materials on the verge of decay—to press into matter and feel its resistance? This work explores the body’s visceral exchange with discarded materials, like eggshells, to expand our sense of humanness and unsettle fixed notions of being.

Beth Graczyk is a Brooklyn/Lenapehoking-based choreographer, director, performer, and educator whose 22-year career bridges the worlds of art and science. As the Artistic Director of Beth Graczyk Productions, Inc. (BGP), she merges performance and scientific inquiry, centering queer and neurodivergent perspectives. Since 2006, her choreography has been presented across the U.S. and internationally in Japan, China, and India, with venues including Velocity Dance Center, Gibney, La MaMa, JACK, CPR, Movement Research, OTB and ODC. She is a faculty member for the Peridance Certification Program in NYC. Alongside her artistic practice, Graczyk is a biochemist, co-author of 10 scientific publications, and a researcher in the Ruta Lab, where she investigates olfaction in insects. Her interdisciplinary forges new connections between movement, materiality, and perception. @bethgraczyk

TIPA

by Carolina Marin/Kescena

Sat May 10, 5:00pm, The Cell Theatre

Curated by Melissa Riker and John C. Robinson

TIPA is a Diva, although from the emergency and the precarious, going through the fine and elegant, a quite particular hybrid. Woman with a body from the Andes and the Pacific Ocean, nomadic and open to the world.

Carolina Marín/Kescena , Chilean, artist, dancer and specialist in combined artistic languages, based in New York City. I formally studied dance in Chile and Argentina between 2006 and 2013. I am an Axis Syllabus teacher candidate and Contact Improvisation dancer, continually developing my self-education and following Axis Syllabus and Contact Improvisation around the world.

My work focuses on research and experimentation on the dynamic movement of humans and other species. Advancing towards new territories in the transdisciplinary and collective sphere has been a way of understanding and expanding these studies and experiences, which propose to maintain ourselves in relation to the biodiversity of the environment and the interspecies relationship, as a sustainable path to keep us moving and continue existing on planet Earth.

In this way my artistic work uses tools and concepts belonging to dance, science, architecture, sound, digital technologies, video and nature.

I have been working on the practice of walking as a basic action of locomotion, in relation to the landscape, the paths and the footprint, and how these write a story. In the same sense, I found the action of weaving and sewing as a way to connect, unify, build and make shapes on the way to constructing a story. I am currently researching how to develop biomaterials to continue weaving relationships.

So Many Me’s

Choreography, Performance, and Text by Alex Oliva

Music and Performance by Neil Rolnick

Sat May 10, 5:30pm

Sun May 11, 3:00pm

The Cell Theatre

Curated by Melissa Riker and John C. Robinson

Measuring. Selling. Falling Apart. Acting Out. Surrendering.

Measuring. Selling. Falling Apart. Acting Out. Surrendering.

Measuring. Selling. Falling Apart. Acting Out. Surrendering.

Measuring. Selling. Falling Apart. Acting Out. Surrendering.

Alex Oliva (she/her) is a choreographer, director, performer, educator, lover, freaky-character, totally-normal administrator, and unofficial clown. Her creative experience spans dance, film, immersive theater, and improvisation, and has taken her to San Francisco, NYC, Seattle, and abroad. Alex thrives in collaborative settings and maintains a passion for the merging of people and their practices.

Neil Rolnick (he/him), composer: A pioneer in the use of computers in performance since the late 1970s, Neil Rolnick’s music has been performed around the world, including recent performances in Cuba, China, Mexico and across the US and Europe.

ask and you shall receive

by Dorchel Haqq

Sat May 10, 6:15pm

Sun May 11, 4:00pm

The Cell Theatre

Curated by Melissa Riker and John C. Robinson

a dissolving of oneself, coming closer to home, lets’s see where do we begin? inhale for 4, hold for 4, exhale for 4, hold for 4, repeat.

