Hard/Femme Dances
Hailed as "Vivid," "Incendiary," "A Beautiful Mess," and "Desperate for Attention," Hard/Femme Dances was founded by Kelsey Rondeau and Hunter Sturgis in late 2018. They are a Brooklyn-based dance theater company focused on storytelling, queer themes, and the transformative power of glitter. As a company, they are excited by anything that is outlandish, outré, and operatic in scale. Coming from a wide-ranging background of concert dance, immersive theater, burlesque, and drag, their work honors these disciplines as its framing sensibilities. Through the lens of camp, my work draws on diverse elements of pop culture and uses found objects to collage, blend, and distill these artifacts into darkly humorous, anarchic, fantastic narratives. Since the founding of the company, they have created short works for venues across New York, including Spoke the Hub, Triskelion Arts, House of Yes in Brooklyn, Gibney Dance Center, and Judson Memorial Church in Manhattan. You can follow them across social media…@hardfemmedances

Hunter Sturgis (Snide)
Hunter Sturgis is a queer dance artist, filmmaker, and Pilates teacher from south Texas currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Hunter creates to subvert and challenge oppressive power structures that have taken root systemically, historically, and thusly, corporeally. He uses the power of disruption to open up new spaces where there is deep, uncharted territory of the heart.
@mercury___007

Kelsey Rondeau (Miss Priss)
Kelsey Rondeau (they/them) was raised in Northern California, and fell in love with dress-up and make-believe at an early age. They received their BFA from UT Austin in August 2014, followed by the year-long dance intensive at Tanzfabrik Berlin. Since 2016, they have lived in Brooklyn, and in that time, have worked as a freelance dancer with AnA Collaborations, Kelly Ashton Todd, Thryn Saxon, Arthur Avilés, Johannes Wieland, and Third Rail Projects. When not in the studio, you can find them dancing on the bar at the House of Yes as their alter ego, Ava Lanche.
@avalanche_of_beauty

Manatsu Tanaka (Sneer)
Manatsu Tanaka is a Japanese performing artist who thrives in versatility and creativity. Their career has been blooming in contemporary/immersive/musical theater. Recent: The Nosebleed (U/s Aya 0/1/2/3/4), The Art of Killin’ It (Swing), Einstein on the Beach Japan 2022 (Soloist).
www.manatsutanaka.com | @manatsu.tanaka

Piper Makenzie Dye (Surely Temple)
Piper Makenzie Dye is originally from San Diego, CA, and holds a BFA in Dance from SUNY Purchase. Previously a dancer with Eveoke Dance Theater and a soloist for Ballet Nepantla, she has performed works from choreographers including Crystal Pite, Doug Varone, Shannon Gillen, Twyla Tharp, Jose Limon, and Donald McKayle. She is thrilled to be a part of The Boof Quadrille.

MJ Markovitz (The Rake on the Make)
MJ Markovitz is a performer based in Brooklyn, NY. They currently work as a freelance artist, dancer for Ballez, and collaborates with their sexysmartamazingreallycoolandgay friends. MJ attends Columbia University part-time, trying to make some sense of the contemporary American context–like why exactly hasn’t Taylor Swift come out as a raging homo yet?
markovitzmj@gmail.com | @mjmarkovitz

Cody Pickens (The Old Colonel)
Cody Pickens received their BFA from ASU in 2018. Coming from a heavily competitive background, modern performance art and dance theater have always interested them the most. Since then Cody has moved to NYC and has been working with hard/femme since the production of **disco biscuits**. Rediscovering a new love and relation to dance and movement, they're here to shake things up and have a little more fun doing it.

Connor Sale (Lighting Designer) is a New York based lighting designer who was raised in Arizona, but recently moved from Chicago. Recent design credits include “Earth Temple” (in collaboration with Nocturnal Medicine at SMUSH Gallery); Summation Dance/Sikora+Dance Double Bill (Gibney Dance); “This is How We Remember” (Triskelion Arts); “Queen of the Night” (Victory Gardens); and “Sea Change” (Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago). He has worked as an Assistant Lighting Designer with the Juilliard School of Drama, The Feath3r Theory, Pig Iron, Urban Bush Women, McCarter Theater Center, JACK, and many more. Additionally, he has been touring with Sadler’s Wells’ production of Pina Bausch’s “The Rite of Spring”. Connor’s interested in the organic way that light moves, especially by the way light affects movement and the way movement affects light.
www.connorsale.com || @connorsalelight 

Anna Wotring (Director of Production), a Pittsburgh native, is a community-minded dance artist, designer, and production stage manager committed to the practice of collaborative leadership. She currently works with Annie Heath, Lauren Horn, Jennifer Nugent and slowdanger as a technical design consultant, dancer, and production stage manager. Wotring obtained her BFA in Dance at the Five College Dance Department in Western Massachusetts. She has had the privilege of working with a multitude of dance organizations, including Alvin Ailey Studios, Attack Theater, Ballet Des Ameriques, BalletNext, Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Company, the Dance Conservatory of Pittsburgh, Dance Place, H2O Contemporary Dance, Monica Bill Barnes and Company, New York Live Arts, the Pillow Project, Prayers of the People, RoseAnne Spradlin, Scapegoat Garden, Time Lapse Dance, and many others. Wotring is beyond excited to begin working and imagining with the Trisk team. @annaissupercool

Special Thanks
Many thanks to the wonderful team at Triskelion Arts, the Nates, Zane Sipotz, Maxi Canion, and Thomas Waller for their support throughout this process.

Much gratitude to those who donated to the GoFundMe Campaign: Anonymous, Evan Spigelman, Jacqui Dugal, Susannah Ryan, Sam Zuckerman, Philip Karjeker, Fernando Moya, Stephanie Schwartz, Ariel Cantrell, Cameron Ebrahimian, Jihaan Karjeker, Shaukat Karjeker, Lily Tanner, Olive TuPartie, Elizabeth Tanner, Louisa Nyman, Oleg Mindiak, Thomas Hootman, Lisa Van Court, Alexa Hendrickson, Adrien Allred, Allison Dyke, Chelsey Ng, Joseph Giampetro