We are happy to introduce two dance artists who have been awarded studio time and childcare support at PWNW.

Latoya Lovely—local artist

The local artist selected by our panel receives 90 hours of studio time between June 1, 2023 and February 29, 2024, plus a stipend for childcare.

Latoya Lovely accompanied her roommate just to spectate at an annual dance concert audition at Western Oregon University in 2003 and decided to give it a go. She was the only one laughing, part of her thinking, “how ridiculous of you to be so not together yet so intent upon conquering this movement.” She had no ballet, modern, contemporary experience and here she was fighting to be a part of a world that truly looked magical. She made it into a piece which was choreographed by Rainbow Dance Theatre, the modern company housed at the university and ended up touring with them for about 13 years. Lovely had the opportunity alongside RDT to represent the United States at the 2005 World Expo in Nagoya, Japan. She toured with RDT through Canada, Arizona, Idaho, Mexico, Washington, and in many schools all over Oregon through Young Audiences. As a part of her contract with RDT, she was also required to instruct youth and adults in dance of which she was terrified, but it ended up changing her life of course.

Lovely is currently a guest artist and has performed with Rejoice Dance Diaspora Theater, and at Center Stage in Portland, with Darrell Grant for the Soul Restoration project, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Portland State University, and was a part of a dance film collaboration with Peripheral Vision most recently. Last year, Latoya was granted a residency with p:ear, a non-profit organization which mentors homeless youth, where she shared movement with youth as a part of her time there.

Lovely is also a visual artist and muralist, her work can be seen at https://www.instagram.com/llovely01/.

I began dancing in college at the age of 21, while also attending the University of YouTube, teaching myself what my colleagues already knew. In my current practice, I have been blessed with space for healing and celebrating with my Black and Brown community. We are surrounded by brilliance, it is spiritual when we collide. This is what I share in my movement, speaking to my own heart and to that of my child, collaboration, acknowledging the greatness which emanates from our Black community, and honoring ourselves while lifting one another up.

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Kaitlin McCarthy—visiting artist

Visiting artist Kaitlin McCarthy will be in residence at Performance Works August 13-24, and is awarded studio time, stipends for childcare , housing, travel and per diem.

Kaitlin McCarthy (she/they) is a Seattle-based dance artist, journalist, and teacher. Over the last decade her choreography has appeared at On the Boards, Velocity Dance Center, SOIL Gallery, 12^th Ave Arts, and at countless other festivals and self-produced performances. Her work is “fondly humorous and stunningly creepy”(SeattleDances) and “in the forefront of innovative contemporary Seattle dance” (Deconstruct Collective). In addition to her own work, she has developed a decade-long collaborative partnership with Jenny Peterson, performing under moniker “The Bonnies.”

As a dancer she has performed for over a dozen Seattle-area artists, including regularly with Alice Gosti/MALACARNE since 2014, with whom she has toured nationally and internationally. She has spent the last eight years as a teaching artist for Velocity Dance Center and eXit SPACE.

As a dance journalist she has contributed regularly to City Arts Magazine, Dance International Magazine, and SeattleDances.com, where she has been the Editorial Director since 2016. During her leadership she grew SeattleDances from a volunteer site to one that paid its writers and staff, and realigned the organization’s mission to focus on local and independent dance that is often passed over by mainstream press. In 2022 she was awarded a fellowship to the National Critics Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Center for Theater. Kaitlin graduated summa cum laude with a degree in dance from Mt Holyoke College in 2009.

My work blends uncanny imagery, elements of theater, and athletic dancing to construct abstract narratives and perform human relationships. Through weaving kinesthetic empathy with cultural mythology, I seek the space of simultaneous contradictory truths to make pathways for the underlying to find its way to the surface. Whether austere, intimate, or comical in mood, my works find a foothold in the bizarre as a way to access honesty.