Inter-grant Festival

AN ANNUAL PLATFORM AT ARTS ON SITE CELEBRATING THE VOICES OF INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS WHO HAVE SUCCESSFULLY NAVIGATED THE US IMMIGRATION PROCESS.

2026

Oct 8-10, 7pm at Arts On Site

Ching-i Chang: inter-grant fest initiator

A migrating breeze, made in Taiwan, U.S.‑naturalized dance artist. She explores the voices of the peripheral and subaltern. Her interdisciplinary work has appeared at Yuz Museum, Queens Museum, MOCA, ICA at VCU, Harlem Stage, Danspace DraftWork, and Movement Research at Judson Church. She has worked with Susan Marshall and Gesel Mason, performed in Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More (NYC original cast; Shanghai performer & rehearsal director), and toured with ANIKAYA to Palestine, India, Pakistan and across Africa. Ching-I holds an MFA from the U of Utah and certifications in Laban/Bartenieff, Yoga and Yoga Nidra. She facilitates the Inter‑grant Festival. In 2025, she is an Individual Artist Finalist (NJ State Council on the Arts), a Create Change Fellow (The Laundromat Project), and a 2024-2025 AAPI resident artist at TOPAZ ARTS. Ching‑I loves bananas.

Penelope j. armstead: inter-grant producer

STEMMING from a childhood name, PeachKRAYZ is a brand to empower women, lifting up scholarship as a tool to tell moving stories. Peaches//PJ//Penelope has been a dance instructor in public schools and dance studios since 1992.

She studied somatic practices in depth at the Tisch School of the Arts in NYC, and toured internationally as a multi-hyphenate performer for 13 years.

While training on the hills of Germantown Philadelphia, and the parking lots of Boulder, Colorado, Peachkrayz cultivated a keen sense of the natural rhythm within all earth…the ancestral rhythm.  Since its commodification began in 1977, Hip Hop has remained an elusive source of the spiritual principles of love, healing, and rebirth. With the planets aligning our Selves ever more quickly to “Africa at Work”, accessing higher knowledge and true power has never been more vital to the survival of life here.  Through dance, music, writing, spoken words, and true knowledge, Peachkrayz Presents was borne through struggle and emergency.

https://peachkrayz.wordpress.com/

MIHO RYU: INTER-GRANT PROGRAM DIRECTOR

Miho Ryu is a New York based dancer, choreographer, teaching artist, and Program Director of Inter-grant Festival, originally from Tokyo, Japan. She has choreographed and performed more than 100 works including live performances, films, music videos, and interactive installations across Germany, Portugal, Switzerland, Austria, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, and the United States.

After two decades of professional experience based in Japan, Miho returned to New York in 2024. Since then, her work has been presented at Future Dance Festival at The 92nd Street Y, Peridance Presents at KnJ Theater, WestFest at Martha Graham Studio Theater, Inter-grant Festival at Arts On Site, RECESS at Chez Bushwick, Crossing Boundaries at Dixon Place, Eco Arts Festival at Governors Island, AOCC at BAX, Chain Theatre, Firehouse Theater (VA), Asia Tri Jogja in Indonesia, and more. Miho has also performed works by Laura Peterson, Colleen Thomas, Mizuho Kappa, Yin Mei, and The Next Stage Project. She is a faculty member of Peridance Center, Ballet Hispánico School, and Steps on Broadway. While currently undergoing breast cancer treatment, Miho is excited to expand her artistic practice into new territories through her role as Program Director of Inter-grant Festival.

https://www.ryumiho.com/

2026 ARTISTS

MARIe LLOYD PASPE: PROGRAM STEWARD and 2026 inter-grant artist

Marie Lloyd Paspe is a dance artist, choreographer, and singer. Daughter of parents from Batangas and Iloilo, Philippines, Paspe’s practice studies queer resistance and lost stories of migrant bodies across oceans and time. Paspe’s work manifests through the laborious body: implying the brown, hypersexualized immigrant body as a revolution against the oppressor’s gaze. Her work incorporates vocal looping, pole dance, paper crafts, and embodied/imagined memories, exploring kapwa (Tagalog for *shared one-ness) as a practice in re-membering we are not separate from each other.

