Making Moves: Seattle

Join NCCAkron for Making Moves: Seattle, a panel discussion and book launch event for Artists on Creative Administration (AOCA). The conversation features regional arts leaders and national book contributors exploring themes of the choreography of care, self-advocacy, and navigating changing times.

Saturday, May 3, 2025

3:00pm – 4:30pm PT

On the Boards

100 W Roy St, Seattle, WA 98119

Copies of Artists on Creative Administration will be available through local bookseller Elliott Bay Book Company.

Byron Au Yong, Composer and Director of Arts Leadership at Seattle University

Christy Bolingbroke, Executive/Artistic Director of NCCAkron and Artists on Creative Administration (AOCA) Contributing Author

Jody Kuehner AKA Cherdonna, Performance Artist and Instructor at Cornish College of the Arts

Miguel Gutierrez, Choreographer and AOCA Contributing Author

Tonya Lockyer, Cultural Strategist and AOCA Editor/Contributing Author

Fox Whitney, Multi-disciplinary Artist

**in process, additional panelists TBA

Artists on Creative Administration: A Workbook from the National Center for Choreography was published September 24, 2024, by The University of Akron Press as part of their NCCAkron Series in Dance. Edited by artist/cultural strategist Tonya Lockyer this book features essays from and interviews with 30 artists and advocates from the dance and performing arts worlds, sharing first-hand stories of creative administration in action through case studies, interviews, life tools, and experiments.

About the Panelists

Byron Au Yong (Seattle, WA) creates events Variety calls “intimate and existential, personal and political all at once.” He was born to Chinese immigrants in Pittsburgh and raised in the Pacific Northwest. His upbringing informs an attention to the ways people gather to listen and connect with the places they call home. Honors include a Creative Capital Award and Sundance Institute/Time Warner Foundation Fellowship. Au Yong holds degrees in theater, dance, and music from NYU, UCLA, and the University of Washington. He is an Associate Professor and Director of Arts Leadership at Seattle University.

Christy Bolingbroke (Akron, OH) is the Founding Executive/Artistic Director for the National Center for Choreography - Akron (NCCAkron). As such, she is responsible for setting the curatorial vision and business model to foster research and development opportunities in dance. Previously, she served as the Deputy Director for Advancement at ODC in San Francisco, overseeing curation, performance programming, marketing, and development organization-wide. Prior to ODC, she was the Director of Marketing at the Mark Morris Dance Group in Brooklyn, NY. She earned a BA in Dance from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an MA. in Performance Curation from Wesleyan University. 

Miguel Gutierrez (Brooklyn. NY / Los Angeles, CA) is multi-disciplinary artist based in Lenapehoking/Brooklyn, NY and Tovaangar/Los Angeles. He creates empathetic and irreverent spaces for himself and other QTPOC folx to dream. His work has been presented nationally and internationally in venues such as Festival d’Automne/Paris, the Walker Art Center, and in the 2014 Whitney Biennial. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, United States Artists Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award, four New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards, and a 2016 Doris Duke Artist Award. He is an Associate Professor of Choreography at UCLA in the department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance.

Jody Kuehner AKA Cherdonna (Seattle, WA) uses dance, drag, theater, camp, feminist traditions, absurdity and subversive commentary to make art. Twenty years ago, she landed in Seattle and fell in love with its rowdy, postmodern dance culture. Over the last 20 years Jody has created and performed a wide array of evening-length works and performance installations described as “uncategorizable spectacles” (The Stranger) for theaters, museums, clubs, parking lots, and abandoned buildings. She is a 2020 and 2023 NEFA’s National Dance Project finalist, 2017 Artist Trust Fellowship recipient, 2016 NEFA’s National Dance Project awardee, and 2015 Stranger Genius Award winner. She has been presented nationally at the USF in Tampa FL, Go Drag! Festival, Berlin, Germany; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI; Centro de las Artes, Monterrey, Mexico; The Yard at Martha’s Vineyard; American Dance Festival, Durham, NC; and FringeArts in Philadelphia, PA. Her exhibition DITCH was presented at the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA; The Momentary at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AK; Sarasota Art Museum, FL; and Akron Art Museum, OH. DITCH was featured in ARTnews, i-D Magazine and NBC's 12 must-see LGBTQ art shows around the world.

Tonya Lockyer (Suquamish, WA), widely praised as “a key cultural changemaker” (Seattle Times), is an award-winning artist and cultural strategist. Her work as a groundbreaking artist, arts leader, and curator has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, Arts International, Princeton University, NPR, The Banff Center, Canada Council, TEDx, and the City of Seattle. As an artist and curator, Lockyer has collaborated with some of the most innovative artistic experimentalists of our time. Lockyer was the founding co-director of the collective VIA, the transformative director of Seattle’s Velocity Dance Center (2011-2018), and the inaugural chair of Seattle’s first arts district. She is an adjunct professor in Arts Leadership (MFA/BA) at Seattle University.

Fox Whitney (Seattle, WA) is a multi-disciplinary artist working at the intersection of dance, film, music, writing, and visual art. He is obsessed with the surreal nature of transformation. His projects center his mixed Black, queer, and transgender point-of-view. In 2012, he founded Gender Tender, an ongoing  QT interdisciplinary performance project. Light Aloud, a trans-futurist psych band he started  in 2023 is named after a GT performance score that begins by meditating on a photo of police pushing a protester to the ground during the 1969 Stonewall Riots. His process is informed by his experience as a gigging drummer, experimental dancer, actor, and past life as a drag king. Fox’s work has been commissioned and produced by the Henry Art Gallery, On the Boards, Velocity Dance Center, Seattle International Dance Festival, Yellow Fish Epic Durational Performance Festival  and Seattle’s Gay City Arts.. His visual art and short films have been exhibited nationally. Light Aloud has performed at Trans Pride Seattle, Capitol Hill Block Party, and Seattle Art Fair. He holds an MFA in Studio Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Fox is also a yoga + meditation + movement teacher and an arts journalist currently writing for SeattleDances.com.

Pictured (L to R): Cover art for Artists on Creative Administration; The Space Needle and Seattle skyline at twilight (photo by Kerry Park).