Melissa Miller

Melissa Miller is an artist working in movement, writing,and installation based in St Louis, Missouri. She is passionate aboutstorytelling as a means of utopian imagining and making lived experiencesvisible. Trusting in the body as a landscape of knowing, she examines ways thatbodies in performance suggest meaning and how those suggestions are satisfiedor subverted. She considers performance to be a laboratory—an experimentalmining of one’s self knowledge, and an offering of vulnerability and connectionin spaces where audiences may serve as active witnesses to transformation. Melissagraduated with her BFA in Dance at Belhaven University, and currently pursues aMaster of Fine Arts in Dance from Hollins University.

About This Piece: Holy Body / Monstrous Body is a story. Thestory of a Catherine Benincasa - a true story of a body caught in the crosshairs of religious dogma, male dominance, and violent misogyny and the ways inwhich that body behaved and succumbed. This story is a point of entry for discussing thecontempt for female bodies which has been normalized in, but not restricted to,high-control Western religious environments.

Paige Van Nest

Paige Van Nest is originally from St. Louis, Missouri, and began her training at Arts in Motion School of Dance. She graduated from Webster University in 2019 with a BFA in Modern Dance and a certificate in Entrepreneurship. Her training outside of Webster University includes Nashville Ballet, The Big Muddy Dance Company, MADCO, and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. In addition to performing with Leverage Dance Theater andMADCO, Paige has performed in the KP Project and has choreographed and performed in the SMTC summer residency projects with Jacob Henss. Paige is passionate about educating the next generation of dancers through teaching at the studio level, choreographing on college dance majors, choreographing musicals for local high schools, as well as creating education materials for the long-established educational outreach residencies at Dance St. Louis.
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About This Piece: Storytelling is such an integral part of the human experience. In my choreographic work, I play with humor, elements of classical dance techniques and dance theater, and references to pop culture through music and visual art to share whimsical yet accessible stories.

Erin Morris

Erin Morris has been teaching, performing, and competing in jazz and swing dancing for over 20 years. She has enjoyed international artist residencies in Vienna, Berlin, and Krakow but above all loves contributing regularly to her local communities and students. Erin received her MFA in Dance in 2023 from Washington University in St Louis and is now adjunct faculty. Her art-making focus has been on blending her background in Black social jazz dance with personal explorations in postmodernism, and she finds that all paths return her to the importance of improvisation and collaboration with musicians. Whether in the studio, the classroom, or the jazz club, Erin is committed to laying bare cultural roots and discovering a present that is individual, informed, aesthetic, and connective.

About This Piece: Erin’s new work builds upon a movement language that is thick with authentic jazz and pushes through to whatever can be authentically now. Rhythmic and stuck, heavy and bright, this piece lights up the body with sound while telling a darker story of dreams deferred.

Marlee Doniff

Marlee Doniff (she/they) has been dancing for the past two decades. Her relationship to the form manifests in many ways—education, performance, choreography, research, and administration. Marlee is curious about creating authentic, vulnerable, bold movement to explore the ways the body processes life’s bigger qualms and subtle joys through theatricality and virtuosity. Marlee’s newest project, Sharing Circle, advocates for collaboration and community in the dance world. She has danced and choreographed with Space Station and Consuming KineticsDance Company. Marlee is a passionate educator who hopes to ignite creativity and aid in students’ discovery of their artistic voice. Additionally, She works as the Festival Company Manager for the American Dance Festival. Through this and their other administrative work, they are honored to elevate dance at all stages in the process. Marlee holds a BA in Dance from Webster University where her senior capstone, “That’s so Gay… Gender and Sexuality Representation inConcert Dance and Why it Matters,” was chosen for presentation at multiple conferences.Marlee is excited to deepen her artistry as a part of the MFA cohort atUniversity of Illinois Urbana-Champaign this fall. You can learn more about her work at marleedoniff.com. 

About This Piece: “i drove through west virginia in the dead of night” creates space for contemplation. It is the embodiment of my tendencies of people-pleasing and hyper independence through indulgence in overcompensation and a bit of desperation. Why do I feel the need to prove I can do something no one is asking me to do?’