Bernard Brown is an award-winning transdisciplinary choreographer, filmmaker, performer, arts activist, curator, and educator who situates their work at the intersection of Blackness, Queerness, and belonging. A choreographic thinker, his work as a creative being merges physical practice, research, and theory while centering and uplifting his community.

Alongside an extensive performing career, Brown is the founder and director of Bernard Brown/bbmoves - a social justice dance theater company - choreographing for stage, specific sites, film, and opera presented globally including invitations, residencies and commissions from The J. Paul Getty Museum, On The Boards, REDCAT, Dance Camera West, American Dance Festival’s Movies by Movers, Oscar-qualifying African Diaspora Cinema Festival, Seoul International Dance Festival, The Music Center, Dance Italia, Royce Hall and US Embassy sponsored tour to Burkina Faso, West Africa. His work as a filmmaker continues to garner acclaim and make a global impact. “The Weight of Sugar” has been screened extensively in Europe, Asia and North America to great acclaim, winning awards for Best Choreography, Best Directing and Best Dance Film in New York and India.

His concert dance performance credits include Lula Washington Dance Theatre, David Rousseve/REALITY, Doug Elkins Dance Company, Jazz Antiqua Dance and Music Ensemble, and founding member of TU Dance. Other stage credits include Robert Wilson’s “Letter to a Man” with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Los Angeles Opera’s “Aida,” Penumbra Theater’s “Black Nativity,” Donald Byrd’s “Harlem Nutcracker,” “Treemonisha” for Skylark Opera (choreographer and performer), the titular role in Nike’s “12 Miles North: The Nick Gabaldon Story,” and the Kennedy Center’s Masters of African American Choreography, as répétiteur and performer. He has worked in films directed by Chris Emile, Janessa Clarke, and Tim Allen.

His work is rooted in catalyzing change through dance. He is interested in excavating the ways in which art can transform, create ripples of empathy, and foster healing. Brown is a core member of Street Dance Activism and an ongoing collaborator with Dancing Through Prison Walls, an abolitionist project. His arts activism has been chronicled in the Dance Magazine, The Activist History Review and in the Los Angeles and New York Times publications.

Invested in expanded notions of home and belonging, Brown is the Interim Co-Director and Curator of homeLA, where they have previously served as performer, choreographer and advisory board member. Other curatorial work has been seen at the California African American Museum, Highways Performance Space, Pieter Performance Space, and on the streets of the historic Leimert Park Village through collaborative work with LA Commons and Pacific Standard Time, a Getty Foundation initiative.

A sought after teacher, Brown conducts workshops, lectures, presentations, and master classes internationally, namely in Korea, Israel, Burkina Faso, Panama, Malta, Canada, Brazil, and in communities and institutions across the US such as Northwestern University, Homeboy Industries, Los Angeles Unified School District, Johns Hopkins University, National Immigration Law Center, CalArts, Los Angeles City Hall, and inside prisons in California and Puerto Rico, sharing their inclusive pedagogy. A first-generation college graduate, Brown earned his MFA from UCLA and BFA from Purchase College. He is an Associate Professor at UC San Diego, a Certified Katherine Dunham Technique Instructor, and was named a Cultural Trailblazer by the City of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Times has called him “…the incomparable Bernard Brown…”

Samantha Mohr is an arts administrator, creative producer, educator, and performing artist. As Interim Co-Director of homeLA, Mohr oversees the organization’s internal operations, resource development, and public programs. Since 2020, she has piloted homeLA’s education branch as the Co-Founder and Director of the inSITE program, designing interdisciplinary performance and film curricula for youth across Southern California.

Her administrative practice is informed by community advocacy, including her involvement with the early working groups of the Los Angeles Dance Worker Coalition (LADWC) and contributing to the development of Laying Groundwork for Shared Practices, a set of performer and institutional resource guides. She served as the international Company and Tour Manager for performance artist Faye Driscoll. As a creator and producer, Mohr has presented her live and digital works in theater and film festivals across the United States and Europe.

