photo by Ben Hoste

Mari Meade is an educator, choreographer, and the Artistic Director of Mari Meade Dance Collective/MMDC. Meade has received the New York Choreographic Institute, UNCSA Development Residency, the Kenan Fellowship at Lincoln Center Education and was an Artist in Residence at Chez Bushwick, Triskelion Arts, CUNY Dance Initiative, and Lake Studios Berlin. She has been awarded a Brooklyn Arts Council regrant, and a “New Work” and Su Casa grant from Queens Arts Council. Her contemporary dance company, Mari Meade Dance Collective/MMDC, is approaching their tenth year, and has performed nationally and internationally. The evening length run of “dialogue” premiered to sold out audiences in June 2018. Mari Meade is also a board member of the Kenan Institute for the Arts and the Associate Director of the UNCSA’s Choreographic Institute. She has been commissioned by Amalgamate Dance Company, One Day Dance and CounterPointe. She is a teaching artist for New York City Ballet and Dancing Classrooms. She is a graduate of UNCSA.

photo by Jade Young

Claire Davison was born in Boulder, Colorado. She received her initial ballet training at the Boulder Ballet School and later went on to join the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at American Ballet Theatre in 2010. Davison joined ABT as an apprentice in November 2012 and the corps de ballet in June 2013. She has created roles in multiple ABT productions as well as reprised many roles in the full-length classics. Davison was a selected choreographer for ABT’s Innovation Initiative in 2014 and the “Incubator” choreographic workshop in 2019. In 2018, Davison created the one act ballet, “One of Us,” in collaboration with The Boulder Ballet and composer Paul Fowler. She has toured with Twyla Tharp Dance and appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Aside from ballet, Davison is an actor, clown, improviser, and film maker based in Brooklyn.

photo by Sarah Annie Navarrete

Alexa Capareda received her training in ballet and contemporary dance at Ballet Regina and the Philippine High School for the Arts. After moving to Texas, she trained at Ballet Austin. She continued her studies in Canada at Ecole Superieure de Ballet Contemporain de Montreal before joining Mario Radacovsky’s Balet Bratislava in Slovakia, where she had the privilege of performing Jiri Kylian’s Falling Angels and Six Dances. She began exploring her own choreography before leaving Europe, winning 3rd prize at the 2013 Festival of Choreographic Miniatures in Serbia. Alexa has been a dance instructor at Ballet Austin’s Butler Center for Dance since 2013. She joined the Ballet Austin Academy faculty in 2015 and is currently a member of Ballet Austin’s artistic staff. As Rehearsal Director for Ballet Austin II and the Butler Fellowship Program, she has assisted in restaging of BAII repertoire and has created pieces on Butler Fellows. Alexa also works as a dance artist with Jennifer Hart’s Performa/Dance, ARCOS, BLiPSWiTCH, Jennifer Sherburn, and Magdalena Jarkowiec. She is co-producer and performing artist with Frank Wo/Men Collective, and her solo work has been featured in collaborations with sound artists/musicians Steve Parker, Brent Baldwin, Henna Chou, Lynn Lane’s Houston-based Transitory Sound and Movement Collective, Austin Camerata, and LOLA Austin. In 2017, Alexa received an Austin Critics Table Award for Excellence as a Dancer.