I am a free range collaborator based in the unceded lands of the Massachusett and Pawtucket nations near what is now called Boston, MA who lives with a rare chronic health condition. Since 2000, I have been the co-founder/Artistic Director of Monkeyhouse. From 2011-2016, I was also the resident choreographer for Dance’N Feet, a Boston based dance ensemble for women aged 60 – 80 who are not afraid to stand on their heads.

My ongoing project, the Dictionary of Negative Space (DoNS) holds space for the words that the English language lacks for lamenting. It was inspired by my experiences after a car crash killed my mother, father & brother. It has been featured in an I-ARE residency at the Dance Complex in Cambridge, MA; in exhibitions in New York, Arizona, Nevada, Minnesota, Tennessee, Louisiana, Massachusetts and S.Korea; conferences in S. Korea, England, India, and the US; as well as in collaborations with Monkeyhouse, Nicole Harris, and Scott McPheeters. My residency at the Newton Cemetery was supported in part by a grant from the Newton Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. I have received a Public Art Learning Grant from NEFA and completed the Audio Description Institute from the American Council for the Blind.

One of my quirky knitting pattern/personal essay/instruction based art pieces, Slippers to Soothe Your Emergency Room Blues, won the First Annual Feels Blind Literary DIY Prize and has been presented in at the Institute for Conceptual Studies online and at the CICA Museum in Gimpo, S.Korea. My essay, Unexpected Artist in Residency in a Hospital, and my DIY hospital robe pattern were recently published in Piney Wood Atlas’s Midwest edition. She is currently directing and costume designing a new play by Eric John Meyer that has been supported through residencies at the Lark and at Dutch Kills Theater in New York City.

Jess Roseman Biography

Jess Roseman, Choreographer/Dance Artist – I’m Jess Roseman, (she/her/hers), a dancer, choreographer, movement educator, massage therapist, and single mother. I’m a third generation Ashkenazi Jew from Brookline, paternally, and my Jamaican mother immigrated to Dorchester, MA at age 13. My folks married in Boston two years before the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision legalized interracial marriage. Because of family disownment and community dissent, they raised me and my jazz trombonist brother in Newton. I recognize the privileges we’ve been afforded by our upbringing to both become artists. I live in west suburban MA in the sandwich generation between my middle schooler twins, and my retired folks. I started choreographing in high school. I studied traditional Caribbean and West African dances to learn my ancestors’ movements. When New York had few opportunities for Black choreographers, I cofounded Prowess, a dance collective, with women of color to produce our own concerts. Some of my most inspiring dance influences come from working with Bebe Miller, Deborah Hay, Lavinia Williams, and Eiko Otake. As a biracial mother, a survivor, a healer, and an artist, my existence is an endeavor to embody justice. I am an artist with over a half century of experience to draw upon. I came out of dance retirement to inspire myself and others. I find roots wherever I go, wherever I stand.

Rich Miner Biography

Rich Miner has been building and investing in innovative startups for over 30 years. I joined Google with the acquisition of my startup company Android, which we built into the worlds most popular operating system. At Google I helped lead android development, helped create and grow our venture fund (GV) & I am currently building innovative products. Before Google I helped build the worlds first voice based personal assistant as co-founder of Wildfire Communications. We sold Wildfire to Orange where I was a VP of innovation and also started Orange Venture’s – a corporate fund focused on communications and life style related investments. I have a doctorate in Computer Science from the University of Mass at Lowell.