Dorchel Haqq, raised in Harlem, began to embody history at the Dance Theater of Harlem. With experience from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts then later at the Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College SUNY, Dorchel initiated her discovery of the body as a political statement. While studying at Purchase College, Dorchel’s education expanded at Korea National School of the Arts. Dorchel has explored movement practices with Johannes Wieland, Stefanie Batten Bland, Maxine Doyle, Loni Landon, Sidra Bell, Kayla Farrish, and Maya Lee Parritz. These relationships aided the development of Dorchel’s movement language inducing an imaginative world with a focus on the care of the nervous system. Dorchel explores fantasy and abstracts the echo of transgenerational trauma in her body of culture through film, sound exploration, and object investigation. Dorchel has expanded her practice as an artist in residence with Springboard Danse-curated Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation Founder’s Residency, Gallim’s Moving Women, Leimay’s Incubation, the Center for Performance Research, Baryshnikov Arts Center and has received support from the City Artist Corps Grant and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant. Dorchel performed with A.I.M by Kyle Abraham for 2 years before immersing in Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, Shanghai. Dorchel is one of the original cast members of Emursive Theater’s Life And Trust. Alongside being an adjunct lecturer at Purchase College, Dorchel has presented work through Battery Dance Festival, Triskelion Arts, Arts on Site, Art Cake, Black Aesthetics at Judson Church, Beyond the Black Box Festival, and Creative Time. Dorchel is a 2025 Movement Research Van Lier Emerging Artist of Color Fellow with Nora Chipaumire as her mentor.

Sushi Dinner at the Cell

Sat May 10, 7:15pm

The Cell Theatre

Hosted by John Robinson

You read it right! Grab a dinner ticket and join us for a quick bite, in the theater, between shows

Ho’o Infinity

created by Pele Bauch and Eva Burgess

Sun May 11, 5:00pm

The Cell Theatre

Curated by Melissa Riker and John C. Robinson

Ho’o Infinity is a dance that travels from the darkness at the beginning of time to bounty and celebration. It melds together contemporary performance, abstraction, and poetry, with hula, mele, and mea‘ai – Hawaiian dance, song, and food. Food made by Chef Kini Kahauolopua.

Pele Bauch is an interdisciplinary choreographer who weaves together dance, theater, and installation design. With modern dance as her base, Bauch draws from the visual arts, oli (Hawaiian chant), hula, and her Hapa Haole Kanaka Maoli (multi-racial Native Hawaiian) heritage. Selected for the 2025 inaugural Wehiwehi convening of Native Hawaiian contemporary performing artists and the 2023 Western Arts Alliance Native Launchpad, Bauch’s work has been presented by La MaMa, Chocolate Factory, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Women in Motion, and others. She has received residencies from BAX, The Joyce Theater Foundation, and DTW. pelebauch.org

Shows and Experiences May 14-18

Imagination, Body, Play

Open Level Movement Workshop with Beth Graczyk

Wed May 14, 4-6pm

Judson Church Gym

Through cycles of action, image, and scenario, we’ll invite the subconscious to lead and make space for play. Solo and ensemble practices will help root and expand our shared imaginations.

Imagination, Body, Play

We’ll warm up by layering physical tasks that expand attention to breath, space, time, and connection with others—infused with a glimmering focus on gradients of weight and suspension. Through iterative cycles of action, image, and scenario, we’ll invite the subconscious to lead as we soften how we observe ourselves and each other, making room for play. We’ll move through solo and ensemble practices to ground and grow the architectures of our individual and collective imaginations.

Beth Graczyk is a choreographer, director, educator, and scientist based in Brooklyn/Lenapehoking. As Artistic Director of Beth Graczyk Productions, Inc. (BGP), a national nonprofit based in NYC, she bridges art and science through interdisciplinary performance while centering queer and neurodivergent perspectives. Since 2002, Graczyk has performed and choreographed nationally and internationally, including in Japan, Ecuador, France, China, and India. Her work has been presented by Velocity Dance Center, Gibney, La MaMa, JACK, CPR, and Movement Research, among others. Her recent dance documentary film, Waiting for the Bus, explores self-expression, movement, and identity through the lens of autism. It was an Official Selection in 2025 at the Winter Film Festival in NYC, and in 2024 at the NY Global Lift-Off and Sans Souci Dance Film Festivals. Since 2019, she has been on faculty at the NYC Peridance Certificate Program, teaching improvisation. In addition, she works part-time as a Research Specialist at The Rockefeller University in the lab of MacArthur Fellow Dr. Vanessa Ruta, studying olfaction in insects. Graczyk is an author on ten scientific publications. She has received funding from 4Culture, Artist Trust, the Washington State Arts Commission, and the NEA, and commissions from the City of Seattle, Peridance Collective, Northwest Film Forum, and Cornish College of the Arts. Her recent collaborators include John Maria Gutierrez (G^2), Aaron Gabriel, Amy Chavasse, and she has danced for Sara Shelton Mann, Mark Haim, Raja Kelly, and Molly Scott, among others.

