Ogemdi Ude (Choreographer/Director) is a dance and interdisciplinary artist, educator, and doula based in Brooklyn. Her performance work focuses on Black femme legacies and futures, grief, and memory. Her work has been presented at Kampnagel, The Kitchen, Gibney, Harlem Stage, Danspace Project, Abrons Arts Center, BRIC, ISSUE Project Room, Recess Art, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Center for Performance Research, and for BAM’s DanceAfrica festival. As an educator, she has taught at The New School, Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, and University of the Arts. She is a 2025 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Choreography, 2025 Princess Grace Honoraria in Choreography, 2025-2028 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, and a 2024 NEFA National Dance Project Production Grant recipient. She has been a 2024/2025 BAX Artist-in-Residence, 2024-2025 Leslie Lohman Artist Fellow, 2022-2024 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, 2021 danceWEB Scholar, 2021 Laundromat Project Create Change Artist-in-Residence, and a 2019-2020 Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU Resident Fellow. In January 2022 she appeared on the cover of Dance Magazine for their annual “25 to Watch” issue. Recently, she has published a book Watch Me in a collection edited by Thomas DeFrantz and Annie-B Parson: Dance History(s): Imagination as a Form of Study published by Dancing Foxes Press and Wesleyan University Press.

Selah Hampton (Dance Captain/Performer) is the dance captain for MAJOR. She collaborates exclusively with the highly acclaimed choreographer and director, Ogemdi Ude. Their creative partnership spans more than 15 years, and it is her greatest honor to bear witness to Ogemdi’s talents. Selah is a Customer Success Manager at Tennr, Chair of the Princeton Prize in Race Relations national board, National Advisory Council member for A Better Chance, and Associate Board member for Teach For America NY. Selah earned a BA in chemistry from Princeton University with certificates in African American studies and dance. She is currently based in Brooklyn, New York.

Chanel Stone (Performer) is a Brooklyn-based performer, choreographer, producer, creator, and skater. Born in Columbus, Ohio, she moved to NYC in 2015 and earned a BFA in Dance from LIU Brooklyn in 2019. Chanel has worked with choreographers including Donna Uchizono, Tendayi Kuumba, and Annie-B Parson, and starred as a lead in multiple productions with Company XIV. She is the founder of Beyond the Black Box, an arts and culture organization celebrating, honoring, and healing the Black dance community through events, collective creation & interdisciplinary artistic collaboration.

Jailyn Phillips-Wiley (Performer) is a Jersey bred, Brooklyn based freelance dance artist. While attending Rutgers University, Jailyn was blessed enough to work with her peers, Shannon Gillen/Vim Vigor Dance, Dawn Marie Bazemore, and Noa Zuk. She was awarded Mason Gross’ Majorie J. Turner award for outstanding choreography on her senior thesis and received her BFA in May 2020. In 2022, Jailyn joined Umoja Dance Company under the direction of Karen Love. Wiley’s professional experience also includes chameckilerner, KeiyaA, and Kashia Kancey, among others. Jailyn dedicates this performance to all her childhood friends that pushed her into dance battle circles. IG: @jaipeedubs

Junyla Silmon (Performer) is a New Jersey based movement artist originally from Canton, MS. She is a summa cum laude graduate from Montclair State University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in dance performance, minor in business administration, and certificate of entrepreneurship. Junyla has performed with the dance companies Freespace Dance, Accent Dance NYC, Susan Marshall & Company, and continues an ongoing work relationship with choreographers Stefanie Batten Bland and Kayla Farrish. She was also a performer in the final years of Punchdrunk’s “Sleep No More” in NYC, and most recently premiered in “FAIRYLAND: ETHER” by Alba Albanese and StoryverseNYC Inc. IG: @nyla.js 

