Jordan Isadore – Dancer, Choreographer, Video Editor
Artist Bio: Jordan Isadore is a dancer and choreographer originally from Northern California who has established himself as a versatile and accomplished artist in the contemporary dance world. Beginning his dance journey at the age of ten, Isadore received his B.F.A. in Dance from California State University Long Beach in 2009.
During his academic years, Isadore performed works by renowned choreographers including Twyla Tharp, Keith Johnson, Marie De La Palme, and Jodie Gates. After graduation, he began his professional career with Los Angeles-based company BodyTraffic, performing works by Barak Marshall and Alex Ketley. In 2011, Isadore relocated to New York, marking a significant turning point in his artistic trajectory.
In New York, Isadore has collaborated with an impressive array of choreographers and dance companies. He has worked extensively with Shen Wei Dance Arts, becoming a core member of the company and performing internationally across diverse and prestigious venues. His performances have spanned global locations including the David H. Koch Theater, Mariinsky Theater, Park Avenue Armory, and tours throughout China, South America, Europe, Brazil, Italy, and Russia.
Beyond traditional dance performances, Isadore has showcased his versatility by directing movement for Solange Knowles and performing on the Conan O’Brien show with Devonté Hynes of Blood Orange. His artistry has been captured by renowned photographer Lois Greenfield.
Isadore has collaborated with notable artists like Christopher Williams, Andrea Miller of Gallim Dance, Sydney Skybetter, and Jennifer Edwards. His choreographic work has been presented at numerous prestigious venues, including The Museum of Arts & Design, 92nd Street Y, Joe’s Pub, and The American Dance Festival.
ILVS STRAUSS – Performer
Lynne Ellis – Lighting Designer
Artist Bio: From a sociodemographic standpoint, I am a 45 year old educated, queer, mixed-race, white-passing, female bodied, Honduran-American artist. From a non-sociodemographic standpoint, I’m still those things, but manifest in 3D by the ethereal: experience, values, judgement, desire, need, love, motivation, inspiration, etc.
I once had a job as an analytical chemist for a pharmaceutical company (BA Chemistry – OSU) but then slowly pivoted to the arts (MFA Interdisciplinary Arts – SFU). The hats I wear are many and at times I have been known to wear several at once: multi-disciplinary performance artist, writer, dancer, facilitator, technical director, lighting designer, and sound engineer.
Born in the Los Angeles area, I grew up in Portland then moved to Seattle before coming up to Vancouver BC. At present, I have no intention to move further north.
www.ilvsstrauss.com
Joe Kye – Musician, Storyteller, Ritualmaker
Artist Bios:
Joe Kye
Portland-based musician and storyteller Joe Kye discharges worlds of emotion with his lush string loops and eclectic style. Born in Korea and raised in the United States, Joe shares his multifaceted identity with humor and vulnerability. His recent project takes listeners on a transcendent personal journey, recollecting lineage and love spanning generations and geography. Looping violin, vocals, and traditional Korean instruments, Joe’s improvisations swirl with spoken word and deep ancestral connection, unraveling our inner cocoons with awareness and self-compassion. Kye has performed for Carnegie Hall’s Migrations festival, recorded a Tedx Talk, and been featured on PRI’s The World .
Website: www.joekye.com
Fox Whitney – Writer, Sound, Choreographer, Performer
Will Courtney – Performer
Vlada Kremenović – Performer
Moonflower – Performer
Léo Othón – Performer
Artist Bios:
FOX WHITNEY [he/him] is a multi-disciplinary artist working at the intersection of dance, music, film+video, theater, writing and visual art. Fox is obsessed with the surreal nature of transformation, how we identify ourselves and how personal and collective identity is an ever shifting and evolving landscape. His projects center his queer and transgender point of view. He founded the interdisciplinary performance project Gender tender in 2012 and the trans-futurist psych band Light Aloud in 2023 The band grew from his ongoing series of performances MELTED RIOT. Inspired by the stonewall Riots of 1969, MELTED RIOT is a surreal protest song, a queer meditation, a psychedelic research project, a punk prayer.