Paspe’s choreography has been presented at Center for Performance Research, Movement Research@Judson Church, Harlem Stage, Lincoln Center, MASS MoCA (USA), Umeå Jazz Festival (Sweden), SAVVY Contemporary (Germany), and UGNAYAN (Manila). She is a former performer with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company from 2018-2024, and a Bessie Awardee as a company member for choreographic contributions to “Deep Blue Sea.” Paspe is a research artist with Ifugao Center for Living Culture (Philippines), 2026 NYSCA Grantee, 2026 LMCC Arts Center Resident, 2026 Bechdel Project FIFE Fellow, 2025 NEFA National Dance Project Finalist, 2025 TOPAZ Arts Resident Artist, 2024 Harlem Stage Fellow, and 2022 A4 Jadin Wong Fellow.
marielloydpaspe.com / @mmmlloyd 

Preeti Vasudevan: 2026 inter-grant artist

Preeti Vasudevan is an award-winning choreographer and performer creating provocative contemporary works from her Indian tradition. Founder and Artistic Director of Thresh Performing Arts Collaborative, her mission is to create experimental productions that foster a provocative dialogue with identity, and our relationship with heritage cultures and contemporary life. Recent highlights include: 2018 Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists; 2018 Jerome Robbins Dance Division’s Dance Research Fellowship, NY; 2018 Selected Artist, DanceMotion USA Follow-On Program with BAM; 2018-19 Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation’s 2018-2019 Observership Class; 2018, LabWorks Residency, New Victory Theater, NY; Spring 2016 Resident Fellow, The Center for Ballet and the Arts, NY; Artist in Residence, New York Live Arts (2015-17), NY; 2015 DPA Atelier award, LIMS, NY; Presenter at the TEDxBarnard, Barnard College, Columbia University. Vasudevan is part of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silkroad Ensemble working with international artists on cultural diplomacy and creative risk and is the creator of ground-breaking educational website, Dancing for the Gods (in collaboration with the Dept of Education, NYC).

https://www.threshdance.org/home

Maho Ogawa: 2026 Inter-grant artist

Maho Ogawa is a Japanese-born, multidisciplinary movement artist working in NYC since 2011. Her work has delved into building a choreographic language based on nuances and isolated movements of the body that she has built a database, "Minimum Movement Catalog". Minimum Movement Catalog received numerous commissions nationally at Princeton University, New York University, Whitebox Gallery, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Center for Performance Research, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Dance New Alliance, Leimay, and internationally at Morishita Studio (Japan), Akiyoshidai International Art Village (Japan), and Whenever Wherever Festival (Japan), collaborations (David Watson (musician), Dafna Naphtali(musician)), grant (Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Abrons Arts Center), and academic supports from Performance and Interactive Media Arts program and computer science department at Brooklyn College. Her recent research-based multidisciplinary project, "Japanese Tea and Ritual Room" has been awarded a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, and the community survey and research article for the work was published in the online magazine PUSH/PULL no.20. The first iteration of this project, "The Japanese Gesture Archive - Tea Ceremony," was commissioned by Invisible Dog Art Center in 2022. Since then, the work has been developed through Culture Push's associated artist program, the Emily Harvey Foundation, the Target Margin Residency, the Performance Mix Festival, and Movement Research at the Judson Church. This project received promotional support from the Japan Society (2022, 2024), and was commissioned by the Center for Performance Research on November 5, 2024 for the Election Night event, Fou Gallery, and multidisciplinary artist Eri Shoji's Lower Manhattan Cultural Council-awarded event, "Bustu Bustu #8," in September 2025. Ogawa is the recipient of the Artist-In-Residence program at Movement Research, funded partly by the Mertz Gilmore Foundation (2024-2026), Marble House Project (2025), MOtiVe (2025), and LiftOFF (2026). https://www.suisoco.com/

Petra Zanki: 2026 INTER-GRANT ARTIST

Petra Zanki is a Croatian -American choreographer and artist living in Brooklyn, New York. Petra creates time-based works on the intersection of dance, performance, and installation, solo and in collaborations, using movement, video, sound, and light. She approaches each creation somatically, developing material through research, then distilling chance and personal testimony into choreographic frameworks. Her work, autobiographical and site-responsive, is always in dialogue with the environment and audience, treating place, climate, and community as co-authors. 

Petra is Brooklyn Arts Council Grant Award recipient for three consecutive years (2024, 2025 & 2026), DWR Fund (2025), NYFA (2025) and FCA Grant (2021, 2025) recipient, as well as resident choreographer at TISCH/NYU-WADE (2025), NooArts (2025) and Montello Foundation (2026). 

She performed in the US and internationally. In New York City, she presented her works at Mark Morris, NOoSPHERE Arts, Estrogenius festival, Green Space Studio, PRELUDE Festival CUNY, Movement Research, PS122, Dixon place, CPR, ChaShaMa, Pen&Brush Gallery, and Arts Connection/Governors Island, among others. 

Petra graduated from the MFA Choreography program at CODARTS (2023).

