BRIDGE PROJECT 2027 APPLICATIONS
BRIDGE PROJECT APPLICATIONS ARE OPEN
DUE SEPT 1 2026 | Velocity invites Seattle-based choreographers to apply for Bridge Project 2027
Velocity adopts an expansive definition of the word emerging. For us the word encapsulates emerging relationships between artist and institution, new choreographic partnerships, re-emerging into the scene, emerging into their first choreographic work in their professional career, and more. Whether you are new to Seattle, new to dance making, or are a well known or seasoned Seattle artist who wants to explore a new idea and connect with new audiences, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out if you’d like to talk about how this program reframe could mean Bridge is for you!
Velocity’s Emerging Creative Incubator, Bridge Project, is a platform where Seattle based choreographers are able to build or re-establish a relationship with Velocity and its audiences. Every year, this five week residency offers three choreographers up to 50 hours of rehearsal space each to research and present a new 20 minute dance work at 12th Ave Arts. Velocity provides each choreographer with an artist stipend, rehearsal space, creative mentorship, and administrative support during the research and presentation processes.
We will be selecting three movement-based artists who have not made choreographic work in Velocity’s incubator programs (Bridge Project, OUT THERE, Co-Productions, Made in Seattle, CAiR) in the last five years. Ideal applicants are interested in connection, mentorship (both as mentor and mentee), and challenging/deepening their choreographic process towards local emergence or re-emergence. One of the three positions in the cohort is reserved for an Emerging Artist who has been making choreographic work for three years or less.
If you have questions or would like to speak to someone about your application, please contact Shane Donohue: shane@velocitydancecenter.org
Olivia Anderson | Bridge Project 2026, photo by Jim Coleman
SELECTED CHOREOGRAPHERS WILL RECIEVE
- 50 hrs of rehearsal space (Valued at $1500)
- Artist Stipend of $1500
- Lighting design by Velocity technical staff
- Mentorship and production support from Velocity staff and Curating Artist in Residence
- 4 in-person performances that are fully produced
- Documentation + Photos of the new work
VELOCITY'S CURATORIAL STATEMENT
This statement guides how we make choices and how we invite artists into collaborations with us. It’s a living commitment—evolving as we do.
At Velocity, we support dance driven by experimentation—not defined by a specific style or aesthetic, but by a commitment to research, risk, and inquiry. Our curatorial approach is rooted in our values: artist leadership, equity and inclusivity, leading with relationship, curiosity and rigor, and liberation for all. We support artists that work to shift harmful or outdated norms. We prioritize depth, clarity, and process over product. To us, excellence means thoughtfulness, innovation, and resilience.
We are drawn to artists who experiment with how dance is made, shared, and experienced. We want to know how you’re working not only with movement, but with process, collaboration, and engagement with intended communities. We seek artists researching deeply within their movement form, considering the social and political realities shaping their work, and the many ways performance can communicate and have impact—before, during, and after the show. We’re also interested in artists reimagining how work gets made: experimenting with new strategies, challenging models of authorship and power, and reshaping how we plan, fund, and talk about dance.
At Velocity, we curate to cultivate. We see artist development as a relationship that grows over time. Our programs are designed to support this ongoing process, allowing us to build trust and understanding, deepen our collaboration, and expand the scope of our shared work. We believe meaningful partnerships require mutual investment, shared risk, and shared reward. When we curate, we’re not only thinking about what’s ready now—we’re also thinking about how we can grow with an artist so we’re ready to take on larger, more ambitious projects together when the time is right.
Our decision-making is collaborative and led by artists. Curation at Velocity is led by the Executive Director and the programming staff, and often includes the wider Velocity staff and invited community artists, who serve either as project-based panelists or more long-term advisors. We prioritize hiring administrators who are artists themselves, so that our processes remain artist-led.