SKY meets SEA

written, directed and choreographed by maura nguyễn donohue

in collaboration with the cast

Thurs May 15, 7pm

Judson Church Gym

Curated by Melissa Riker

A 1,000-year love story between St. Patrick and Medusa/Po Nagar converging on the banks of the Mekong River during the Vietnam War. A fantasia of crusades, kidnapping, snakes, and dragons examines eco-chemical warfare’s ongoing legacy.

maura nguyễn donohue is Director of MFA/Dance at Hunter College and a maker of ecological and Asian diasporic experimental installation and performance works using reclaimed materials. maura has been making work and facilitating, curating, producing, writing about, and leading public conversations on live performance in the US, Asia, and Europe for over 30 years. maura was co-producer/curator for the estrogenius festival for several years, was 1 of 12 choreographers included in Dance History(s): Imagination as a Form of Study, co-edited by thomas f. defrantz and Annie-B Parson.

IN EXCHANGE FOR ANONYMITY

by VERBAL ANIMAL

Thurs May 15, 8:00 PM

Judson Church Meeting Room

Curated by Sabrina Canas

Glistening bodies into communion, I say to you. In sweat. In sonic hypnosis. IN EXCHANGE FOR ANONYMITY is an undoing into the obscure, absurd, and monstrous complex of social surveillance.

Lavy is a choreographic dance artist, producer, and DJ. Graduating with their BFA in dance from Marymount Manhattan College, Lavy founded VERBAL ANIMAL, a rotating cohort of interdisciplinary collaborators. Since its inception, Lavy has been commissioned by the 14th St Y, TADA! Theater, 3 Dollar Bill, and Triskelion Arts. VERBAL ANIMAL curates Queer Noise, a platform created to provide emerging queer choreographers an opportunity to present experimental and process centered work. Most recently, Lavy was commissioned by Triskelion Arts to close out their 2024 season with the premiere of their new work, IN EXCHANGE FOR ANONYMITY. Lavy is a Co-Producer for the NY show Kiss My Face. They are active in creating decentralized performance experiences in club spaces that emulate sweat, connectivity, and Queer resilience. For, they are the founder and producer of PLAY ME TECHNO AND TELL ME IM PRETTY, an experience that doubles as a fundraiser for the Trans community.

VERBAL ANIMAL operates as a rotating collective of interdisciplinary collaborators spanning visual artists, dancers, sound creators, and drag artists. VERBAL ANIMAL centers the Queer experience to create immersive, decentralized, and theatrically charged performance. Our body of work seeks to investigate collective intelligence, question larger notions of surveillance practices, and emphasize the collective need for communality. We have been produced by Triskelion Arts, the Jamaica Making Moves Festival, and the Emerging Choreographers Series.

BUFFY and MTHR THSA

Thurs May 15, 9pm

Judson Church Gym

Curated by Portia Wells

Worlds of burlesque, theater and sisterhood collide and create a northern star.

EstroGenius 10 Minute Play Series

Tues May 13 7pm

Wed May 14 8:30pm

Sat May 17 4:00pm

Sat May 18 9:15pm

The RAT NYC, Dumbo, Brooklyn

These seven playwrights rose to the top in our adjudicated series.

The Short PLay Series is the cornerstone of the EstroGenius Festival. Beginning in 2000, and continuing to ask playwrights and directors to challenge assumptions, bend stereotypes and offer multifaceted characters with complex experiences on our stage.

The Rewrite by Lynda Crawford

Solipsism by Annette Maria Arnold

The Affair by Molly Kate Babos

Your Hot Grandma Wore Halter Tops by Carl Bernzweig

Life Support by Jill Melanie Wirth

Genesister by Desi Moreno-Penson

Evening Out by Karen Campion

Double Dose of Molly

Written and Performed by Molly Kirschner

Directed by Deb Margolin

Sat May 17 2pm

Under St. Marks Theatre, 95 St Mark’s Place NYC

A very special EstroGenius experience, Double Dose of Molly is presented by a brilliant mother and daughter team.

From the playwright:

Double Dose of Molly is a short solo performance piece, a tender autobiographical comedy based on my experience with undiagnosed bipolar disorder, the manic break I went through in my junior year of college, and the long process of recovery that this transformative incident set in motion.