Growing up in Croatia during the war, her main interest remains the transformation of pain into landscapes of beauty for the benefit of humanity.

http://www.petrazanki.com/

Solenn Etienne: 2026 INTER-GRANT ARTIST

Solenn Etienne was born in Guadeloupe, surrounded by her generous Caribbean culture, inheriting a profound connection to nature and spirituality. 

Attracted by the vibrating energy of New York City, she joined the Ailey School and graduated in May 2024.

Solenn learned repertory from Hofesh Shechter Company, Cleo Parker Robinson Ensemble, and worked with choreographers such as Juliano Nunes, Ronald K. Brown, and Norbert De La Cruz.

Solenn is a current member of MODArts Dance Collective, Cie Petra Zanki Company, and aspires to evolve and assert herself in the dance world by freeing her unique expression while transcending her physical limits.

https://www.instagram.com/sloe_n/

Huiwang Zhang: 2026 INTER-GRANT ARTIST

Huiwang Zhang is a dancer and choreographer based in Long island, NY. He was trained in Chinese classical dance at the Beijing Dance Academy. His movement research has been influenced by his work with artist like Jennifer Nugent, Stephen Koester, Eric Handman, Madeline Hollander, Yin Mei, Sara Pearson, Patrik Widrig, Lee Mingwei, Janet Wong, Seán Curran and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane company (2017-2025) . He was nominated an Outstanding Performer by the Bessie (NY Dance & Performance Awards) for his performance in Our Labyrinth at the Metropolitan Museum of Art directed by Lee Mingwei and Bill T. Jones.

He received his first choreography commission from Paul Reynolds, curator of the Salt Lake City Library to present his original work at their much-praised 12 Minutes Max program in 2017. He has since presented his works at venues such as Green Space, Movement Research at Judson Church, Inter-Grant Festival at Arts on Site, Topaz Arts, Flushing Town Hall, Beijing Dance Festival as well as creating for Universities like Queens College CUNY, Jacksonville University and University of Florida. He has been awarded for creative residencies include the New York State Choreographer Initiative, Mare Nostrum Elements: Emerging Choreographer Series and AAPL dance residency at Topaz Arts. He received a Bessie for Outstanding Choreography with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company for his contributions to Deep Blue Sea.

Huiwang’s recent performance have included works for the San Francisco Opera (The Monkey King, 2025), The Metropolitan Opera (Tristan and Isolde, 2026) and Wendy Osserman Dance (Echo Glass, 2026). He is currently on faculty at Hofstra University.

https://www.huiwangzhang.com/

2026 Docuserise Films

mOBILE dANCE FILM ASSOCIATION: DOCUSERIES Production

Designated as a 501c3 charitable non-profit organization in 2022, the MDFA operates with a threefold mission to support Mobile Dance Filmmakers and every aspect of Mobile Dance Filmmaking through education, production, and curation.
https://www.mobiledancefilmfestival.com/mdfa

Eiko Otake: 2026 dOCUSERIES FILM FEATURE ARTIST

Eiko Otake is born and raised in Japan and a resident of New York since 1976, Eiko Otake is a movement-based, interdisciplinary artist. After working for more than 40 years as Eiko & Koma, in 2014 Eiko began performing her own solo project. Since 2014, Eiko collaborated with photographer/historian William Johnston on creating "A Body in Fukushima", which captures Eiko’s body in places of nuclear contamination, and has presented photo exhibitions and film screenings in the U.S. and internationally. In 2017, she launched a multi-year "Duet Project", an open-ended series of cross-disciplinary experiments with a diverse range of artists. In 2022, Eiko started her ten-year project "I Invited Myself", in which she creates, advocates, and exhibits her media works. For her solo work, Eiko has received a Bessie’s Special Citation, an Art Matters Fellowship, the Anonymous Was a Woman Award, and the LMCC Sam Miller Award. Eiko regularly teaches at Wesleyan University, NYU, and Colorado College. She received an honorary degree from Colorado College in 2020.

https://www.eikootake.org/

ANKITA sharma: 2026 dOCUSERIES FILMmaker

ankita is an experimental movement-based artist invested in storytelling where content dictates genre and betrays expectation. They create to think critically, unpacking systems and symptoms of power from a queer, punk solidarity-based lens that rehearses freedom in the body and mind. In aesthetic, their work is a character-based, grungy, cheeky work of primal spirit, with physical practices rooted in Contemporary Dance, Dance-Theater, and forms from both the South Asian and the African diaspora. For ankita, audiences are agentive, sitting with and challenging discomfort in environments where sophistication and blasphemy collide. 

ankita is currently based in Brooklyn. They hold degrees in both Dance and Anthropology and have had their work performed throughout the US, including at: Denver Art Museum, Abrons Art Center, The Barn, Dixon Place, The Tank, BASE, JACK, Ormao, Movement Research, The Basement, and University Settlement. They have received residencies and support from Chulitna Lodge,, Djerassi, Art Omi, Kalakeli Movement Arts, NYSCA, FCA, Brooklyn Arts Council, The Barn, BASE, GALLIM, Performance Project, MNE, LEIMAY, and Crown Goodman . ankita has also taught and presented film work internationally in Japan, India, and Ireland. 

