Renegade Performance Group
André M. Zachery (b. 1981) is the artistic director of Renegade Performanc Group and an interdisciplinary artist who creates performances, interactive media installations, film, and sound art. He earned a BFA from the Ailey/Fordham program in 2005 and a MFA in Performance & Interactive Media Arts (PIMA) from Brooklyn College in 2014. Zachery is a Jerome Foundation supported 2015-2017 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence and a 2016 NYFA Fellow in Choreography. Most recently he was a guest artist-in-residence professor at the School of Dance at Florida State University.
LaMont Hamilton (b. 1982) is an interdisciplinary artist who works primarily in photography, film and performance. Hamilton has been the recipient of several fellowships and awards including the MacDowell Colony, Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, Artadia Award, ArtMatters Grant and the City of Chicago’s IAP Award. His residencies include Visiting Artist in Residence at Duke University in conjunction with African and African American Studies and SLIPPAGE: Performance | Culture | Technology and Bemis Center for Contemporary Art.
Audrey Hailes is a dance-theatre artist raised in Washington DC. Committed to public performance as a necessary tool for wellness and revolution, she received a BFA in Experimental Theatre from NYU and is a 2013 Laundromat Project Professional Development Fellow. Audrey is a teaching artist, performer with the Dance Cartel and co-host of the women-run radio show Hip Hop and Her Family. Her work was recently commissioned by Gibney Dance as part of the DoublePlus performance series. Operating in the blessing of abundance, the support, fortification and history shared by family is the fuel behind her practice.
Samara Gaev, Founder and Artistic Director of Truthworker Theatre Company, is a New York based activist, educator, theatre director, and performer. Her work has taken her to Zimbabwe, Senegal, Hawaii, Brasil, Peru, Cuba, Scotland, and throughout the U.S. Gaev has 16 years experience using performance as a tool for cross-cultural healing & social change, including initiating theatre and writing intensives for formerly incarcerated, gang affiliated, and pregnant and parenting youth. Under her direction, Truthworker Theatre Company has written, devised, and self-produced two original hip-hop theatre productions: BAR CODE: A Performative Analysis of the School to Prison Pipeline and IN|PRISM: Boxed In & Blacked Out in America. Samara is honored to have served as Artist/Scholar in Residence at Columbia University’s Teachers College: Graduate School of Education, and to be lead teaching artist at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, directing their Arts & Justice theater program for teens. She is also the National Education Coordinator for Question Bridge: Black Males, a board member of Project Rhythm, and Curriculum Writer for Hurricane Season: The Hidden Messages in Water.
yon Tande (né Whitney V. Hunter) works in the areas of performance, exhibition, curation, and education. He creates for the stage, gallery and alternative spaces. He directs his performance collective Whitney Hunter[MEDIUM] and is a Movement Research 2013 Artist in Residence. His grants and commissions for the creation and exhibition of his works are numerous including Puffin Foundation Grant, Harlem Stages, Thelma Hill Performing Arts Center, Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival, Lumen Festival, and others. His work focuses on the politics of personal and cultural identity and creating alternative pathways of cognition through ritual-based performance art. Recent performances include Body Count: Counting the Dead, #101 which initiated the founding of Body Count Collective (BCC) with fellow artists Preach R Sun and Lisa Lewis, D.R.O.M.P, Airing Dirty Laundry (with Andre M. Zachery), 1st American Shapist House… and others.