Kayla Farrish (Performer) is a creator, multidisciplinary artist, and performer in NYC. As a freelance performer she’s collaborated with Ogemdi Ude, Autumn Knight, Micah Watson, Danielle Russo, Kate Weare, Sleep No More NYC, Marjani Forte, Nicole Von Arx, Helen Simoneau Danse, Kyle Abraham/AIM and more! She has received Bessie Awards, Harkness Promise Award, NY Times Break Out Star, NEFA Project Grantee, and Ellis Beauregard Contemporary Dance Award. Her commissions include Limon Dance Company, ADF, Armstrong Now!, Harlem Stage and beyond. She creates live works, films, and collaborative projects with artists like Esperanza Spalding, Trixie Whitley, Moor Mother, and Melanie Charles. (She loves MAJOR!!!) IG: @fulloutfarrish 

song aziza tucker (Performer) is a project based movement and writing artist wrapped up in the erotic, cathartic, and beautiful reflections of black femme aliveness and survivalhood. She obtained both her BFA and MFA degrees respectively at the University of the Arts under the direction of Donna Faye Burchfield. song has had the pleasure of working as a performer and collaborator with, jaamil olawale kosoko, Tommie-Waheed Evans, Niall Jones, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Ogemdi Ude, and Doug Varone, among others. Through all collaboration, song desires and commands a full pronouncement of a voluminous self impelled by black femme strategies for aliveness. 

Camille Phelps (Understudy) is an interdisciplinary dancer based in New York City. Originally from Atlanta, she began her training at Dancemakers of Atlanta. She continued her training at SUNY Purchase where she graduated in 2023 with her BFA in dance. During her time at Purchase, she had the opportunity to perform works by Bill T. Jones, Linda and Glenn Sims, 2nd Best Dance Company, and Kyle Abraham. After graduating, Camille has been freelancing in New York City, performing with Akira Uchida, Keerati Jinakunwiphat, Imani Gaudin, Wendell Gray and is a member of Sidra Bell Dance New York. @coolcatmil

Lambkin (Composer) (she/they) Electronic R&B/pop music, modern dance, and Black futurism comprise Lambkin’s artistic vision: where the visceral meets the cerebral; where the natural enacts the synthetic. The musician, composer, choreographer, and director explores Blackness as the break that might rupture our attachments to Worlds, territories, and Man. IG: @biglillamb 

Myssi Robinson (Archivist) is a Bessie award winning performer, multidisciplinary maker and caregiver from Powhatan lands / Richmond, VA.  Robinson explores creative archiving, mixed-media marking + design, ritual curiosities and her own improvising body.  Through photography, video poetry, visual art response and spirit-forward witnessing, she asks how archival effort can flirt with embodiment, collective processing, affirmation of being and the blurring of legibility. In all her working, Intuition and empathy play with maximalist instinct to give life to what comes. Gratitude to Carolyn and Darrin for her life and abilities to create freely within it. may we all heal. IG: @myssirobinson 

Tania “t” Saiz Perez (Production Stage Manager) is a queer immigrant dance artist and production stage manager based in Brooklyn, NY. They hold a BFA in Dance from the University of the Arts, where they served as Production Coordinator and Stage Manager from 2022 to 2024. In her freelance work, t has had the pleasure of working with BigKid Dance, Cannonball Festival, HIVEWILD, Kayla Farrish, Marguerite Hemmings, MICHIYAYA Dance, Ninth Planet Productions, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, and waheedworks. Currently, they are the Production Stage Manager for the BFA Dance Lab at Bennington College and Ogemdi Ude’s MAJOR.

