Dive into FoCo Technique™ and experience solo creation and coaching with Nat Wilson, Brooklyn-based dancer, teacher, and choreographer whose work focuses on cross-cultural communication with a passion for expansive physicality.

FoCo Technique™ is an original and evolving dance vocabulary created by choreographer and artistic director of YYDC, Yue Yin. Echoing her choreographic voice, the technique is a unique contemporary form of dance movement rooted in Chinese classical and folk dance, melded with the complex and diverse influences of the immigrant experience. The form grows from Yin’s own blended international background and a deep appreciation for precision, contrast, fluidity, and musicality.

Nat works closely with Yue Yin as a dancer in YY Dance Company, certified FoCo Technique™ instructor, and repetiteur for Yue Yin’s choreography. Nat is also a valued member of kNoname Artist | Roderick George and Boca Tuya, among other freelance work.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Nat Wilson (they/he) is a Brooklyn-based dancer, choreographer, and teacher. At age 16 they moved to New York City to study ballet, later joining the Joffrey Ballet Studio Company. In 2016, they joined Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, giving them the opportunity to perform and teach around the world, including China, Peru, South Korea, and India. In January of 2020 they moved to New York City to pursue a freelance career, having since worked professionally in both New York and Los Angeles, performing with YYDC, kNoname Artist/Roderick George, Boca Tuya, and ate9 Dance Company, as well as creating their own work. They are one of only three instructors certified to teach Yue Yin's FoCo Technique™ and have taught workshops in Peru, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco, as well as ongoing classes in New York. As a choreographer, they blend the movement language of FoCo Technique™ with their own idiosyncrasies and a dramaturgical voice inspired by their time in Israel.

Website: www.natwilsondance.com
Instagram: @natattax

sleeper hit! is a work by Moscelyne ParkeHarrison, unfolding across three scenes: fashion and identity (s1), rhythm and youth (s2), and legacy and text (s3). Drawing on the idea of a “sleeper hit”, a work that resonates unexpectedly or long after its debut, the piece explores the psychology of time and anticipation, and virtuosity as expressions of identity. 

The Hatchery workshop will explore sleeper hit (s1): embodiment and character development through fashion. Working in collaboration with a stylist, this workshop will center fashion as an entry point into identity, presence, and performative selfhood. Garments will serve as the foundation for a devised process that investigates individuality and collectivity, revealing how we come to be seen by others and by ourselves.

This workshop is ideal for dancers interested in embodied research, interdisciplinary collaboration, and deepening their personal virtuosity through character, style, and self-expression.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Moscelyne ParkeHarrison (she/her) is a choreographer, director, and dance artist based in NYC. She is the former Associate Artistic Director and Resident Choreographer of Post:ballet (2022-25), and Artistic Director of NYC based dance company BODYSONNET (2019-present). She is a graduate of The Juilliard School with the Joseph W. Polisi Artist as Citizen Award. She recently choreographed Magma, an evening length immersive dance theater show at SF’s premiere nightclub, The Midway.

In July 2025 she was asked to serve as Interim Rehearsal Director of AXIS Dance Company, one of the nation’s most acclaimed ensembles of disabled, non-disabled, d/Deaf and neurodiverse performers, whom she has collaborated with since 2023 as a teacher and performing artist.

Moscelyne has received support from Anthony Quinn Foundation, New England Foundation for the Arts, Adobe, and MassCultural Council, and commissions from The Juilliard School, Skidmore College, Joffrey NYC, Metropolis Ensemble, Merde Project, LINES Training Program, Center for Creative Technology at Juilliard, and Post:ballet. She has taught at ODC, The Juilliard School, LINES Dance Center, The Training Ground SF, Broadway Dance Center, UC Davis, and UC Berkeley. Moscelyne’s dance films have been featured at The San Francisco Dance Film Festival, Dance Camera West, and ADF’s Movies By Movers. She has been a guest at Intuit, The Alan D. Marks Center for Entrepreneurship at Juilliard, Dance/USA, and Yale University.