Her performance credits include touring with David Roussève/REALITY’s Halfway to Dawn to the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival and Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. Mohr performed in Leonard Bernstein’s MASS with the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Gustavo Dudamel at Walt Disney Concert Hall and with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, conducted by Louis Langrée at Lincoln Center; Philip Glass’s Les Enfants Terribles with Long Beach Opera; and works by Prix Marcel Duchamp winner Julien Prévieux at the Palais de Tokyo and Centre Pompidou. She collaborated extensively on multimedia projects with artist Elizabeth Leister, and performed in projects with homeLA founder and curator Rebecca Bruno.

Her choreographic works have been staged in Los Angeles at REDCAT, Highways Performance Space, LAMAG, LACE Gallery, the Hammer Museum, homeLA, Pieter Performance Space, Electric Lodge, South Park Commons, and the Feminist Center for Creative Work; in New York at The Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art, Movement Research at the Judson Church, and Eden’s Expressway; in Paris at Cinema La Clef; and in Baltimore at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center and Baltimore’s Theater Project.

Complementing her work in the arts, she is a Registered Yoga Teacher and trains in the Feldenkrais Method. At homeLA, she brings all of these experiences together to build collaborative, caring spaces for artists and communities.

Andrew Mandinach (he/him/his) is the Media Production and Social Media manager of homeLA. He is responsible for homeLA’s archive, event and rehearsal documentation, photo and video editing, social media posts, and visual aesthetics. He is a filmmaker and installation artist whose work explores memory and perception, representation, identity, performance, and gender. His documentation has created an archive of nearly every rehearsal and performance over 8 years, in 20 homes, of 125+ artists. Andrew received his BA in Visual Arts, Media with a minor in Ethnic Studies from The University of California at San Diego. He is currently the Social Content Manager for UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, where he manages the social strategy for the school across all social media platforms with a focus on follower growth and community engagement.

Vanessa Hernández Cruz (she, her, ella) is an emerging interdependent Chicana disabled dance artist & Disability Justice activist. She is from the unceded lands of the Tongva & Kizh lands colonially known as Los Angeles, California. She graduated from California State University Long Beach with her BA in Dance Science.

In 2022, she was selected into the first national cohort for LatinXtentions year long dance mentorship program led by David Herrera. She was also selected into The Box LA Pieter Parking Space Residency based in Los Angeles, CA where she produced her dance piece “Exit?”. In 2021 she was a part of the Arts Unchained International virtual residency where she developed a dance film titled “11th Hour”.

Vanessa has been implementing the Disability Justice framework (Sins Invalid) through her activism & dance work. She is currently working with DANC (Dance Artists’ National Collective) as their Communications & Social Media Co-Coordinator. She also serves as a consultant in their BIPOC & Disabled Circle.

In the past, she has guided Cal State Long Beach Department of Dance to adopt Disability Justice elements into their dance productions and curriculum with the support of CSULB Affinity AIDE (Advocates for Inclusion & Dancer Equity).

She has developed two workshops: Dismantling Ableism in Dance & Accessibility at the Forefront of Dance Making Series. In addition she offers accessibility consulting to individuals & a variety of arts organizations.

Vanessa’s lifetime aspirations are to perform, choreograph, & create dance films. Through her artistry & activism she will continue to help dismantle systemic oppressions in the dance field to help create an equitable path for future multi-marginalized disabled artists.

Chloë Flores (she/her) is a Latinx Yaqui Native curator, writer, educator, and arts leader with over twenty years of experience working in Los Angeles’ art sector. She works at the intersection of performance, place, and advocacy—foregrounding movement-based and transdisciplinary practices that interrogate power, history, and belonging. Most recently, she served as Executive Director and Curator of homeLA from 2019-2026.