Simean “Sim” Carpenter (Lighting and Set Designer) is an award-winning scenic, lighting and production designer from Baltimore, MD currently based in New York City. Sim holds a deep passion for social equality. His goal as a designer is to use his many mediums to captivate the audience, craft environments that elevate storytelling and reveal the, far too often, disregarded truths of marginalized groups. Selected credits: Everything that Never Happened (Baltimore Center Stage); Long Way Down (Olney Theatre/Apollo Theater); Tiny Beautiful Things (Baltimore Center Stage); The Folks at Home (Baltimore Center Stage); Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus (Marriott Theatre Chicago); D.R.E.A.D. (New York University); FLEX (New York University) Sim holds a B.F.A. in Stage Design from DePaul University and an M.F.A. in Design for Stage & Film from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Sim is a recipient of the 2024 Princess Grace Theatre Honoraria Award. simcarpenter.com

Celeste Jennings (Costume Designer) is a costume designer and playwright who is so proud to be a part of the MAJOR team. Recent/Upcoming Costume Design include: Appropriate (Old Globe Theatre), Oh Happy Day and Pride and Prejudice (Baltimore Center Stage), Memnon (The Classical Theatre of Harlem at the Getty Center and Marcus Garvey Park), Rough Crossing (Resident Ensemble Players), Minor;ity (Women’s Project Theatre), Fat Ham (Huntington Theatre), and Furlough’s Paradise (Geffen Playhouse). Recent Produced Plays: Citrus and ‘Bov Water (Northern Stage). Recent Play Readings: Potliqka (Public Theatre) and Contentious Woman (PlayCo). Education: MFA in costume design from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She’s a current member of the Emerging Writer’s Group of the Public Theatre. IG: celestejenn_ Website: https://www.celestejenndesigns.com/

Sara Pereira da Silva (Producer) is a Fulbright alumnus with an MA in arts management from American University. She was the recipient of an INOVArt grant and has been involved in dance teaching and Arts Management for more than 16 years with experience in Macau, Hong Kong, Lisbon, Washington, D.C., and New York City. In February 2018, she joined Big Dance Theater as their Executive Director, where she has produced 6 different works that toured internationally. Silva is also a member of CIPA (Creative and Independent Producers Alliance), she joined Ogemdi Ude/MAJOR in October of 2024.

Avery Gordon (Interpreter) is a freelance interpreter in the NJ and NYC areas. A graduate of Union County College with an Associate Degree in American Sign Language–English Interpreting. Her credits include the Broadway production Kimberly Akimbo. Off-Broadway productions/performances include Marcus Gardley’s Black Odyssey with Classic Stage Company; Watch Night with Perelman Performing Arts Center; The Ally with The Public Theater; Gun & Powder with Paper Mill Playhouse; Good Bones with The Public Theater; Mystic Pizza with Paper Mill Playhouse; Moya with New Victory Theater; Goddess with The Public Theater; Oh, Happy Day! with The Public Theater; Snow White with New Victory Theater; Radio City Rockettes; Curtain Up! Broadway Festival; and Broadway Celebrates Earth Day. Musical concerts: Brandy, Buju Banton, Ciara, Dua Lipa, Janet Jackson, Jonas Brothers, Kylie Minogue, Missy Elliott, Monica, Ne-Yo, Tyrese Gibson, and T-Pain.

Kathleen D. Taylor (Interpreter) has interpreted on Broadway in :
Lion King; I Need That; Harry Potter; 1776; A Raisin In The Sun; For Colored Girls Who Considered Considered/When The Rain is Enuf; Trouble in Mind; Caroline Or Change; Color Purple; WHOOPI!; Bombay Dream; Rocky Horror Show; The Life; Annie; Bring in ‘da Noise; Seven Guitars; Smokey Joe’s Café; Jelly’s Last Jam. Off- Broadway: The Effect; After Midnight; Days of Wine & Roses; Letters From Max; Romeo & Juliet; Hamlet; Richard Ill; Cullud Wattah; For Colored Girl; If Pretty Hurts Ugly Is a Muhfucka; Color Purple; BODYGUARD: The Musical; Smokey Joe’s Café, Cinderella; Baby; Blue; An Ideal Husband; Seedfolks; Malcolm X; 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas; Fly; Aesop’s Fables, A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Once On This Island.