She currently teaches at Joffrey NYC Jazz & Contemporary Training Program, Gibney, and Steps on Broadway. She is the choreographer and creative supervisor for Filling the Shell, techno-choreographic work produced by ARESPHERE with BODYSONNET in New York City.

The Embodied Cinema explores the body as a cinematic instrument, where movement, camera, and environment co-author the film. Centering the body as both subject and author, this Incubation investigates how physical presence shapes cinematic form.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Luca Renzi, Choreographer, Dance-Theorist, and Cinematographer, is based in Los Angeles. He holds a Masters of Fine Arts in Dance from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, specializing in Choreography & Dance/Technology. Luca currently serves as a Co-Choreographer and Co-Creative Director at Mike Tyus & Co. He is also the founder of the Choreographic Research LAB, a platform that encourages exploration in dance composition, reflecting Luca’s approach to design and choreography. Luca collaborates with leading brands, recording artists, dance companies, architects, installation artists, and museums to craft innovative, cross-disciplinary experiences that bridge movement, design, and culture.

Instagram: @luca_francesco_renzi

Mike Tyus is a Los Angeles–based dancer, choreographer, and creative director. He is the founder of Mike Tyus & Co., a movement-driven company creating works for stage, film, museums, and brands.

Tyus has performed with Cirque du Soleil, Pilobolus Dance Theater, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s “Eastman”, and is a founding member of Jacob Jonas The Company. His choreographic commissions include Le Ballet Opéra d’Avignon, Whim W’Him, Visceral Dance Chicago, Peridance, and Joffrey Ballet’s “Winning Works”. Known for blending acrobatics, theater, and contemporary dance, his work explores themes of nature, spirituality, and human resilience through bold, ritualistic movement.

Commercially, Tyus has collaborated with some of today’s leading artists and brands, including Zendaya, FKA Twigs, Sia for Ryan Heffington, Grace VanderWaal, Jackson Wang for Hennessy, Apple, and Lancôme. Most recently, his work appears in the Netflix documentary Songs From the Hole and “Masquerde” the new immersive rendition of Phantom of the Opera off-Broadway in NYC.

Beyond the stage, Tyus continues to expand the possibilities of dance on film and in museums. He has created two original dance films for The Broad Museum in Los Angeles and developed performances and a film for Superblue Museum in Miami. These projects reflect his commitment to bringing dance into unconventional spaces, merging visual art, film, and live performance.

With a career spanning international stages, commercial platforms, and museum installations, Tyus has established himself as a versatile and innovative voice in contemporary dance. His work celebrates physicality and resilience while challenging audiences to reflect, feel, and reimagine the possibilities of movement.

Website: miketyus.com
Instagram: @miketyus

Investigate site-responsive creation with Oakland-based dance artist Babatunji, whose hybrid movement language and extensive experience across stage, film, and public spaces informs this special site-specific workshop in partnership with Roar Shack Live.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Babatunji is a dance artist, choreographer, and creative innovator based out of Oakland, CA. Though never formally trained as a child, Babatunji was always moving his body to the beat. At the age of 15, he discovered the art of hip hop. Following this epiphany of love, he grew up through his teens breaking and popping on street corners in Hilo, Hawai’i. After being “discovered” by a local dance instructor, he began his formal training at Center Stage Dance Alliance in various styles of dance, including ballet. This training would inevitably lead him to LINES Ballet’s Training Program, and from there, into LINES Ballet company.

For over a decade he has worked with one of the greatest American choreographers, Alonzo King. Throughout their time together Babatunji originated many roles, including the acclaimed “Lift Every Voice” solo in which he’s been blessed to share the stage with Grammy Award-winning vocalist, Lisa Fischer. As a freelance dancer, Babatunji has worked with Post:ballet, SFDanceworks, tinypistol, Ballare Carmel; as well as performed works by choreographers and artist such as Adji Cissoko, Yue Yin, Danielle Rowe, Brett Conway, Rich and Tone Talauega, David Harvey, and Mike Tyus. Additionally, his work for film includes features in Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs’ Blindspotting on Starz. Most recently he co-starred alongside Misty Copeland in her short art film Flower, which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2023. The San Francisco Chronicle profiled Babatunji’s journey from street performance to the big screen.

