Photo by Bruce Tom
Symone Sanz (she/her) is a dance artist versed in performance, improvisation, and choreography from Los Angeles. She holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Since living in Seattle, she has enjoyed creating work with artists Heather Kravas, The Seattle Project, Cherdonna Shinatra, and zoe|juniper, among many others. Symone inspires euphoria in her Dance Church® classes and supports the Seattle dance community through her work in arts administration, with a focus on curation and marketing. She currently serves as Board Treasurer for Velocity Dance Center.
Credit: Lou Daprile
Jody Kuehner (she/her) aka Cherdonna Shinatra uses dance, drag, theater, camp, feminist traditions, absurdity and subversive commentary to make art. Twenty years ago, she landed in Seattle and fell in love with its rowdy, postmodern dance culture. She fell in love with her own queerness. In doing so, Jody created Cherdonna Shinatra as a persona and character to question herself and explore the world from a uniquely queer perspective. Over the last 10 years Jody has created and performed a wide array of evening-length works and performance installations described as “uncategorizable spectacles” (The Stranger) for theaters, museums, clubs, parking lots, and abandoned buildings.
She is a 2023 & 2020 NEFA National Dance Project finalist, 2017 Artist Trust Fellowship recipient, 2016 NEFA’s National Dance Project awardee, and 2015 Stranger Genius Award winner. She has been presented locally at On the Boards, Washington Ensemble Theatre, Seattle Theatre Group, and the Henry Art Gallery. She has been presented nationally at the USF in Tampa FL, Go Drag! Festival, Berlin, Germany; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI; Centro de las Artes, Monterrey, Mexico; The Yard at Martha’s Vineyard; American Dance Festival, Durham, NC; and FringeArts in Philadelphia, PA. Her exhibition DITCH was presented at the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA; The Momentary at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AK; Sarasota Art Museum, FL; and Akron Art Museum, OH. DITCH was featured in ARTnews, i-D Magazine and NBC’s 12 must-see LGBTQ art shows around the world.
Parmida Ziaei (she/her) is an Iranian multidisciplinary artist and designer based in Seattle and the co-founder of Seda Iranian Theatre Ensemble. Parmida has been a scenic and production designer with many Seattle theaters including ACT, Village Theatre, Seattle Shakespeare Company, ArtsWest,Taproot Theatre, Seattle Public Theater, among others. When not designing, Parmida performs, choreographs and teaches as a movement artist and serves as a consultant and curator. Parmida has been the recipient of multiple residencies including the 2022 Northwest Creator Residency at Village Theatre.
Fox Whitney (he/him) is a multi-disciplinary artist working at the intersection of dance, music, film+video, theater, writing, and visual art. Fox is obsessed with the surreal nature of transformation, how we identify ourselves and how personal and collective identity is an ever-shifting and evolving landscape. His projects center his queer and transgender point of view. He founded the QT interdisciplinary performance project Gender Tender in 2012. He also fronts the trans-futurist psych band Light Aloud that grew from his ongoing series of performances and workshops called MELTED RIOT. MELTED RIOT is a surreal protest song, a queer meditation, a psychedelic research project, a punk prayer.
Fox’s work has been commissioned and produced by the Henry Art Gallery, On the Boards, Velocity Dance Center, Seattle International Dance Festival, Yellow Fish Epic Durational Performance Festival, and was selected for the inaugural season of Seattle’s Gay City Arts. Light Aloud has played at Trans Pride Seattle, Capitol Hill Block Party, and the Seattle Art Fair. He has performed in works by Meg Foley, Will Rawls, keyon gaskin, Morgan Thorson, Andrew Schneider, CommonForm Dance Project, Malic Amalya, and Gabrielle Civil. He got his MFA in Studio Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has exhibited his short films and visual art nationally. Fox is also a yoga and meditation teacher, movement teaching artist, and arts journalist currently writing for SeattleDances and Variable West. He was the Artistic Director of Velocity Dance Center from 2020-2022.