CRITERIA
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Criteria |
Description |
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Proposal demonstrates that the artist’s work is emerging based on Velocity’s expansive idea of the term. The artist must be a resident of the Greater Seattle Area and available for all dates listed. |
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Proposal articulates a research concept that is compelling and clearly translates to a movement based presentation within a performance and shows artistic alignment with Velocity’s Curatorial Statement. |
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Proposal demonstrates that this project would provide clear benefit to the artist’s development. |
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Proposal articulates how an investment in this project will benefit the wider Seattle community. Projects interested in hosting an audition will be scored higher on community impact. |
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The proposal clearly articulates an embodied research concept that culminates in a new 20-minute work that is achievable, given both the artist’s experience and skills and the time and resources available. |
Within Criteria 1 –
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- “emerging” – Velocity adopts an expansive definition of the word emerging. For us the word encapsulates emerging relationships between artist and institution, new choreographic partnerships, re-emerging into the scene, emerging into their first choreographic work in their professional career, and more.
- “Greater Seattle Area” – For the Bridge Project, we mean Greater Seattle Metropolitan area, which includes King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties. This project is specifically aiming to benefit residents of this region, so you must live and/or work in this area to be eligible for the Bridge Project.
- “available for all dates” – We mean that you are available to be present either physically or in some cases virtually for the entire duration of the dates listed. Selected applicants will set their rehearsal schedule during the residency, but they must be available for all meetings, technical/dress rehearsals and performances.
Within Criteria 5 –
- “Feasibility” – Bridge Project is a 5-week opportunity to create a short work to be presented alongside two other short works within a live theater context. We encourage you to stretch the limits of what is possible, but your proposal will be strongest if you help us understand how this proposal will exist within this context, and consider what is achievable given the resources and time available to you. We see the Bridge project as a catalyst for ideas, and many alums go on to expand their work beyond the original scope of the first performance, so keep in mind that this first iteration does not need to be the final product, but just the first premiere of your larger idea.
Application workshop 1 / JUL 18 | 12 - 1 PM PST (Highly Recommended)
CLICK HERE to sign up
Application workshop 2 / AUG 14 | 6 - 730 pm PST (Highly Recommended)
CLICK HERE to sign up
IMPORTANT DATES
Important Dates [selected choreographers must be available for all of the following]:
- Fri, OCT 9 | 12-1:30pm – Production Meeting about Budget, Funding, Rehearsal/Audition Collaboration
- Fri, OCT 23 | 12-1:30pm – Production Meeting- Framing, talking about your work and contextualizing.
- JAN 5-31 | Artists will schedule their own times with Creative Producer no less than 50 hours for the 4 weeks of rehearsal (12.5 hours a week)– Intensive residency @ 12th Ave Arts
- Wed, JAN 13 | 5-7PM – Art Talk Meeting @ 12th Ave Arts
- Wed, JAN 20 | 5-7PM – Art Talk Meeting @ 12th Ave Arts
- Sat, JAN 23 | 12-4PM – Production showing @ 12th Ave Arts
1 hour for each artist – showing and then discussion with designers
All lead artists present for each artist - Wed, JAN 27 | 5-7PM – Art Talk Meeting @ 12th Ave Arts
- FEB 1-2 | TBD – 2-hr tech rehearsal @ 12th Ave Arts
- Tues, FEB 2 | 6pm – 3-hr tech run @ 12th Ave Arts
- Wed, FEB 3 | 6pm – 3-hr dress rehearsal @ 12th Ave Arts
- FEB 4-6 | 7:30pm [Saturday 2pm + 7:30pm] – Performances @ 12th Ave Arts
Art Talk Meetings – These are casual meetings with the artists in the Bridge Cohort and Velocity Staff. These are moments to ask questions about their work and generally get to know each other better.
Curator Bios
Nia-Amina Minor, Curating Artist in residence
Shane Donohue, creative producer
Joseph Hernandez, Communications Manager
Jody Kuehner, Artist Circle Member
Nia-Amina Minor is a movement artist, choreographer, curator, and educator originally from Los Angeles. Her work focuses on the body and what it carries using physical and archival research to converse with memory. She approaches her practice as an imaginative space grounded in rhythm where improvisation, Black vernacular movement, and choreography meet. Nia-Amina has received regional and national commissions for her choreographic and film work and has a working background as a performer and dramaturg. She is co-founder of Black Collectivity, a collaborative project that celebrates embodied research through performance and curation.