Over the past 10 years, Babatunji has developed a unique movement language, blending his background in ballet, contemporary, breaking, and hip hop. He has choreographed for Berkeley Ballet Theater, Boston Dance Theater, Post:ballet, Trolley Dance, SFDanceworks, and the San Francisco Dance Film Festival, among other Bay Area companies. As a solo artist, Babatunji has performed internationally, collaborating with visual, sound, and technical artists of countless genres. His work has been seen at the Museum of Dance, Lion’s Jaw performance + dance festival, København Danser, and SFJazz in collaboration with Terri Lyne Carrington. In 2015, he was awarded a Princess Grace Award, as well as a Chris Hellman Award for his outstanding achievements and promise in the world of dance. In 2022, Babatunji was featured in Dance Magazine’s “Dancer Spotlight - Making New Movement”.

Babatunji is immensely grateful to his mom for providing him with every opportunity and the guidance of her wisdom along the way.

Instagram: @babatunji

Christian + Maurya are interested in investigating a grammar of both embodied and lingual language in an effort to help workshop participants gain clearer and more objective improvisatory and creation tools. That said, to reference the poet Denise Levertov, accuracy is the gateway to mystery; so while we seek clarity, it is in the service of both increasing our access to the depth and poetry of our creative expressions and becoming better and more empathic listeners (of ourselves and each other).

Each day will consist of a warm up + physical practice; skill + technique building; and assimilation, making, + sharing.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Maurya Kerr is a Bay Area-based artist and educator. Much of her work, across disciplines, is focused on black and brown people reclaiming their birthright to both wonderment and the quotidian. Maurya was a member of Alonzo King LINES Ballet for twelve years, an ODC artist-in-residence from 2015 to 2018, and holds an MFA in dance from Hollins University; she has taught in the LINES education programs since their inception. After co-curating ODC Theater’s 2023/24 season, she was appointed as Resident Curator for their 2024/25 season. Her sophomore short film, Saint Leroi, was described in the Village Voice as “a surreal meditation on Black history, violence, and American decay and a powerful indictment of racism.” Maurya is a 2025 NEA Creative Writing Fellow, with her poetry nominated for two Pushcart prizes and appearing in multiple journals. Other recent honors include winning Rhino Poetry's 2024 Editor's Prize, second place in Palette Poetry's 2023 Resistance & Resilience Prize, and first place in the 2022 Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest. She is author of the chapbooks MUTTOLOGY and tommy noun (winner of the 2022 C&R Press Winter Soup Bowl Chapbook Award).

Website: www.tinypistol.com
Instagram: @tinypistol

Christian Burns has been choreographing, teaching, and performing in the Bay Area and beyond for over 30 years. He has been a member of James Sewell Ballet and Alonzo King LINES Ballet, a guest artist with The Forsythe Company, and has collaborated with some of the world’s leading dance improvisers. His ongoing pursuit of meaning and purpose through dance has yielded a dynamic range of interdisciplinary works for the stage, video, and visual art contexts. He currently resides on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, where he teaches for the Prince Dance Institute and Kona Dance and Performing Arts, and has been named a 2026 Artist in Residence at the Donkey Mill Art Center in Kailua-Kona.

Website: www.burnswork.org
Instagram: @burnswork

Unlock the power of physical storytelling in this dynamic workshop for movers and movement enthusiasts alike. Blending performance techniques, acting, and composition, the workshop supports participants in channeling their stories through sensation-based and narrative-led movement approaches. 

This workshop will serve as an incubation process for Sweat!, an immersive new dance work by Ja’Moon Jones for City Dance Studios. Reimagining club culture as sacred spaces for transformation, resistance, and survival, Sweat! is rooted in the ecstatic and communal energy of the dance floor—spaces where marginalized people have long gathered to grieve, celebrate, and transcend. This piece will explore sweating together as both physical exertion and a powerful act of collective endurance.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Ja'Moon Jones is a conjurer of movement, channeling ancestral memory through ritual, dance theater, and immersive performance. Their work invites audiences into liminal space—where history, imagination, and the present moment converge.

