Meet Our Grantees
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2025 Grantee
Louise Coleman is a New York-based dancer-choreographer. Louise’s work questions the relationship between mundane gestures and human desires, internal improvisational research and performance, and task-driven play and character building. Her work has been performed at the Jack Crystal Theater, Green Space, The Craft, and Arts on Site. She is currently a resident choreographer with the “Study Series”. Louise receiv ed her high school education from Interlochen Arts Academy and received her BFA in Dance from New York University Tisch School of the Arts spring 2025. As a dancer she has performed works by and in collaboration with Ashley Chen (La Mama), Annie Rigney, Bebe Miller, Sean Curran, City Dance, Smith and Co, and others. She recently had her New York Live Arts debut performing "Remembrance" with Salvatore LaRussa Dance Theater. She has attended intensives with Gallim, Alonzo King Lines, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and Orsolina 28 where she learned repertoire from Crystal Pite and Marco Geocke. Louise looks forward to continuing her journey as a dancer and choreographer in the city.
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2025 Grantee
As an artist, Vivian Boyden is interested in entering alternative realities where the body is able to capture everything from the spectrum of human experience to the worlds that exist independently from the rational mind. They value individuality, peculiarity, community, and passion. They seek continuous development for themselves, and strive to cultivate an environment for those around them that is nourishing. In their work, some themes they explore are gender, sexuality, intergenerational connections and recurrences, and what it means to be a part of a collective. Their non-binary identity influences how they see their work, creating nuanced stories and movement that becomes an expression of a multitude of ideas or feelings.
2022 Grantee
Shira Kagan-Shafman is a New York City based dancer and choreographer. She received her BA in Dance from the New School and spent a semester studying in Israel through DanceJerusalem. Kagan-Shafman has performed professionally in works by Peggy Florin, Dean Moss, Rebecca Stenn, jess pretty, Joanna Kotze and Mariana Valencia. Currently, she is working for Ephrat Asherie Dance.
2020 Grantee
Valentina Bache Rodriguez was born and raised in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. She began her dancing career immediately after taking her first steps and has been unable to stop ever since. At 15 years old, she skipped high school and moved to Massachusetts to attend Bard College at Simon's Rock, where she obtained her Associates Degree in Biology and Dance at the age of 17. After three years of hard work trying to develop her artistic impulses alongside a career with alleged financial stability, she decided to fully turn her attention to dance. Thus, she moved to NYC to attend Hunter College for a BA in Dance graduating spring 2020. Her current works operate as introspective movement diaries in which personal and societal absurdities are explored unapologetically. Through the spatio-emotional investigation of the unmapped qualities and textures of human experience, Valentina hopes to enrich and innovate motion as an endless expressive realm of possibilities for herself and those involved in the process.
2019 Grantee
Lian Kizner is a graduating senior at Lehman College pursuing a Dance BA and a Psychology BA. She began dancing and performing at age seven in Studio E. She has studied different styles of dance such as modern, jazz, tap, ballet, hip-hop, and structured improvisation. She choreographed her first performed piece, "Negiot," in 2018, which was selected to perform at the Lehman College's Accepted Students Day. She has performed in pieces by Michael Manswell, Amy Larimer, Nicholas Leichter, and Alexandra Beller. In 2018, she was a featured dancer in two pieces in the Lehman College Spring Dance concert and performed in Quiana Prince's evening-length show, "Project L.O.V.E: No Love Lost." In 2019, she choreographed "I Loved Her," and assisted Quiana Prince in "Project L.O.V.E: Where the Wild things are!" Lian was the first recipient to humbly receive the BWPS Grant to produce her own dance show for June 2019.