Why do I dance? Dance is about building empathy and relationships. It is about creating and sustaining communities for people to express themselves, and for people who need to move to get through hardships they’ve experienced. My dance practice is about giving myself room to re-discover comfortability in my own body. It is to show young people that queer people can take up space and that their body is there for them to revel in. It’s to show people the joy of queer embodiment in a society that shuns such practices. I want to teach young LGBTQ+ people the elations I’ve found in my body through dance, and how they can work to find that same peace. My dance and research is to elevate young queer people so they too can find joy in their bodies.

- Ida Lucchesi (she/they)

My work is very conceptual. It has a message…a point. And it’s often one that comes through me vs. from me. (I see artists as channels.) Because the message has always been more important than the medium, I’m constantly exploring new methods and techniques for artmaking, and I often work in collaboration with other artists. Right now, I’m working on a book of poetry that incorporates collage work and explores themes of mental illness, hustle culture and mutual aid. The book's throughline is about how the inhumane machinations of capitalism can only be healed by a return to nature — a return to the natural world and to our own nature, which are inarguably interconnected.

- KT Mullen (she/her)