Fox’s work has been commissioned and produced by the Henry Art Gallery; On the Boards; Velocity Dance Center; Seattle International Dance Festival; Yellow Fish Epic Durational Performance Festival and was selected for the inaugural season of Seattle’s Gay City Arts. Light Aloud has played at Trans Pride Seattle, Capitol Hill Block Party and the Seattle Art Fair. He has performed in work by Meg Foley, Will Rawls, keyon gaskin, Morgan Thorson, Andrew Schneider, CommonForm Dance Project, Malic Amalya and Gabrielle Civil. He got his MFA in Studio Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has exhibited his short films and visual art nationally. Fox is also a yoga and meditation teacher, movement teaching artist and arts journalist. He was the Artistic Director of Velocity Dance Center from 2020-2022. www.foxwhitney.com
WILL COURTNEY [all pronouns] is a multifaceted transgender artist, Light Aloud band member and Gender Tender performance project all-star. She was the first performer Fox invited to dance with him for Gender Tender research and development when it all started in 2012. Will has been a lead performer for many GT projects and after the first few years of performing began to expand his role in GT working with Fox as an artistic consultant, rehearsal director and producer. As a performance duo, Fox and Will gleefully mine the blurry line separating their longstanding friendship and their very queer performance chemistry.
VLADA KREMENOVIĆ [she/her] is an immigrant performer and filmmaker currently based in Seattle, WA. Originally from Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, she graduated from Middlebury College in 2017 with a joint degree in dance and film. Since moving to Seattle, she has danced with Heather Kravas, Alice Gosti, Melissa Riker, Petra Zanki, Karin Stevens, Jordan Macintosh-Hougham, Fox Whitney and Noelle Price, as well as worked on several short and feature-length film projects. Her work has been presented by Studio Current, Velocity Dance Center and Freeway Park. She is interested in combining her postmodern, interdisciplinary education and Slavic heritage to create choreographic containers for radical empathy and to raise awareness of the issues in Balkan countries.
MOONFLOWER (He/They) is a Queer Two-Spirit Transmasculine Mescalero Apache Latinx and Chinese performing artist, actor, and Draglesque performer. He is an advocate for erotic embodiment, queer trans joy, and pleasure expansion. Kink, art, and performance are an integral part of of their life, as they are practices that help them abolish and break free from oppressive, colonial, and societal disciplines. He is passionate about creating and contributing to radical containers of play that allow himself and others to go to a place of deep transformation, exploration, and healing. You may have recently seen him onstage with Seattle Rep, Village Theatre, ArtsWest, VALTESSE, The Dirty Darlings, and AZNGLO / RICEGLO. When not onstage you’ll find him in the kitchen cookin, in the mountains, or in the nearest body of water!
Jenny Peterson – Choreographer, composer, performer
Kaitlin McCarthy – Choreographer, performer, prop and costume design
Artists Bios:
Kaitlin McCarthy and Jenny Peterson have been making strange performance works together in Seattle, WA since 2013. Often performing as “The Bonnies,” they gravitate to the grotesque/off-kilter/marvelous like moths to the flame. They have performed at WET’s Six-Pack Series, Velocity’s NextFest, OTB’s Open Studio, Boost Dance Festival, NEPO 5k, Seattle Intl Dance Festival, High F@ggotry, and other underground art salons and nightlife performance venues. In 2024 they premiered their first evening-length work, DRIVE WOLVES MAD, and toured it to Portland, OR and San Diego, CA.
One of us is tall, one is short, both are Type A weirdos. Jenny is a Seattle artist working in dance, photography, and music/sound. She grew up a competitive gymnast in the Chicago suburbs and has never recovered. Jenny boasts 17 years of performing professionally in Seattle, including with the Pat Graney Company since 2008. She holds a B.A. in Dance and Visual Arts from UC Irvine and is a licensed massage therapist. Kaitlin is a Seattle-based dance artist, teacher, and journalist. She has performed with countless choreographers since 2010, including as a core member of Alice Gosti’s company MALACARNE. A prominent dance writer about town, she edits the publication SeattleDances and has a decade of experience specializing in teaching adult beginning dance. You can find out more at their respective websites: jennypeterson.com and kaitlinmccarthy.com.
Silas Borgstrom Ruesler – Performer, Creator
Artists Bios:
Silas Borgstrom Ruesler (they/he) is a multi-disciplinary artist exploring identity, vulnerability, and the body with a satirical and surreal approach. Raised by a high-school biology teacher in Los Angeles, CA, they are heavily influenced by natural forms and human anatomy. Silas received their BFA in studio art from Cal Poly SLO in 2020 and participated in the Inverse Performance Art residency in 2019 and 2020. They continue their work with interactive, visual, and sculptural arts as a means of communication, commentary, and catharsis. He has recently exhibited pieces at Umpqua Valley Arts and Maude Kerns Art Center in Oregon. Silas currently lives in Portland, OR, where he works in deathcare to support his artistic practice. https://www.silasruesler.com/
kelly langeslay – Performer, Choreographer, Writer
Artists Bio:
kelly graduated from the University of Washington in 2020 with a BA in dance and a BS in psychology. their work has been presented at Velocity’s Bridge Project February 2025, OOMPH December 2024, Automorphs November 2024, reSET All-Stars September 2024, Gatto Nero April 2024, Spring Shot April 2024, Drama Tops Off the Lead Showing March 2024, Show 6 by CO—November 2023, reSET May 2023, 12 Minutes Max March 2023, and the Flight Deck Showing August 2022. they have also danced in Alice Gosti’s company MALACARNE. kelly is in the process of creating and producing their first evening-length solo performance girl dinner, which will premiere in Seattle June 5-7. they are currently losing their mind in all of this creative process, and they expect it to last until the end of June, but maybe they just have mercury poisoning from eating too much canned tuna.
