Building A Better Fishtrap / Phase 2

Ebony Noelle Golden (Creative Collaborator) is the CEO and principal engagement strategist at Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative, LLC and the artistic director of Body Ecology Womanist Performance Project. BDAC is a New York City-based cultural arts direct action group that works to inspire, instigate, and incite transformation, radical expressiveness, and progressive social change through community-designed, culturally-relevant, creative projects. The Houston, TX native is also an accomplished performance artist, poet, director, and choreographer who stages site-specific rituals and live art performances that profoundly explore the complexities of freedom in the time of now. www.bettysdaughterarts.com

Sara Jimenez (Visual Design) is a New York based multidisciplinary artist. She received her BA from the University of Toronto (2008) and her MFA from Parsons the New School for Design (2013). Her practice explores memory, impermanence, and cultural identity. Residencies include Brooklyn Art Space (2014), Wave Hill’s Winter Workspace (2015), The Vermont Studio Center (2016), and the Bronx Museum’s AIM program. Exhibitions include the Pinto Art Museum, Rush Arts Gallery, and The Brooklyn Museum (Tatlo). She has performed at The Noguchi Museum and Dixon Place, among others. This spring, Jimenez had two solo exhibitions at FiveMyles Gallery and Wayfarers Gallery.

Rosa Navarette (Video Design) is video artist based in Los Angeles. She is honored to be working with Building a Better Fishtrap once more. Recent video projects involve Amara Tabor-Smith’s “STAND” (2016), “Chicanas, Cholas, Y Chisme 2016” promo video (2016), and Selah Gospel Choir’s “YES!” performance documentation (2015). Education: Inner-City Filmmakers, UC Berkeley, Integrated Movement Studies. rosalnavarrete.blogspot.com

Everett Saunders (Sound Design) is the founder and creative director of Flux Innovations, LLC a digital media services company. Their recent clients include PBS, Sony Music, and Columbia Records. Saunders is a producer, composer, songwriter, and performer. He has specific knowledge and practice in audio post-production and multi track board operation. His work spans across genres with original compositions for numerous independent films and New York’s dance community, having premiered work at two notable dance venues Dance Theatre Workshop (EGO 2010), and Dance New Amsterdam (Moments In Prayer 2008) and Raw Material (To Co-Exist 2009/2011). Everett has also mixed, mastered, and arranged for the internationally acclaimed dance company Urban Bush Women (Cool Baby Cool 2009). Some of Everett’s latest audio editing work includes DJ Cassidy’s forthcoming debut album “Paradise Royale” on Columbia Records. Paradise Royale features collaborations from artists Cee-Lo Green, John Legend, Kelly Rowland, Mary J. Blige, Usher and countless others. Two currently released singles from the forthcoming album, “Calling All Hearts” and “Make The World Go Round” have charted here in the US and abroad. Everett is currently researching and developing soundscapes that include his extensive work in the world of 3D Audio, which can currently be seen as an installation at MoCADA Museum in Brooklyn, NY. Everett is an avid vinyl collector and musicologist, his love of sound has inspired a diverse palette of favorites ranging from Pharoahe Monch to composers Hans Zimmer and Ennio Morricone.

Vassi Spanos (Installation Design) is delighted to be in collaboration with Paloma McGregor on Building a Better Fishtrap/Phase 2 at BAX. Vassi holds a BA from UC Berkeley and a MS from Pratt. In addition to her work in installation and production design, she is an art historian and international museum specialist.

Emma K. Rivera (Lighting Design/Technical Direction) is the technical director and resident lighting designer at Brooklyn Arts Exchange/BAX, and a technical director at Speyer Hall, University Settlement. She is thrilled to be working with Paloma McGregor on this iteration of Building A Better Fishtrap. emmarvr.wix.com/design

Jaimé Dzandu (Performance Guide) is from Hampton, VA. She received a B.F.A in Dance Choreography from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her co-choreographic work was recently selected to present for Dancing While Black: Dancing on Fertile Ground in New Orleans. She was one of the women choreographers selected to participate in Urban Bush Women’s Choreographic Center Prototype Week. Her work has been presented at the National Black Theatre of Harlem, Bushwick Starr and New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center. Jaime´ work is personal and political in that it is rooted in creating and supporting healing, affirming, and liberating spaces for women and girls. She is a teaching artist for Preschool Rock! – providing quality movement and art programming for the Brooklyn community and Lower Eastside Girls Club. Jaimé is an Urban Bush Women BOLD facilitator apprentice. She has performed with artist such as Nathan Trice Rituals Dance Theatre, Roots and Revolution and Brother(hood) Dance. She bows in gratitude to her ancestors, family, teachers and friends that guide her along her journey.

Stephanie Mas (Performance Guide) is a dancer and performing artist that resides in Brooklyn, NY. She has collaborated with Paloma McGregor and Fishtrap since January 2013. She is currently a company member with Urban Bush Women and serves as a facilitator and teacher for Urban Bush Women workshops nationally and internationally. She also earned her 200 hr yoga certification in Vinyasa yoga with Laughing Lotus and enjoys sharing and learning from her students. Many thanks to Paloma for continuing to join her in Fishtrap.

Ni’Ja Whitson (Performance Guide), An award-winning interdisciplinary artist, performer and educator, New York based Ni’Ja Whitson, has been referred to as “majestic” and “powerful” by the New York Times. Recent awards include an LMCC Process Space Residency, Bogliasco Fellowship, Brooklyn Arts Exchange Artist Residency, two-time Creative Capital “On Our Radar” award including being among its inaugural group, among dozens of other residencies and awards across disciplines. As a practitioner of indigenous and diasporic African ritual and resistance forms, they create work that reflects the sacred in street, conceptual, and indigenous performance. Proudly, they collaborate with notables in theatre, dance, visual art, and music including closely with Sharon Bridgforth and Douglas Ewart, and other leaders such as Dianne McIntyre, Oliver Lake, Edward Wilkerson Jr., Daniel Alexander Jones, Charlotte Brathwaite, Allison Knowles, and Baba Israel. Ni’Ja Whitson is currently on faculty at the New School for Liberal Arts and is the founder/artistic director of The NWA Project.