A graduate of The Juilliard School, their practice draws from African diasporic traditions, physical theater, and collective witnessing. They have performed and presented work internationally, including at Institut Français (Dakar, Senegal), Abrons Arts Center (NYC), and Judson Memorial Church (NYC), BAAD! (NYC), Herbst Theatre (San Francisco, CA).

Ja’Moon is the inaugural Resident Choreographer at Ballare Carmel, a 2024–2025 New Dance Alliance: BASC Fellow, and a 2025 Dancing While Black Fellow—platforms supporting Black artists through rest, creation, and cultural reclamation.

They have performed in Sleep No More NYC by Punchdrunk and danced with A.I.M by Kyle Abraham. Their performance credits include works by Crystal Pite, Bill T. Jones, and YueYin.

A recipient of the Max Mara Young Visionary Award, Ja’Moon has held residencies with École des Sables (Senegal), Berkeley Ballet Theater (California), and Merely Underground. His choreographic voice continues to evolve through storytelling, embodied memory, and the desire to create brave, transformative spaces for community.

Instagram: @thedancingspirit_

Step into a full-body immersion where floorwork, dance-theater and spontaneous composition collide. Through non-linear storytelling, travel between the real and surreal to unlock new portals of movement and expression. Building foundations from visceral, momentum-driven floorwork; awaken joint mobility, gain strength and efficiency in motion while harnessing explosive power with cloud-like landings. Develop agility, confidence, and try on new movement imprints. Broadening the body’s expressive tools, explore monologue, dialogue, lip-syncing, and animated physicality. Activate theatricality and the voice to excavate other avenues of character development. Combine each day’s skills to create a map for instant composition. Practice layering complexity inside a structured improv. Find meaning through character in response to real-time events unfolding with the ever-developing collective. Go beyond “steps” to unleash spirit, instinct, and the limitless possibilities of intent-driven performance.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Laja Field is an international dance-theater creator, educator and performer known for her hyperphysical, non-linear storytelling through movement. Her work spans across the U.S, Canada, Central America and Europe. Originally from Salt Lake City, she earned her BFA from the University of Utah. In her final year, Laja began working with johannes wieland and went on to spend three full seasons at Staatstheater Kassel in Germany. Laja’s teaching career jump-started at New York City’s Gibney 280 and Peridance Center. While in the city, Laja co-founded LAJAMARTIN physical dance theater with Martin Durov and was also a founding member and rehearsal director of Vim Vigor Dance Company. Independently, Laja has toured to 18 countries worldwide, some highlights include being selected as resident choreographer at Springboard Danse, performing at PRISMA festival in Panama, serving as adjunct professor at NYU | Tisch, creating work for Danse à la Carte’s, TransFormation in Montreal, and teaching yearly at the b12 festival in Berlin. Laja is the North American Admissions Ambassador for the MA Dance: Performance at The Place | London Contemporary Dance School; a guest with greywax dance company directed by Victor Rottier and continues her independent projects creating and teaching across the globe.

Jessie Lee Thorne (she/they) is a choreographer, filmmaker, and performer whose work moves fluidly between live performance, dance film, and commercial media. Her practice explores the relationship between movement, dialogue, and imagery as a means of connection across artistic disciplines and societal boundaries. Jessie has collaborated with music artists including RY X, Banks, Bishop Briggs, and David Archuleta, as well as institutions such as Nowness, Universal Pictures, The Getty Museum, and TED. As a performer, Jessie has toured internationally for over a decade with artists and companies including Micaela Taylor’s TL Collective, Walter Matteini, Margot Gelber, and Dolly Sfeir. Jessie’s award-winning film Topia (2022) produced by Boston Moving Arts, screened internationally and later premiered as a live dance-theater evening work for Dance at the Odyssey Festival in LA. Jessie holds an MA in Screendance from the London Contemporary Dance School and recently was commissioned to make new work for Backhausdance and The Boston Conservatory. Currently living in London, Jessie continues creating and directing movement-led narrative work. This May she will be premiering a new duet in NYC.