The LiftOff Residency takes place at NDA’s Studio in Tribeca and provides six physical-based performance artists with 30 hours of rehearsal space each, an introductory meeting, and two feedback sessions. This residency is for artists looking to join a small cohort of artists to share and give feedback on each other’s work.
You will see that this cohort of artists works across disciplines in rich performance practices, with both local NYC and international communities.
Keep reading & get to know the artists!
Originally from Argentina, Anabella Lenzu is a dancer, choreographer, scholar & educator with 35 years of experience working in Argentina, Chile, Italy, and the USA.
Lenzu directs her own company, Anabella Lenzu/DanceDrama, which since 2006 has presented 400 performances, created 15 choreographic works and performed at 100 venues, presenting thought provoking and historically conscious dance-theater in NYC.
As a choreographer, she has been commissioned all over the world for opera, TV programs, theatre productions, and by many dance companies. She has produced and directed several award-winning short dance films and screened her work in over 200 festivals both nationally and internationally.
Andrea Soto, raised in Juarez, is a first-generation Mexican American performer and movement artist whose craft lives in a duality from being a border child, “no soy de aquĂ, ni soy de allá,” as Chavela Vargas sings. She believes in the body as our truth system.
Her work spans over choreography, performance art and physical theater, and has been shared in Los Angeles and New York. Her pieces live as poetic ecosystems rooted in non-hierarchical systems of making and being and explore the boundaries of human impulses and presence. A graduate from California Institute of the Arts, she is the recipient of the 2024 Barbara Ensley Award on behalf of the Merce Cunningham Trust. Her performances span national and international platforms, and she continues to work as a dancer, performer, and movement director across Los Angeles, New York and London.
Emilio Wettlaufer is a Guatemalan-American dance artist based in New York City. Hehas performed at the 17th International La Biennale di Venezia Dance Festival under the direction of Wayne McGregor and at venues such as Hauser & Wirth, REDCAT, LA Dance Project, and the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Notable performance credits include works by William Forsythe, Xie Xin, Simone Forti, Sidra Bell, and Dimitri Chamblas. He has additionally been featured in campaigns for Bottega Veneta, Calvin Klein, and Microsoft. As a creator, Emilio aims to tell stories that embrace the use of filmmaking, writing, and theatricality within the framework of dance. He recently premiered his latest solo work, “This of Mine”, as part of the Hier Jetzt 2025 edition at the Schwere Reiter Theater in Munich, DE. Emilio received his BFA in Dance from the California Institute of the Arts in 2022.
Liiiam is a dance artist and sound creative based out of Brooklyn, NY. His artistic practice roots itself in “stutter/dancing”, a movement exploration that weaves the deeply embodied experience of stuttering into choreographic and pedagogical frameworks. By utilizing the unruly potential of stuttering, he aims to disrupt societal expectations around efficiency, communication, and clarity that so often embed themselves into everyday life. His work actively revolves around two overarching questions: What can stuttering teach movement? What can movement teach stuttering?
Maho Ogawa is a Japanese-born multidisciplinary movement artist working in NY. Her work has delved into building a choreographic language based on nuances and isolated body movements, and she has built a database, “Minimum Movement Catalog“. Her recent works partly decontextualize and research the minimum movement in Japanese tea culture. She crafts public events inspired by Japanese tea rituals to build new thinking methods about “silence.” Her aim is to empower erased cultures by dismantling oppressed body gestures and their context as choreography, fighting for cultural equality in nonviolent ways. Maho’s works have been shown in Asia at Korea & Japan Dance Festival (Seoul), Za Koenji (Tokyo), Whenever Wherever Festival (Tokyo), and in the U.S. including Princeton University, Invisible Dog Art Center, JACK, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Center for Performance Research, New York University Grey Gallery, and Emily Harvey Foundation, to name a few. Ogawa received grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant and creation support at Culture Push, Emily Harvey Foundation, LEIMAY, Marble House Project, MOtiVE, and New Dance Alliance. She is a 2024-2026 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence.
Nikkie Samreth (They/Them) is a first generation Cambodian-Chinese multidisciplinary artist originally from Dallas, TX. Their work pulls from the sprinkle of information that has been passed down through generations by their Khmer/Sino-Khmer ancestors while growing up in the Western world to create impressionist-like yet surreal movement installations. Narratives, folktales, moral systems, beauty standards, education, are some of the concepts of human design that interest and inform their artistic practice by looking through these different lenses to reckon with the philosophies of human nature.
As a performer Nikkie has been in works by Raja Feather Kelly, Brendan Drake, Gordon Hall, and other artists. They have a BFA in Dance from NYU Tisch and studied at the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance. They also have a Bachelor of Science from FIT in International Trade & Marketing with a triple minor in Economics, Creative Technology, and Ethics & Sustainability.
We are so excited to see the artists diving deep into their processes throughout their residencies!
Photo credits: Photo 1 – Anabella Lenzu/DanceDrama, photo by the artist. Photo 2 – Andrea Soto, photo by Alex Munro. Photo 3 – Emilio Wettlaufer, photo by Mehmet Vanli. Photo 4 – Liiiam, photo by David Ullman. Photo 5 – Maho Ogawa, photo by Rachel Keane. Photo 6 – Nikkie Samreth, photo by isis rayne.
Maho Ogawa, photo by Elyse Mertz
“I am honored to have performed at the Performance Mix 37…PMF plays a very inspiring, influential, and unique role in redefining the role of theater and performance art in society. I hope we continue to think about how this festival means so much not only for dance fans/ students, but for art lovers and the general public.”
– Maho Ogawa
New Dance Alliance
182 Duane Street
New York, NY 10013
(646) 510-1824
All venues are wheelchair accessible.
