Kayla Farrish/Decent Structure Arts is an emerging company combining filmmaking, photography, and dance. Farrish is a NY based director with a vision for intimate storytelling.  A North Carolina native, born into a dance-loving family. In 2013, she graduated from the University of Arizona  summa cum laude, and was awarded the Gertrude Shurr Award for excellence in modern dance and passionate dancing. Since moving to New York, she has freelanced with various artists and companies including Punchdrunk Sleep No More NYC, Kyle Abraham/Abraham. In. Motion, Kate Weare Company, Helen Simoneau Danse, Rashaun Mitchell/Silas Reiner, Nicole Von Arx, Danielle Russo Performance Project, and others. She’s received three choreographic commissions: Of Bones Dance (2014) and Houses on the Moon Theater Company (2016), and Danspace (2019).  She co-choreographed Gods and Accepting Darkness with Nik Owens for Spark Dance Forum (2015). Studying photography and film with Yara Travesio, Benjamin Heller, and Brooklyn Central, she formed portraiture, writing, and improvisation studies Beloved Loveless, and  premiered With Delicacy and Permanence live solo and film in May 2017 at B.A.A.D! In Summer 2017, she was granted a residency with Chez Bushwick, creating 5 short dance/music video films including Black Bodies Sonata, Anchors of Iridescence Part I & II, and You Were In My Dreams Last Night along with a film inspired photograph gallery. These films were presented at Chez Bushwick A.I.R. performance, Bushwick Open Studios, Triskelion Film Festival, Deconstructed:Dance Films Festival, Mouthfull Presents/ Of Bones Dance, and Detroit Women in Film Festival. In 2018, she developed live works: Wager/With grit From, Grace, live duet version Black Bodies Sonata, and Why I Can’t Hold Strangers performing at Stuffed: Dinner and Dance program at Judson Church, Pepatian APAP showcase, Arts On Site Performance Party,  Danspace curated Food For Thought, BAAD!, and other spaces. She produced and created “Spectacle” Film and Live Performance evening length piece apart of the Pepatian Dance Your Future Residency in 2018. In 2019, she will take part of the Keshet Makers Space Experience Residency, Petronio Residency Center, and also premiere new and developing works in her Danspace Fall 2019 Commision.

Sam Kim is an experimental choreographer, performer and teacher based in Brooklyn who has been making and performing in dances since the mid ‘90s.  Her work restlessly investigates and occupies the margins of dance while courting the danger inherent in rejecting dance’s legacies––in other words, her choreographic practice is a means of engaging in a personal game of brinkmanship.

Significant, commissioned works include Procession (Zenon Dance Company, 2018), Fear in Porcelain (The Chocolate Factory Theater, 2016), Angle of Incidence (Zenon Dance Company, 2016), Sister to a Fiend (Gibney Dance, 2015), Some Kind of Derelict Telekinesis (Barnard/Columbia Dances at New York Live Arts, 2014), Darling (PS122, 2009), dumb dumb bunny (The Kitchen, 2007), Cult (Dance Theater Workshop, 2007), AVATAR (Mulberry St Theater, 2006), Nobody Understands Me (Dance Theater Workshop, 2004), Placid Baby (PS122, 2003), and Valentine (Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, 2002).  In addition to the upcoming premiere of Other Animal, she looks forward to the premiere of her project, The Fall, at The Chocolate Factory Theater in ’20/21.  Sam’s work has also been presented by the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Galapagos Art and Performance Space, JACK and Movement Research, and nationally and internationally, by Highways Performance Space (LA), Studio 303 (Montréal), the Unknown Theater (LA) and Bryant Lake Bowl (Minneapolis), among many others.

Sam has been awarded grants, fellowships and residencies from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Lucky Star Foundation, MAP Fund, Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation, Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, Swoon Art House, Ucross Foundation, Mount Tremper Arts, Yaddo, Bogliasco Foundation, Movement Research, New York Live Arts, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, MacDowell Colony and Brooklyn Arts Exchange, among others in support of her work.

Sam engages with and is responsive to the NYC experimental dance community through various leadership roles.  Sam has taught classes and workshops throughout LA, Minneapolis and NYC, and frequently serves as a panelist and adjudicator for numerous organizations, most recently for the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Movement Research Artist in Residence program, The Bogliasco Fellowship and MAP Fund grant.  She also organized and moderated the feminist Movement Research Studies Project Band of Outsiders: WOMEN (2016).  Sam served on the board of Dance Theater Workshop (2006-2010) and was a member of the Artist Advisory Committee at PS122 (1999-2003).  She has also served as an artistic advisor to residency programs and individual choreographers.