Her work spans exhibitions, performances, programs, publications, residencies, and coalition-driven initiatives that seek to redistribute resources and generate new models for care, equity, and critical exchange.  Most recently, she published Shared Practices, a performance equity framework developed through a collaborative process led by homeLA with choreographer Dorothy Dubrule and Amanda Sroka, Senior Curator at ICA LA. Her current curatorial projects span site-specific performance, feminist cultural programming, and architectural history, including a research-based curatorial initiative in dialogue with the Paul R. Williams retrospective at the J. Paul Getty Research Institute (Winter 2027) and Radical Kinship, an exhibition and programing that brings together work from artists working across collage, ceramic painting, sculpture, film, print, installation, and performance that consider kinship beyond colonial and individualist frameworks at the Feminist Center for Creative Work through August 2, 2026.  She founded GuestHaus Residency (2011-2022), co-founded the Los Angeles Dance Worker Coalition, and spearheaded the development of the Department of Cultural Affairs’ first dance-specific grant program: Dance in the City. 

She holds a dual B.A. in Creative Writing and Literature from California State University Long Beach (honors), and an M.A. (cum laude) in Art and Curatorial Practices in the Public Sphere from USC Roski. Her projects have been supported by the California Arts Council, Mike Kelley Foundation, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, J. Paul Getty GRI, Feminist Center for Creative Work, Cypress College, and the MAK Center.  Additionally, Flores has held curatorial and production roles with LAMCA, Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA), the Armory Center for the Arts, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, The Box, among others, and co-founded Long Beach’s enView Gallery (2005–08). Her writing appears in publications by the J. Getty Museum, University of Southern California, LACMA, UC Riverside’s California Museum of Photography, OCMA, Cypress College, and the Dance Resource Center.

Rebecca Bruno is a psychotherapist and artist practicing across dance and visual art. In 2013, Bruno founded homeLA, a performance project dedicated to dance process in private space partnering with body-based artists and Los Angeles residents. Bruno collaborates with Mak Kern on Objects for Others, a project that embraces chance and meditation by pairing a dance sensibility with kinetic sound sculptures. Bruno’s works have been presented by such venues as The Hammer Museum, The Norton Simon Museum, The Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, the Lloyd Wright Sowden House, the Neutra VDL House, REDCAT Theater, FLAX Foundation at Tin Flats, The Pit Gallery, Honor Fraser Gallery, Ponderosa Germany, Dance Studies Association Malta, Judson Church NYC, and the LAB Jerusalem.

Jia Yi Gu is an architectural scholar, curator, and designer working on histories of knowledge production through the lens of media studies, cultural techniques, and material cultures (i.e. how we know and show our histories). Her research and courses explore changing definitions of architectural knowledge from the building site to the desktop. She is Assistant Professor of Architecture at Harvey Mudd College and one half of the architecture and research studio Spinagu. She develops exhibitions, texts, and experimental programming and projects.

Over the past decade, she has cultivated a pedagogical and curatorial practice centering on transdisciplinary and inquiry-based exhibitions, alongside the critique and transformation of institutional work. Previously, she was director and curator at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture and director of Materials & Applications, a Los Angeles based project space for experimental architecture. She is currently a Board member of the Feminist Center for Creative Work

Jenny Landers is the owner and curator of Sowden House cultural events. She has a background in television, professional and collegiate sports post-production, and graphic design. Over the years, Jenny has worked for boutique post production houses based in NYC: Image Editorial, Post Perfect, The Blue Rock Editing Company, Company 3, and ANC Sports.

She is a lifelong lover of dance and always makes it a point to seek out the dance community in every city she lands. Jenny served as a board member and the secretary for Malashock Dance in San Diego from 2016-2019, and she has been on the board of homeLA since 2019. Jenny has hosted fundraisers and events for Invertigo Dance, Everybody Dance LA, homeLA, FLAX Foundation, and the MAK Center for Arts and Architecture. Upcoming events include a summer production for Iris Dance Company and a fundraiser for the Barnsdall Art Foundation.

Other charitable events she has hosted include Kindred Spirits Care Farm, Wildlife SOS, Little Red Dog, and Food Forward.

Art exhibits she has helped to facilitate at the Sowden House include the Gagosian’s exhibit of ADRIANA VAREJÃO - Transbarroco, LAND Los Angeles Nomadic Division; Jose Dávila Sense of Place.