In their spare time, ankita has been an administrator for several award-winning dance-theater shows, artists, and organizations, including Punchdrunk's internationally-acclaimed Sleep No More, Nava Dance Theatre, Baye & Asa, Company SBB, Michael Sakamoto, and the nationally-recognized Queer|Art. They are also a fellow at the BIPOC Critics Lab at The Public and a writer and editor for thINKing DANCE. Across all of their work, ankita pairs artistic rigor with systems-oriented care for underrepresented artists, challenging mainstream ideologies by building networks of reciprocity between those who need it most. 

https://www.ankitacreates.space/

Ximena Garnica: 2026 DOCUSERIES FILM FEATURE ARTIST

Ximena Garnica is a Colombian-born multidisciplinary artist, choreographer, director, curator, and teacher. She is a Visiting Lecturer in the Theater, Dance & Media program at Harvard University. With her partner, multidisciplinary artist Shige Moriya, Ximena is the co-founder and co-artistic director of the New York-based arts organization LEIMAY and its performance group, the LEIMAY Ensemble. Their collaborative works encompass sculptural, video, light, and mixed-media installations; photography; film; contemporary dance and theater performances; publications; relational artworks; and research-driven projects.

Their work offers spectators multiple entry points to engage with questions of being, perception, interdependency, and coexistence. Their collaborative works have been presented in multiple New York venues including  at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, HERE, PERFORMA, Prototype Festival, Watermill Center, ALL ARTS, Japan Society.
www.leimay.org

Akane Little: 2026 dOCUSERIES FILMMAKER

Akane Little is a Brooklyn-based dance artist approaching the body and performance as sites of ritual porosity, enlivened by flesh, blood, and attention to activate states of dimensional liminality. They have freelanced in both Cleveland, OH (Catherine Meredith, Megan Young, Madi Jackson, Rebecca Burcher, and more) and New York City (Kinesis Project, Boy Friday, Hivewild, Hard/Femme Dances, God Complex x Aeon Andreas, Nick Brooke, Chaesong Kim, Glenn Potter-Takata, and more). Commercial credits include Bridget Kearney (Lake Street Dive), Carolina Oliveros (Combo Chimbita), Tom Petty, and Sam Smith. Since 2023, they have been a core member of the Bessie-nominated LEIMAY Ensemble under the direction of Ximena Garnica & Shige Moriya.

They approach each production as an altar, set with uncanny objects and activated by the choreographic disciplines of Western contemporary dance, ballet, drag, lip sync, Bible Belt competition dance, and LUDUS, a movement technique in the lineage of Butoh. Their work is concerned with ritualized attention and porous experiences that aid with remembering, pondering, and witnessing mythic worlds as answers to the riddles of existentialism, absurdity, contradiction, beauty, and the abject. Their altars ring with hyper-specific sonic references that tether the work to conscious realities, and hold tender narrative arcs that are dimensionally deepened by the slippage between humor and horror. Their work has been described as “viscerally tender and incisive" (The Dance Enthusiast) and "raging with sincerity and longing" (Culturebot). They have been presented by Triskelion Arts, CAVE Home of LEIMAY, Exponential Festival at Brick Aux, Dixon Place, and The Tank.

https://akanelittledance.com/

Benja Thompson: 2026 dOCUSERIES FILMMAKER

A practicing queer archivist, Benja Thompson interweaves obscured truths with radical imagination. As a 2024 Dance/USA Archiving Fellow, they vitalized LEIMAY's experimental performance history and presented an hour of footage for the 2025 AMIA Conference. In 2026, they recieved ArtsConnection's inaugural Ted S. Berger Award For Artistic Excellence to support further creative archival activations in collaboration with Shige Moriya. Their filmwork has shown in microcinemas and festivals across the country, including Other Cinema, Northwest Film Forum, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Film-Makers' Coop. They are currently developing an emerging practice of embodied cinema, performing at The Tank and Dixon Place, as well as producing and curating Pollen, an expanded cinema marathon series. Technical coordinator credits include the Bessie-nominated A Meal by LEIMAY (HERE, 2024), MOMMA! (Exponential Festival, 2025), IMI (SoMad, 2026), and No Tail! (Cannonball Festival, 2026), alongside video supervision for Mercedes (BAM Next Wave, 2024) and Black Lodge (Prototype Festival, 2025). In addition to freelance archiving for New Dance Alliance and LEIMAY, they pay the rent as a projectionist for Anthology Film Archives and BRIC.