Molly Kirschner, poet, dramatist, performer, and educator, is a teaching artist at Vermont Stage and a

resident playwright of Rising Sun Performance Company. She debuted her original solo show “Double

Dose of Molly” as part of the inaugural 2024 SNAP Festival at The Flynn Center in Burlington, VT.

Monologues from her plays L’appel du Vide (a finalist for ThinkTank Theatre’s 2021 TYA Playwrights

Festival) and Woman With A Parasol have been published in Smith and Kraus’ Best Men’s Stage

Monologues and Best Women’s Stage Monologues anthologies. Kirschner’s poems have appeared in

journals including The Southern Review, The New Ohio Review, and One Magazine. Four poems are

forthcoming from Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics. Her new manuscript was a finalist for the 2021 Four Way Books Levis Prize in Poetry.

Deb Margolin, Director is a playwright, actor, director, and founding member of Split Britches Theater Company. She is the author of numerous plays, including Turquoise, Critical Mass, Imagining Madoff, and Bringing the Fishermen Home, as well as 11 solo performance plays which she has toured throughout the US, including 8 STOPS, a comedy concerning the grief of endless compassion. Deb was honored with an OBIE award for Sustained Excellence of Performance, the Kesselring Prize for Playwriting, a Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwright award, and the Richard H. Broadhead Prize for teaching excellence at Yale University, where she is Professor in the Practice in the undergraduate Theater Studies Program.

EstroGenius Reading Series

8 plays, 2 directors, awesome actors

Sun May 18 1:00pm

The RAT NYC, DUMBO, Brooklyn

Directed by Charmaine Broad and Heather Bildman our 8 playwrights offer brand new plays through the EstroGenius Company Actors

Our Girl by Ann Barrett

Crush by Quinn Warren

The View From The Top Of The World by Liz Leighton

The Program by Andrea Fleck Clardy

Bovine Existential by Brian C. Petti

Saboteurs by Donna Latham

The Sisters Fox by Emmy Weissman

The Art of the Deal by J. Thalia Cunningham

Shows and Experiences May 21-24

Community Workshop

Wed May 21, 4:00pm

Judson Church

EstroGenius brings thinkers, movers and world changers to be in dialogue and lead an hour and a half workshop for all.

Automorphs

created and performed by Kara Beadle and Andy Zacek

Thurs May 22, 7pm

Judson Church Gym

Sat May 24, 5:30pm

Downtown Art, 70 E 4th St

Curated by Melissa Riker and John Robinson

For the rebellious and curious bicyclists in your life. From Seattle, with love.

Automorphs follows a band of bicycling rebels as they adapt and evolve in a world dominated by the automobile. The weight of endless asphalt, the ever-present danger of high-speed steel beasts, noxious gas and cacophony combine to mutate their insubordination into an all-consuming identity.

Kara Beadle (they/them) is a movement artist, dance educator, and massage therapist based in Seattle, WA. As a non-binary, neuro-queer dance maker, Kara values queering dance through humor, improvisation, and object/human relationships to explore their interest in the interplay between neurodivergence, gender-nonconformance, the pressure to fit into society, and performative art. In Kara’s work absurd scenarios are created between objects and bodies to subvert objectification and flaunt our lust for inanimate things. We empathize with objects. We objectify ourselves. We anthropomorphize objects. We empathize with ourselves.

Kara’s work has been shown in On The Boards Spectacle Spectacular, Next Fest Northwest: Rupture/Reverence, Texas Dance Improvisation Festival, Show 5, Georgetown’s Art Attack, The Shed’s Being Mode Residency Showing: Character Arc, Open Flight Studio’s Flight Deck Residency Showing, 18th and Union’s Portable Performance Festival, Velocity Dance Center’s Fall Kick-off: Portals, Launch, TakePause, and The Seattle International Dance Festival.

for ↔ from

Devised by Movement of the People Dance Company

Thurs May 22, 8:00 PM

Judson Church Meeting Room

Curated by Melissa Riker and John Robinson

Influenced by their repertory work (For) Those We Left Behind, MOPDC performers channel their ancestral stories and unanswered questions in a new immersive contemporary dance theater piece. A visceral multi-lived experience grounded in lessons of resilience for our individual and collective journeys.

