in the shade

A visual artist and performer from Martinique, Luigi Savon explores a phantasmagorical universe. Graphic and pictorial practices (drawing, watercolor painting), assemblage, sewing, embroidery, digital arts (studio and digital photography, digital art on smartphone and tablet, video) and performance. Multidisciplinary, his creative work is part of a poetic and playful dimension. He stages his body as in a process of re-presentation where it embodies an invisible universe.

Performer, singer, pedagogue & dramaturg, Angélique pursued a 25-year career in Europe working with, among others, Alain Platel, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Jan Lauwers/Needcompany, & as a singer with Belgian world-music group, Zap Mama. She is a dramaturg for dance & contemporary circus & continues to perform for choreographers in Montreal, receiving the prestigious Prix de la danse – catégorie Interprète in 2022. She is Associate Professor of Contemporary Dance at Concordia University & Special Advisor to the Provost on Black Integration & Knowledges. Interested in decolonial dramaturgies & the dramaturgy of the performing body, Angélique holds a Concordia University Research Chair in Ecologies of B/black Performance.

jeremy de’jon guyton is a performance artist researching Afro//queer archives to examine club dance spaces through the lenses of sound, sweat, and sex(uality). With an M.F.A. in Choreography & Performance from Florida State University and a B.A. in Theatre & Performance Studies from Georgetown University, his choreographic research weaves together devised theatre-making practices, text and spoken word, media, and social and club movement languages to build immersive worlds that urge audiences to listen deeply, question critically, and dream big. He has toured internationally with critically acclaimed artists such as Solange Knowles, is an active member of regional and international artist collectives, has designed and managed programming at the intersection of arts and advocacy for both youth and adult artists. Additional credits include: Jeremy Nedd, Maya Taylor, Aluna, Chris Emile, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, Kristin Sudeikis, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Kesha McKey, Leyla McCallah and Kiyoko McCrae, KM Dance Project, Junebug Productions, B.U.K.U. Dance Krewe, and Goat in the Road Productions. More information can be found at www.jeremydejon.com

donna Kukama is a South African interdisciplinary artist whose practice merges various media by using performance as a tool for artistic research. Moving across performance, video, painting, and installation, her practice often presents socially engaged art through unconventional modes of storytelling in order to destabilize existing historical metanarratives and how we look at reality. Her work takes on an experimental and undisciplined form. With her practice, Kukama opens up multiple ways of inhabiting space, creating other worlds, and conceiving reality. Kukama has exhibited and presented performances at several notable institutions and museums, including the Tate Modern in London; Nottingham Contemporary in Nottingham; Padiglione de’Arte Contemporanea Milano in Milan; South African National Gallery in Cape Town; Museum of Modern Art in Antwerp; nGbK in Berlin; and the New Museum in New York. She has participated in, among others, the 10th Berlin Biennale; the 57th Belgrade Biennale; 12th Lyon Biennale; the 6th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art; 32nd Bienal de São Paulo; 3rd New Museum Triennale; 1st Stellenbosch Triennale; 8th Berlin Biennale and the 55th Venice Biennale (as part of the South African Pavilion). She was the 2014 recipient of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Performance Art in South Africa, and nominated for the 2010 MTN New Contemporaries Award in South Africa. Kukama currently lives and works in Cologne, and is the Professor for Contemporary Art focusing on the Global South at the Academy of Media Arts (KHM).

James Johnson is a proud Belizean American from Chicago, IL. Trained at Chicago Academy for the Arts under the direction of Ana Paskevska and Randy Duncan. Johnson continued his education at SUNY Purchase College where he was able to represent the United States in Hong Kong for the International Dance Festival performing works by Lauri  Stallings, Paul Taylor and Mark Morris. He has worked with choreographers Robert Battle, Sidra Bell, Mario Schroeder, Randy Duncan, Edwardo Vilaro and Edgar Zendejas. Other credits to his name include Hubbard Street 2, Muntu Dance Theater, West Indian Folk Dance Company, The Willingham Project, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, DanceWorks Chicago, Creative Outlet, and Forces of Nature Dance Theater. He was also in productions with Lyric Opera of Chicago, Chicago Opera House(soloist dancers), San Francisco Opera House (s/o dancer us) and Cirque du Soleil’s The Beatles LOVE  in Las Vegas. James Johnson was recognized  as a recipient of the NAACP Award for choreography and solo dance performance. James has also worked with The Gurthrie Theater productions of Guys N Dolls and West Side Story. He completed  two national tours of Broadway’s The Color Purple and Disney’s The Lion King. TV/Film credits include The Chi (season 5) and The Color Purple movie (2023).

For over two decades, Henri Tauliaut has been interested in the relationship between art and science, orienting his research in two main directions: interactive art and Bio-Art. His work has travelled in many places, including the Caribbean, South and North Americas, France, Senegal, and China. In 2015, he was selected to represent Guadeloupe and France at the 12th Biennial of Havana with Jungle Sphere 3.0. Tauliaut presented Flying Shape Courtship at the National Gallery of Jamaica at the 2016 Digital International Exhibition. In July 2018, he was a resident at the Red Gate Residency in Beijing, China. In October 2018, he organized the exhibition Empowerment at the Fonds d’art contemporain in Guadeloupe. In April 2019, he performed Bubbles at the Wolfsonian-FIU Miami Museum, as part of the All-World Festival organized by the French Institute of Miami. In July 2019, he presented the Bio-Art project for which he designed and built the mobile laboratory Genetic Experimentation Device. Since 2015, he collaborates with the performance artist and choreographer Annabel Guérédrat. Together, they organize the International Festival of Performing Arts in Martinique since April 2017.