you can find some of their writing and performance documentation here:
https://www.instagram.com/
Sarah Vitak – Producer, Fabricator
Artists Bios:
Sarah Vitak (they/she) is a scientist turned artist and podcast producer.
Their art practice centers on immersive, interactive experiences that spark curiosity, deep discussion, and self-discovery. In the audio world, they specialize in reporting and producing narrative podcast stories and series. Across both disciplines, Sarah explores the intersections of technology, art, and human interaction—crafting work that invites audiences to engage in new and unexpected ways.
Sarah’s audio work has won a Webby and a Signal Award. In 2023, they were selected as an Audio Tune Up Mentee at RESONATE.
They were an Art-Science resident with Guerilla Science in 2018 and were shortlisted for the Ginkgo Bioworks Creative Residency in 2020. They have received two Awesome Foundation Grants and were shortlisted for the Denver Center for the Performing Arts Off-Center Residency in 2021. That same year, they participated in Odyssey Works’ Experience Design Incubator.
Claire Rigsby and India Roper-Moyes: Producers, Set Designers/Constructors, Fiber Artists, Performers
Artists Bios:
Claire and India are performers and fiber enthusiasts who connected over a love of yarn in theatre spaces. They are both graduates of PETE’s year long Institute for Contemporary Performance. As fiber artists, they’re both interested in exploring the metaphors inherent in making something one stitch at a time. The flow of pattern. The undoing to make “perfect”, or the decision to move forward with a “mistake” immortalized in the work. As artists, they know how a day in the studio where “nothing got done” can feel. The hours spent in front of a canvas without adding a single stroke. The moment you realize you have to undo everything you’ve just done. Claire and India want to explore the idea that every moment, every step, seemingly fruitful or not, contributes to a final piece, or to who they are as artists. No moment is wasted. The undoing is often the doing. Yes, you may undo this beautiful thing you’ve made, but now use what’s left of it to make something new. The material is still there. With knitting or crochet, you can literally undo one project and make another with the same yarn. But isn’t that true in all art we make? Everything is woven in. Can we use the idea of one stitch at a time to help us remember this in all the art we make? In how we live?
Anne Zander is a “completely ridiculous… completely vulnerable” actor, clown, solo-character creator and physical comedy teacher with an MA in devised, physical theater (Theatre Lab) from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She studied clowning there and beyond with her award-winning teacher, Peta Lily.
Her “painfully funny” debut solo show — JUICEBOX — took Portland by storm in 2019 and was Official Selection 2020 at Chicago Sketchfest, Dallas Comedy Festival and HBO’s Women in Comedy Festival (Boston).The pandemic brought forth the digital works Do A Character and her longer, (in)fertility-themed Fertile Ground show, Prolific, along with multiple guest spots on Ron Lynch’s IG Live, comedy-variety Tomorrow! Show (LA).
Zander’s “raw and primal and side-splittingly funny” sophomore solo show, Anne Zander is MOTHER, shot out of her just one year after her twins (BroadwayWorld). This postpartum comedy has made audiences laugh until they pee a little across the Pacific Northwest, and is headed to New York, LA and beyond later this year.
This improviser-turned-clown performs regularly at comedy venues across Portland and is also the real-life mother to 3-year old twins, who made multiple stage appearances in utero but have yet to bring their own clown antics to the greater public.
Jason Rouse is an actor, writer, director and teacher living in Portland. He performs regularly on stages and in television and feature film and writes original comedic long-form plays for middle and high schools because they can’t keep doing the Miracle Worker every year.