Harlemite, Joya Powell is a Bessie Award winning choreographer, educator, writer passionate about community and dances of the African Diaspora. Founder of Movement of the People Dance Company, her work has appeared in venues such as: BAM, Lincoln Center, Harlem Stage, BAAD!, The Folger Theatre (DC), The Flea Theater, and The National Black Theater. A previous Dancing While Black Fellow, Women in Motion Commissioned Artist, The Unsettling Dramaturgy Award and and LMCC Creative Engagement/UMEZ recipient. Joya is an Assistant Professor of the Practice in Dance at Wesleyan University and co-leader of Angela’s Pulse’s Dancing While Black.

Till It Tear Us Apart

choreographed by Petra Zanki

Thurs May 22, 9pm

Judson Church

Curated by Melissa Riker and John Robinson

Inspired by her life and the lives of people navigating the magnetic fields of short-lived NYC relationships, Petra translates this reality into a communion: a Brooklyn rave where dreams, jobs, and star alignments, come together on a dance floor.

PETRA ZANKI is an immigrant choreographer and artist living in Brooklyn, New York. She is a current 2024 Brooklyn Arts Council Grant Awardee. Petra graduated from the MFA Choreography program at CODARTS, Netherlands in 2023, and presented her works in the US and internationally. Growing up in Croatia during the war, Petra’s main interest remains the transformation of pain into landscapes of beauty for the benefit of humanity

back pocket

Choreographed, directed and performed by tidbit collective

Olivia Rousey, Sabrina Canas, and Taylor Woodie

Sat May 24, 7pm

Downtown Art, 70 E 4th St

Curated by Melissa Riker

back pocket is neither now nor later, a live reminiscence of skewed memories that both abandon space + time and tie us to the present. it is a re-imagination of age/ing that encourages us to accept our inability to ever know the whole story.

tidbit collective is a women-led collective that is engaged with methods of worldbuilding as a means to reconstruct the everyday. Our work architects spaces of possibility using pop culture and the conditions of performance as an indicator of reality. tidbit has performed at the 14th Street Y, SAA, 28th Street Theatre (TADA), La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, PAGEANT, and Arts On Site.

When The Muzzle Comes Off, Who Do You Bite First?

choreographed and performed by Portia Wells

Sat May 24, 8:30pm

Downtown Art, E4th St

Curated by Melissa Riker

A ritual of celebration, the work traces the shifting gaze placed upon a transitioning body. How quickly do I learn the script? Personas are reimagined in a darkly playful story of self-construction set to a pulsing techno soundscape of layered text.

Portia Wells is a trans non-binary multidisciplinary artist based in Lenapehoking (NYC). They were born and raised on occupied lands and waters known as the Finger Lakes region of New York. Dance has been the central axis of their life, mobilizing their personal voice to communicate and research the stories and experiences of their lived reality and those in the room with them. His work centers the stories we carry with us into the studio and is informed by his lived queer/trans experience, collaborative creative processes, and feminist, queer, and trans theory.

Their work spans choreography, curation, production and stage management, creative direction, writing, and sound design. They are the Technical Coordinator and an Adjunct Lecturer for the Dance Department at Hunter College. Their choreographic work has been shown at Manhattan Movement and Arts Center, EstroGenius festival, BAAD!, Fertile Ground, The Kraine Theater, Triskelion, and the cell.

He is a cofounder of FourAcres, a creative production company creating pathways to bring together skilled artists with global perspectives and developing press platforms for international artists seeking visas.

EstroGenius Festival is an annual celebration of the artistry of femme, non-binary, non-conforming and trans womxn artists produced by Melissa Riker, Portia Wells and Sabrina Canas with the guest curation of John C. Robinsosn and Short Play producer Vincent Marano. Founded as a short play festival in 2000 at Manhattan Theatre Source by Fiona Jones, EstroGenius, as co-directed by Riker and maura nguyễn donohue since 2017 exists to present the voices of dance-makers, playwrights, experimental performers, teens, musicians, burlesque performers, noise artists, filmmakers, dj’s and anyone else looking to break molds and crack gender codes to the stage, street and forefront of public attention. EstroGenius 2024 is possible in part to generous funding via 2024 NYSCA Support for Organizations through New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, along with the generosity of John C. Robinson, Vincent Marano, maura nguyen donohue and our individual donors. www.estrogenius.nyc

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