As a performer, Nia-Amina has worked with artists such as dani tirrell, Zoe Juniper, Will Rawls, Alice Gosti, Keyes Wiley, and Amy O’Neal. From 2016-2021 she was a Company Artist at Spectrum Dance Theater under the direction of Donald Byrd. Nia-Amina has also provided dramaturgical assistance to choreographers Jade Solomon-Curtis and Donald Byrd. In her work as a curator, she has developed programming at On the Boards, Wa Na Wari, Velocity, and Base, and Friends of the Waterfront Park. From 2014-2016, she was a co-founder and curator of Los Angeles based collective, No)one Art House. As an educator, she has taught, guest lectured, and been a visiting artist at Cornish College, University of Minnesota, CalArts, University of Washington, Western Washington University, Saddleback College, Cypress College, and UC Irvine. Nia-Amina received her MFA in Dance from UC Irvine and a BA from Stanford University. She was Dance Magazine’s 25 Artists to Watch in 2021, and one of Seattle Magazine’s Most Influential People in 2025. Nia-Amina is currently on faculty at Cornish College of the Arts at Seattle University.
Shane Donohue is a Seattle based dance artist currently working as co-top with Drama Tops. He works closely with zoe | juniper as a dancer and rehearsal director. He has set work with, and for, Zoe Scofield at the University of Washington, Strictly Seattle, Whim W’him, Bard Summerscape’s production of “Le Roi Arthus” in 2021. His work has been seen in Next Fest Northwest. He also works as an artistic collaborator and performer with Kim Lusk, Kinesis Project, Scott Shoemaker’s “:PROBED”, and BenDeLaCreme and Jinkx Monsoon’s Holiday Special in the live, national tour and on Hulu. Shane graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point with a BA in Dance.
Joseph Hernandez (he/him) is a Seattle-based choreographer and arts administrator. He keeps dancing and making dances in the spirit best described by Kathy Acker: “The only reaction to an unbearable world is an equally unbearable nonsense.”
He began his work as a choreographer in Antwerp, Belgium. Since then he has made dances for companies throughout Germany, France, and Italy– most recently for Staatstheater Nürnberg, Festspielhaus Hellerau, and Societaetstheater Dresden. He was an active curator at STORE CONTEMPORARY in Dresden, as well as a founding member of the TANZNETZ DRESDEN Studio Round. In the US, his work has been presented by the Joyce Theater in NYC, Whim W’him Contemporary Dance Seattle, the Hamptons Dance Project, and Ballet Idaho. He was appointed as Associate Choreographer by the Northwest Dance Project in 2021, creating 5 works for the company before ultimately deciding to make art in a different way.
He currently works at Velocity Dance Center and is excited by their mission of uplifting experimentalism and artist-centred programming. He believes the future of dance is messy and hilarious, and only possible through community care and collective action.
Jody Kuehner is a Seattle-based dance artist, director, and drag queen Cherdonna Shinatra. She is a 2015 Stranger Genius Award winner, Velocity Dance Center’s 2014 Artist in Residence, and 2010 Spotlight Award winner. Her choreography has been presented by every major contemporary dance venue in Seattle including On The Boards, Velocity Dance Center, Bumbershoot, CityArtsFest, Northwest Film Forum, Henry Art Gallery, and Frye Art Museum. Jody received funding for her current work from the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, which supports a two-year, three-part project, one great, bright, brittle alltogetherness. With this funding along with a unique partnership between the Henry Art Gallery, Velocity Dance Center, and On the Boards, the parts of this project are in residence and touring throughout the US. Jody was Dayna Hanson’s Production Coordinator and Assistant Director 2010-2015 for various projects. She danced with Pat Graney company from 2007 – 2016 and assisted with Graney’s KTF Prison Project. As Cherdonna, she performs with award-winning international sensations Kitten N’ Lou and BenDeLaCreme (RuPaul’s Drag Race). Kuehner teaches Professional Contemporary Dance at Velocity and has taught at Strictly Seattle and Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation.
In 2014, she received a GAP award to hire Seattle local fashion designer Mark Mitchell to make a one-of-a-kind costume for her show Worth My Salt. This performance is part bio drag queen performance art and part contemporary dance. It focuses on a persona named Cherdonna who is an atypical drag queen – a combination of an abstract mover and a modern day old world clown. Cherdonna takes what you recognize about dance, what you believe about drag, what intrigues you about improvisation and what delights you about entertainment, toss it in a mason jar, shake it up, and open the lid.
