We are happy to announce PWNW’s 12th Alembic Residency Cohort: claire barrera, Jae Seung Hancock, and Melody Erfani.
We thank all the intrepid artists who applied for our 2026 Alembic Residency, and to panelists Muffie Delgado Connelly, Katherine Longstreth, and Lu Yim, who had the difficult task of choosing only three artists from among many talented applicants.
Starting April 1, The Alembic Artists will be creating and rehearsing in the studio, sharing ideas and progress with one another, and will present the results of their research and play in November 2026.
Introducing the artists
claire barrera is an artist, activist and educator based in Portland, Oregon. Their recent dance work includes the intergenerational performance Grammar of the Imagination and The Fantastical Power of Two with Maya Dalinsky. Upcoming projects include the original work CAME BACK DIFFERENT and roles in Sam Hamilton’s Te Moana Meridian and Allie Hankins’ By My Own Hand Part 5: INVISIBLE TOUCH. They are a published writer and zinester; since 2008 they have co-edited the zine When Language Runs Dry with Meredith Butner which was anthologized by Mend My Dress Press in 2021. Their essay, “Brown Girl Rise: How We Take Care of Our Own,” was printed in Constellations of Care: Anarcha-Feminism, edited by Cindy Milstein, Pluto Press, in 2024.
My artistic research is born from a need to interrogate my own habits of private sustenance and public action, and community-level patterns of kinship, care and harm. Relationships (between audience/performer, language/movement, nation/individual etc) are central to my work. I use repetition and pattern to find the cracks in a system, highlight individual differences, find opportunities for harmony or reveal new outcomes.
My current project, CAME BACK DIFFERENT/VOLVIO DIFERENTE is a dance performance exploring shifts in perception and perspective. I use myriad techniques to expose the mechanics of manipulation, recollection and historical reconstruction: childhood magic tricks, theatrical tropes, time manipulation through repetition and recall, and concealment/exposure. CBD is a duet between myself and Allie Hankins, with sound by John Niekrasz, objects by Julia Calabrese, lighting/set by Fox Whitney.
Jae Seung Hancock was born in and adopted from Seoul, Korea and raised in a suburb of the Twin Cities. They received their B.A. in Dance and Arts Management from the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point in 2016. After graduating, Jae relocated to Portland, Oregon, where they have lived for the past ten years pursuing dance, theater, and painting. They have collaborated with organizations including Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, CoHo Productions, The Holding Project, Theatre Diaspora, and Tongue Dance Collective.
As a multidisciplinary artist, my work is rooted in colors and textures of the natural world—ocean waves, wind, and lava—inspired by the ways these elements embody movement and energy. Their work draws from both percussive and folkloric dance traditions and modern dance, weaving rhythm, gesture, and vocals into movement that explores themes of homeland, memory, and the loss of cultural identity.
Melody Erfani (she/her) is a theatre maker and movement-based director whose work lives at the intersection of dance, theatre, and installation. Raised in an Iranian-American family in Dallas, she creates devised performances that translate inner emotion into physical language, using gesture, rhythm, and sound to tell stories of belonging and identity.
She has a deep passion for writing and devising based on true stories from marginalized communities, with immigration playing a central role in her work. Her projects include Bee زنبور (HB Playwrights, Headwaters Theatre), Stars Falling Upside Down (Women Center Stage Festival, NYC co-created with Tracy Francis), the outdoor devised piece The Sacrifice of Belonging (Pavement Festival with Risk/Reward), and 97 Orchard Street, which explored the lives of three immigrant women in Manhattan’s Lower East Side using video, movement, and storytelling.
Melody holds an MFA in Directing from the Actors Studio Drama School, completed the Advanced Training Course at Frantic Assembly in London, and has received residencies from HB Studio (2017 & 2024), Barn Arts Collective, and the Drama League’s First Stage Residency. She is the founder of LES Shakespeare Co. and is currently developing The Words Will Come, a movement-driven work exploring dyslexia, shame, and perception.
My work begins with the body. I use movement to make internal experiences visible—how thought, emotion, and memory move through us and between us. In The Words Will Come, I’m exploring the physical language of dyslexia: the jumbled rhythm of thought, the space between comprehension and confusion, and how shame and resilience live in the body. I’m interested in theatre as a live, shared act of breathing, the opposite of realism, where movement carries story and emotion beyond words. For me, the studio is a laboratory for failure, curiosity, and discovery, a place where gesture, sound, and projection collide to form meaning. Through this residency, I hope to expand my movement vocabulary and develop a collective physical language that allows audiences to feel understanding, rather than simply observe it.
Performance Works NW || Linda Austin Dance 