Anne Sorce – MONDAY
Heath Hyun Houghton – TUESDAY
Beth Thompson – WEDNESDAY
Paul Susi – THURSDAYLeiana Petlewski – FRIDAY
Project Team
Julie Hammond – Director
Jen Mitas – Dramaturg
Peter Ksander – Scenic Design
Julie Hammond (Project Director) is a mother, theatre maker, dramaturg for multidisciplinary performance, and instigator of public projects currently based in Portland, Oregon. Her work as a theatre director has toured and been presented by On the Boards (Seattle), Artists Repertory Theatre (Portland), Z Below (San Francisco), the Alliance of Jewish Theatres (Boston, MA), and the rEvolver Festival (Vancouver, BC), among others. From 2015-2019 she co-created 14 shows with Hand2Mouth Theatre. Recent participatory public art projects include an ongoing re-signing and community history of Portland’s Peninsula Park, a year-long residency through the Vancouver Park Board, a community performance/installation for Richmond Public Art, soundwalks for Vancouver New Music, Third Angle New Music, and New Works Calgary, and collaborations with students in elementary and secondary schools exploring historical landmarks, site, and boredom. Julie holds a BA in Theatre from Bates College (Lewiston, Maine) and a MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies from Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, BC). juliehammond.net
Peter Ksander (Scenographer) is a scenographer and media artist whose work has been presented both nationally and internationally. He was a founding curator of the Incubator Arts Project in NYC, won an Obie Award for the scenic design of Untitled Mars (this title may change), and a Bessie Award for the visual design of This Was the End. Recent Portland credits include designs for The Americans, Apoptosis, The Cherry Orchard, Fronteriza, The Weather Room, Sweat, Indecent. He holds an M.F.A. from CalArts, is a professor at Reed College, and is a member of the Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble (PETE). His work as a generative performance artist includes: Seeing the Elephant, The Sleeping Dane Effect (a collaboration with animator Melissa Chimovitz) and Apoptosis (developed with Catherine Ming T’ien Duffly and Rose Proctor for the Risk/Reward Festival). He is co-founder of Tiny Elephant, whose first piece, The Stupid Butterfly Project, was presented by Arts at St. Ann’s, as part of Puppetlab.
Jen Mitas (Dramaturg) got her start in queer solo performance in New York in the late 1990s. She has spent the last twenty-five years helping artists and organizations hone and realize their visions. As a facilitator for The Field in New York she led workshops using the feedback technique (Fieldwork), including week-long artist residencies. As a lecturer and researcher in the UK, she led courses in performance devising, theory and history with BA and MA students at Queen Mary University of London and University of Falmouth. Upon her return to the US she was Hand2Mouth Theatre’s Executive Director for 7 years, producing projects, tours, stewarding conversation events, and developing/ managing a community arts space (Shout House). In 2017 she initiated the green theatre project Object Karaoke as a model for innovating new performance from the detritus of a large repertory theatre. Her work is informed by a longstanding interest in the ideas and economies that inform the performances we make and the techniques we use to make them. Recent projects include dramaturgy for Katherine Longstreth and co-creating Slumber Party
Writer biographies: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VaBzePvFm2CcqBvpptyfyRttHfIw23Qv/view?usp=sharing
Development and production of Hindsight 2020 is supported by the Regional Arts & Culture Council.
Risk/Reward’s mission is to support artists who are pushing the boundaries of performance. Our Festival of New Performance begins with our call for applications from artists living, working, and creating in the Cascadia / Pacific Northwest region. This year, we received over 67 applications – more than double the number of applications we received in 2024. We convene a community curation panel of regional artists, curators, and tastemakers to read the applications and select the pieces that will become the core of our Festival of New Performance, the five performances of the Festival Mainstage. Even more applications were selected as installation, durational, and late-night additions to the festival. In total, we will present more than 35 Pacific Northwest performers across all of the programming in our jam-packed three-day festival.
Our panel this year included curators, actors, directors, performance-makers, and wonderful-weirdos from the Pacific Northwest. Our Portland contingent included choreographer Tahni Holt; Given Davis, a member of The Clown Mystics; devised-theater maker Ashley Hollingshead; and Portland Playhouse’s Producing Director (and recent Skidmore Prize winner) Charles Grant. From Seattle, we were joined by a choreographer and director with the Au Collective, Cheryl Delostrinos; as well as a member of last year’s festival with Drama Tops, Shane Donohue. We were also joined by PICA’s Curator of Performance, Erin Boberg Doughton, and its Production Manager, Molly Gardner, along with Risk/Reward’s own Katie Watkins and Festival Director James Mapes.
In selecting our panel this year, we prioritized a breadth of perspective, as well as a mix of experience with the Festival; Tahni, Given, Cheryl, and Shane have all performed in our Festival of New Performance in the past. The panelists worked collaboratively to pick some promising, fantastic proposals for contemporary performance out of the huge number of amazing applications. Our community curation process continues to be a vital aspect of our festival, ensuring that the development of new work is that much more open and includes less gate-keeping – which makes the work that much better.
Risk/Reward is supported by the following generous institutions and grantors: