DANSPACE PROJECT PRESENTS

Ogemdi Ude is a dance and interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn. Her performance work focuses on Black femme legacies and futures, grief, and memory. Her work has been presented at New York Live Arts, Kampnagel, The Kitchen, Gibney, Harlem Stage, Danspace Project, Abrons Arts Center, BRIC, ISSUE Project Room, Recess Art, and for BAM’s DanceAfrica festival. She is a 2026 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists recipient, 2025 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Choreography, 2025 Princess Grace Honoraria in Choreography, 2025-2028 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, and a 2024 NEFA National Dance Project Production Grant recipient. In January 2022 she appeared on the cover of Dance Magazine for their annual “25 to Watch” issue. She has published a book Watch Me in a collection edited by Thomas F. DeFrantz and Annie-B Parson: Dance History(s): Imagination as a Form of Study published by Dancing Foxes Press and Wesleyan University Press.

Jailyn Phillips-Wiley (Performer) is a Jersey bred, Brooklyn based freelance dance artist. While attending Rutgers University, Jailyn was blessed enough to work with her peers, Shannon Gillen/Vim Vigor Dance, Dawn Marie Bazemore, and Noa Zuk. She was awarded Mason Gross’ Majorie J. Turner award for outstanding choreography on her senior thesis and received her BFA in May 2020. In 2022, Jailyn joined Umoja Dance Company under the direction of Karen Love. Wiley’s professional experience also includes chameckilerner, KeiyaA, and Kashia Kancey, among others. Jailyn dedicates this performance to all her childhood friends that pushed her into dance battle circles. IG: @jaipeedubs

Junyla Silmon (Performer) is a New Jersey based movement artist originally from Canton, MS. She is a summa cum laude graduate from Montclair State University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in dance performance, minor in business administration, and certificate of entrepreneurship. Junyla has performed with the dance companies Freespace Dance, Accent Dance NYC, Susan Marshall & Company, and continues an ongoing work relationship with choreographers Stefanie Batten Bland and Kayla Farrish. She was also a performer in the final years of Punchdrunk’s “Sleep No More” in NYC, and most recently premiered in “FAIRYLAND: ETHER” by Alba Albanese and StoryverseNYC Inc. IG: @nyla.js 

Kayla Farrish (Performer) is a creator, multidisciplinary artist, and performer in NYC. As a freelance performer she’s collaborated with Ogemdi Ude, Autumn Knight, Micah Watson, Danielle Russo, Kate Weare, Sleep No More NYC, Marjani Forte, Nicole Von Arx, Helen Simoneau Danse, Kyle Abraham/AIM and more! She has received Bessie Awards, Harkness Promise Award, NY Times Break Out Star, NEFA Project Grantee, and Ellis Beauregard Contemporary Dance Award. Her commissions include Limon Dance Company, ADF, Armstrong Now!, Harlem Stage and beyond. She creates live works, films, and collaborative projects with artists like Esperanza Spalding, Trixie Whitley, Moor Mother, and Melanie Charles. (She loves MAJOR!!!) IG: @fulloutfarrish 

song aziza tucker (Performer) is a project based movement and writing artist wrapped up in the erotic, cathartic, and beautiful reflections of black femme aliveness and survivalhood. She obtained both her BFA and MFA degrees respectively at the University of the Arts under the direction of Donna Faye Burchfield. song has had the pleasure of working as a performer and collaborator with, jaamil olawale kosoko, Tommie-Waheed Evans, Niall Jones, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Ogemdi Ude, and Doug Varone, among others. Through all collaboration, song desires and commands a full pronouncement of a voluminous self impelled by black femme strategies for aliveness. 