Website

2026 Post Show Discussion Facilitator

Shannon Yu: 2026 mEDIA DIRECTOR AND Post Show Discussion Facilitator

Shannon Yu is a dancer-choreographer, multi-disciplinary artist, and queer creator. Sha streamlines Hip Hop, Contact Improv, Qi Gong and Wing Tsun Martial Arts with video projection and sound design, portraying connections between humanity and geometry. Shannon holds an MFA in Performance and Performance Studies from Pratt Institute and a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering from National Taiwan University. In 2021, Shannon founded multimedia dance company SHA Creative Outlet, credits include Performance Mix Festival, the Evolution Festival, Your Moves Dance Festival, Queer Mvmnt Festival, Inter-Grant Festival and WOW Festival. Shannon was named 2023 Asian American Arts Alliance’s Jadin Wong Fellow for Dance.

https://shannonyu.smugmug.com/

Annie MingHao Wang: 2026 Post Show Discussion Facilitator

Annie MingHao Wang (she/they) is a choreographer/dancer based in New York. They are a 2025 Fellow of the Bogliasco Center as a Van Cleef & Arpels Fellow in Dance and have also held residencies at Movement Research, Topaz Arts, Marble House Project, Leimay Foundation, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Their work has been awarded grants by LMCC (Manhattan Arts Grant) and Brooklyn Arts Council, been featured in Danspace Project’s DraftWorks series, and been presented by Pioneers Go East at their 2024 Out-FRONT! festival, Movement Research @Judson, Leimay's OUTSIGHT series, BRIC, Five Myles, and the Exponential Festival. Annie also dances for Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group and Sugar Vendil. They are grateful to have been part of Maho Ogawa's 水素co. ongoing vision for some years now.

https://row3relays.substack.com/

Leah Tubbs: 2026 Post Show Discussion Facilitator

Leah Tubbs' technical and artistic foundation was honed as a Dance major at Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA) and the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. She has worked as a company member with various dance companies in Alabama, Ohio, California, Texas, & New York. She has exposed people of all ages and levels to the admiration of dance at private and public schools, dance schools, and non-profit dance organizations for over 20 years. MODArts Dance Collective (MADC) was born on July 23, 2011, by Leah & Shaun Tubbs to hold space for BIPOC artists, choreographers, and communities through its choreographic work, two festivals with accompanying residencies, solo concerts, & workshop; www.modartsdance.com. Her choreographic experience outside of MADC includes Union Avenue Opera’s Ragtime, Des Moines Metro Opera’s American Apollo, University of Albany's production of Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show, and NYU/Stella Adler's production of Melissa Maxwell's Salt in a Wound.

www.modartsdance.com

Seeds of

Inter-grant Festival

Inter-grant festival is a platform for international and immigrant freelance artists to create and present work without exclusionary application barriers.

Founded by Taiwanese dancemaker Ching-I Chang after seven visa applications and over two decades of working in the U.S., the festival is rooted in the lived experiences of immigrant artists. Co-supported by Penelope J. Armstead, creator of Peachkrayz Presents, Inter-grant Fest centers artistic authenticity, cultural exchange, and community care.

We support artists across different immigration experiences, with a special focus on artists navigating the O-1 artist visa process. With today's increasingly challenging obstacles of immigration processes, the Inter-grant Festival provides direct support to artists, through critical ongoing opportunities to present work, build visibility, and community building.

Inter-grant Fest is committed to sustained artistic support, creating space for immigrant artists and audiences to connect through performance, shared stories, and cultural dialogue.

2025

Artists

2025 Docuseries mentors

2025 Docuseries Filmmakers

2025

Review Writers

2025

Advisors

2025

Community/

Grant Support

2024 Artists

2024 Community Supports

Highlights

Huiwang Zhang on his process for the festival in 2024, "As the lead tank maneuvered to pass by the man, he repeatedly shifted his position in order to obstruct the tank's attempted path around him, and forced the tanks to halt to avoid running him over."  – “The repeated shifting of positions and obstructing the impossible is the metaphor I am grappling with for the performance with Ching-I at Arts on Site. I want this work to heal generational political trauma caused by unforeseen historical forces.”