A lover of animals, art, and social justice, Jenny has volunteered at many non-profits in NJ, NY, WA and CA. These include: campaign coordinator for Amnesty International at Rider University, NYCares, charity bike rides for National MS Society, American Diabetes Association, and the National AIDS ride, Cycle for the Cause. Massage volunteer hours for University of Washington medical students, and the San Diego Humane Society.

Alongside her dedication to the field of dance, Jenny is also a French & Spanish Wine Scholar and is looking forward to combining her love of travel with her wine education. She also holds her license to practice massage in WA state and currently splits her time between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, where she hangs with her husband and Persian cats.

Kimberli Meyer is a cultural producer, curator, and designer working in art and architecture. She was director of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, at the Schindler House, Los Angeles for fourteen years; and at the University Art Museum at California State University Long Beach for two years. She has worked with leading artists, architects, curators, and scholars to produce many exhibitions and performance installations, educational programs, and museum publications. Meyer is co-leader, along with artist lauren woods, of American Monument, a nomadic artwork that prompts reflection on the cultural conditions under which African-Americans lose their lives to police brutality, most recently on view at the Beall Center for Art and Technology at University of California, Irvine.

Mara McCarthy is the Principal and Curator of The Box gallery in the Arts District of Downtown Los Angeles. Since starting The Box in 2007, Mara has worked to create a unique art space–exhibiting work from artists with a diverse range of mediums, both historical and contemporary, many of whom have been unsupported and forgotten.

The Box LA, originally located on the historic Chung King Rd. of Chinatown, Los Angeles, started out with a focus on artists who had been overlooked both historically and geographically. Presenting exhibitions that would shift the understanding of artists such as Barbara T. Smith, Simone Forti, Stan VanDerBeek and Wally Hedrick. Since moving into the Arts District in 2012 and developing the program even more, McCarthy has been expanding her vision of the gallery and has realized the importance of showing politically and psychologically dynamic work. Looking forward, McCarthy is interested in working in a way that expands the notion of what a commercial gallery can be and to consider how powerful the process of viewing art can be. Expanding the access and concept of a gallery program to include Dance, Painting, Music, Art History, Sculpture, Social Justice projects, Performance and Gallery Editions.

taisha paggett makes things and is interested in what bodies do. They/she believes language is tricky, thoughts are powerful, and that people are most beautiful when looking up. more formally, paggett is an interdisciplinary dance artist whose individual and collaborative works re-articulate and collide specific western choreographic practices with the politics of daily life so to interrupt fixed notions of Black and queer embodiment, desire, and survival. paggett had the great honor of receiving the Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ Merce Cunningham Award in 2019 and their/her work has been supported by the kindness and efforts of numerous other organizations, curators, writers, mentors, friends and venues over the years including the Hammer Museum as part of Made in LA; Commonwealth & Council (LA); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LA); Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia); DiverseWorks (Houston); the Whitney Museum as part of the Whitney Biennial; Studio Museum in Harlem; Danspace at St Mark’s Church (New York); Defibrillator (Chicago); Gallery TPW (Toronto); and the Audain Gallery (Vancouver) amongst others. paggett teaches in the Dance Department at UC Riverside and lives nearby in what paggett is coming to understand as a cross-section of the original and rightful homeland of the Cahuilla, Tongva, Luiseño, and Serrano communities. More information can be found here.

Nicole Robinson (BS/MA) is a dancer, teacher, choreographer and dance education advocate from Riverside, CA. She is the dance specialist for the Fontana Unified School district leading professional development projects and workshops for teachers grades K-6 and is the lead teacher for the FUSD Dance Collaborative which provides dance education for students in grades PK-8 grades. In 2015, she was named California League of Teachers' Teacher of the Year for Region 10 and was named the 2017 Carlston Family Foundation Teacher of the Year.

She has served as a team lead for the California Arts Standards Revision Committee in Dance and is a teacher leader for the California Arts Project. Currently, Nicole is the past president for the California Dance Education Association which is the statewide professional organization for California dance educators. She serves as a committee member for the National Dance Education Organization’s Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access advisory.