This Year’s Cohort
Shannon Yu
Shannon Yu is a dancer-choreographer, multi-disciplinary artist, and queer creator. Sha streamlines Hip Hop, Contact Improv, and Wing Tsun Martial Arts with video projection and sound design, portraying connections between humanity and geometry. Shannon holds an MFA in Performance and Performance Studies from Pratt Institute and a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering from National Taiwan University. In 2021, Shannon founded multimedia dance company SHA Creative Outlet in Brooklyn, New York, and continues to create and perform in Lenapehoking land.
Sha has shown work at Judson Church, Triskelion Arts, Abrons Art Center, Chen Dance Center, New Dance Alliance, and The Center at West Park. Shannon has performed in festivals such as Performance Mix Festival, the Evolution Festival, YES! Dance Festival, Your Moves Dance Festival, Queer Mvmnt Festival, Inter-Grant Festival and WOW Festival. Shannon was named 2023 Asian American Arts Alliance’s Jadin Wong Fellow for Dance, and 2024 Bandung Fellow for Black and Asian solidarity.
Zu AKA Teake
Zu AKA Teake is an LA-based movement specialist who began his training in breathwork and movement meditation under the guidance of 12th generation Chen Taichi successor, Cheng Aiping, a grandmaster and living legend from Hangzhou, China. Having trained at centers both in the US and China, Zu’s foundational practice is informed by the movement pathways of the Wudang Temple lineages (San Feng system) and the principles of nature connection and groundedness espoused in the Daoist scriptures.
Zu graduated from Harvard University in 2012 with a degree in cultural anthropology. He has since studied under various elder instructors in distinct embodied knowledge pathways from both Mesoamerican lines and South African wisdom keepers.
In NYC, he showcased work at the La MaMa Theater and The Shed. In Los Angeles, Zu has shown work at the Hammer Museum, and the LA Dance Festival. He has contributed movement direction and performance work for artists such as Kamasi Washington and FKA twigs.
He looks forward to creating and collaborating this summer with the Mendocino Dance Project
emma quan dewey
emma quan dewey is a Bay Area-raised dancer, choreographer, and educator rooting in Huchiun, Lisjan Ohlone territory (Oakland). emma believes in dance-making as a devotional worldbuilding act, where ancestral/future ways of being that re~member our relationships to ourselves, land, and spirit can be practiced. A descendant of both upwardly mobile Chinese immigrants and early British settlers of Turtle Island, this worldbuilding work is a prayer to be in responsibility and refusal of emma’s lineages’ entanglements with US empire. In residency at MAC, emma is moving with ongoing research into Chinese understandings of Dragon龍, their expressions as a water being, and what this can teach us about power. This research grounds in emma’s studies of improvisation, dance ethnography, qigong & taiji, Daoist philosophy, Chinese astrology & astronomy, and ecological attunement, with movement lineages including work with Dancing Earth Creations, Wudang White Horse, and a BA in Dance & Anthropology from Bowdoin College, among others. You can also find emma getting humbled by their students or the immensity of the ocean.
Elizabeth Rivera
Elizabeth Rivera is a first-generation Filipina, interdisciplinary artist, cultural weaver, educator and producer, hailing from Ohlone territory (aka the Yay Area). Her work encompasses dance, movement, songwriting and music production. She's a singer and multi-instrumentist, for over 20 years, and dancer who’s trained in Filipinx Cultural Dance, Afro-Roots Hip-Hop, Afro-Brazilian, Modern, and Contemporary over 15 years.
She believes arts, culture and storytelling are crucial components to build a more just, equitable and sustainable world. She’s the co-founder of Soulidarity Wave, a multidisciplinary performance arts collective that uplifts the struggles and voices of Third World peoples. She’s the producer of BABALIK: RETURN (Back to the Land) community arts healing festival, and has collaborated with the Bangka Indigenous Canoe Journey, NEST Indigenous Arts Center and the Mission Arts Performance Project SF. She’s been supported by the San Francisco Arts Commission, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, California Arts Council, Youth Speaks, and Center for Cultural Innovation.
She holds a BA in Environmental Studies (Justice & Sustainability), BS in Ethnic Studies, and a minor in Theater Dance Performance Studies from UC Berkeley. Recently, she’s expanded her work in Salvador, and the Amazonas, Brazil, deepening her research of Indigenous land protection, plant-based medicines, traditional healing practices, and Afro-Brazilian Indigenous music and dance. Her work draws from holistic medicine, Indigenous knowledge, human experience, ancestral wisdom, and Mother Nature.