Camille Phelps (Performer) is an interdisciplinary dancer based in New York City. Originally from Atlanta, she began her training at Dancemakers of Atlanta. She continued her training at SUNY Purchase where she graduated in 2023 with her BFA in dance. During her time at Purchase, she had the opportunity to perform works by Bill T. Jones, Linda and Glenn Sims, 2nd Best Dance Company, and Kyle Abraham. After graduating, Camille has been freelancing in New York City, performing with Akira Uchida, Keerati Jinakunwiphat, Imani Gaudin, Wendell Gray and is a member of Sidra Bell Dance New York. @coolcatmil

Lambkin (Composer) (she/they) Electronic R&B/pop music, modern dance, and Black futurism comprise Lambkin’s artistic vision: where the visceral meets the cerebral; where the natural enacts the synthetic. The musician, composer, choreographer, and director explores Blackness as the break that might rupture our attachments to Worlds, territories, and Man. IG: @biglillamb 

Myssi Robinson (Archivist) is a Bessie award winning performer, multidisciplinary maker and caregiver from Powhatan lands / Richmond, VA.  Robinson explores creative archiving, mixed-media marking + design, ritual curiosities and her own improvising body.  Through photography, video poetry, visual art response and spirit-forward witnessing, she asks how archival effort can flirt with embodiment, collective processing, affirmation of being and the blurring of legibility. In all her working, Intuition and empathy play with maximalist instinct to give life to what comes. Gratitude to Carolyn and Darrin for her life and abilities to create freely within it. may we all heal. IG: @myssirobinson 

tania “t” saiz perez (Production Stage Manager) is a queer immigrant dance artist and production stage manager based in Brooklyn, NY. They hold a BFA in Dance from the University of the Arts, where they served as Production Coordinator and Stage Manager from 2022 to 2024. In her freelance work, t has had the pleasure of working with BigKid Dance, Cannonball Festival, HIVEWILD, Kayla Farrish, Marguerite Hemmings, MICHIYAYA Dance, Ninth Planet Productions, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, and waheedworks. Currently, they are the Production Stage Manager for the BFA Dance Lab at Bennington College and Ogemdi Ude’s MAJOR.

Celeste Jennings (Costume Designer) is a costume designer and playwright who is so proud to be a part of the MAJOR team. Recent/Upcoming Costume Design include: Appropriate (Old Globe Theatre), Oh Happy Day and Pride and Prejudice (Baltimore Center Stage), Memnon (The Classical Theatre of Harlem at the Getty Center and Marcus Garvey Park), Rough Crossing (Resident Ensemble Players), Minor;ity (Women’s Project Theatre), Fat Ham (Huntington Theatre), and Furlough’s Paradise (Geffen Playhouse). Recent Produced Plays: Citrus and ‘Bov Water (Northern Stage). Recent Play Readings: Potliqka (Public Theatre) and Contentious Woman (PlayCo). Education: MFA in costume design from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She’s a current member of the Emerging Writer’s Group of the Public Theatre. IG: celestejenn_ Website: https://www.celestejenndesigns.com/

Sara Pereira da Silva (Producer) is a Fulbright alumnus with an MA in arts management from American University. She was the recipient of an INOVArt grant and has been involved in dance teaching and Arts Management for more than 16 years with experience in Macau, Hong Kong, Lisbon, Washington, D.C., and New York City. In February 2018, she joined Big Dance Theater as their Executive Director, where she has produced 6 different works that toured internationally. Silva is also a member of CIPA (Creative and Independent Producers Alliance), she joined Ogemdi Ude/MAJOR in October of 2024.

“MAJOR / The Chord Archive” is a National Performance Network (NPN) Documentation & Storytelling Fund Project supported by the Doris Duke Foundation and the Surdna Foundation.

Danspace Project pays respect to Lenape peoples. We acknowledge that this work is situated on the Lenape island of Manhattan (Mannahatta) in Lenapehoking, the Lenape homeland. We pay respect to Lenape land, water, and ancestors past, present and future.

Danspace Project presents new work in dance, supports a diverse range of choreographers in developing their work, encourages experimentation, and connects artists to audiences.

For over 50 years, Danspace Project has supported a vital community of contemporary dance artists in an environment unlike any other in the United States. Located in the historic St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, Danspace shares its facility with the Church, The Poetry Project, and New York Theatre Ballet. Danspace Project’s Commissioning Initiative has commissioned nearly 600 new works since its inception in 1994.

More about our staff, our mission, and values

For information on our funders, visit danspaceproject.org/support

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