Residency Programs

Incubate artists, change the world.

Counterpulse’s Artist Residency & Commissioning (ARC) Performing Diaspora program is an incubation residency and commissioning program that supports artists whose work is rooted in a traditional art form, yet is also completely contemporary. Performing Diaspora artists draw on tradition as a radical way to carry the stories of previous lives in today’s time and space.

CounterPulse offers a rotation of supported artist residencies each year spanning different ways of making. Each residency concludes with a fully produced work on stage at CounterPulse.

Interested in participating in one of our residencies? Check out current Open Calls >>

Cover Photo: From Performing Diaspora 2014, Nava Dance/Nadhi Thekkek, Photo courtesy of artist.


The 2022 Performing Diaspora residency is made possible by support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Artists

  • Performing Diaspora

    bByb Bibene is a dance educator, choreographer and performer working in theater, ethnic, Afro urban, and contemporary dance forms. His

  • Performing Diaspora

    Sholeh Asgary is an Iranian-born interdisciplinary sound artist and educator who is shaped by her somatic experiences as a refugee.

  • Performing Diaspora

    Image Description: A photograph of the top part of a building through a worm’s-eye view. The multi-family apartment building

  • Performing Diaspora

    Image Description: VERA! Stands in profile, wearing a red bellydance top with jingle belt, and deep red eyeshadow, gold

  • Performing Diaspora

    Cherie Hill (choreographer) is a choreographer, dancer, teacher and scholar, whose art explores human expression and how it is conveyed

  • Performing Diaspora

    Gabriel Christian is an artist bred in New York City and baking in Oakland. Their work metabolizes the vernaculars within

  • Performing Diaspora

    Cynthia Ling Lee (concept and choreography) instigates postcolonial, queer, and feminist-of-color interventions in the field of experimental performance. Trained in

  • Performing Diaspora

    Melissa Lewis (顾眉)  is a ChineseAmerican artist working with mixed identities and mediums. Her work has been presented here and

  • Performing Diaspora

    SAMMAY is a choreographer/producer and interdisciplinary performance artist of Kapampangan, Ilokano, and Bikol descent. She defines her body as a

  • Performing Diaspora

    Photo by George Emilio Sanchez Randy Reyes is queer Latinx choreographer-dance artist-curanderx with roots connecting the geographies of Guatemala,

  • Performing Diaspora

    Javier Stell-Fresquez (Chican@, Tigua & Piro Native), Ivan "Ivy" Monteiro (Brasil), and Davia Amerasu Spain (San Francisco Bay Area native),

  • Performing Diaspora

    Adia Tamar Whitaker San Francisco, CA Adia Tamar Whitaker is one of the youngest professional choreographers and master teachers of