Woven Roots: MFA in Dance student Veronica Silk is one of eight women performing over four nights. / Photo by Danielle Ferguson
Woven Roots: MFA in Dance Thesis Concert at SMC’s LaFevre Theatre
Diverse Threads, One Tapestry: stories of healing, identity, resilience, community, and multiculturalism. Performances run June 6–7 and 13–14.
The MFA in Dance program of ǿմý is pleased to announce the presentation of the Class of 2025’s thesis concert, Woven Roots. The concert will be held in LaFevre Theatre at Saint Mary’s College June 6–7 and 13–14.
“Diverse Threads, One Tapestry” captures the spirit of the performance. Eight women will use movement to portray stories of healing, identity, resilience, community, and multiculturalism in Woven Roots. MFA students come together to share works stemming from diverse dance practices and genres ranging from classical to contemporary to street dance.
Spanning four evenings of multidisciplinary performance, the performers offer audiences a vibrant array of site-specific works, dance films, and in-theater presentations. Each show concludes with an intimate Q&A featuring two presenting artists, offering space for dialogue and reflection.
Featured artists include Bobi Lott, Gwen Benitez, Jen McClary, Jess McNely, Karishma Sharma, Marcella Torres-Sanches, Suzanne Guyot-Rice, and Veronica Silk.
At a time when diversity, equity, and inclusion are being uprooted and threatened, Woven Roots is a timely response and reflection of collective strength. Here's more about the individual performers.
Bobi Lott | “F鷡dzԻ”
Bobi Lott, of South Central Los Angeles, is a proud educator, dancer, anthropologist, world traveler, and believer that dance transforms lives. Her dance career began as a young ballerina of Leimert Park’s Dance Wonderland. She was trained in classical ballet, jazz, tap, and modern dance under the direction of Carolyn Skyers and Karen McDonald. While attending CCSF in 1999, Lott was introduced to the Katherine Dunham Dance Technique by Alicia Pierce, with whom she first traveled to East St. Louis, Illinois, to attend the International Dunham Dance Technique Seminar. Lott is currently a Katherine Dunham freelance researcher studying the technique under the tutelage of Ruby Streate.
“F鷡dzԻ” is a performative healing ritual that asks spectators to participate in this groundbreaking work. Drawing upon inspiration from Katherine Dunham’s dance technique, this performance will evoke the rich traditions of Black Americans in the South.
Gwen Benitez | “A Través De Nosotras”
Gwen Benitez is a brown-bodied dance artist, writer, and public elementary school dance educator based in Oakland, California. She is a first-generation Mexican American woman of Indigenous Mexican and colonial Spanish descent. Gwen has received her bachelor of arts as a double major in Dance and Theatre, Film, and Digital Production from the University of California, Riverside. She is a candidate of the Master of Fine Arts in Dance, Creative Practice at ǿմý. She has presented solo dance works in Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Francisco. Her dance-making practice researches embodied entry points into her experience of complex generational and relational trauma, as ways to re-integrate a healthy body-mind connection. Through an interdisciplinary creative practice of choreography, visual media, writing, and soundscapes, she seeks to contextualize corporeal memories of belonging, violence, indigeneity, and ancestral knowings. Benitez’s choreographic work is interested in how we can remember and reclaim the ancestral memories, stories, lineages, and knowings of our mothers through and with our bodies.
“A Través De Nosotras” is an interdisciplinary dance performance that explores the lives of three different women: Benitez’s maternal grandmother, Benitez’s mother, and herself. In collaboration with music, voice, photography, projections, and set design, small pockets of worlds will be created in which to explore their stories and Gwen’s memories of their lives. In doing so, she engages in a corporeal investigation of the threads between generations past, present, and future, that is both for witnessing and for interacting. “A Través De Nosotras” is ultimately the tender tendrils of a beginning research project interested in identity, indigeneity, memory systems, movement, daughterhood, and vulnerability.
Jen McClary | “Taking a Walk With My Darkness”
Jen McClary has been a dedicated dance educator in the Portland, Oregon area for over 20 years. Her teaching centers on empowering students to find and express their unique voices through movement. She is the artistic director of disORDER dance company, a pre-professional company that bridges the gap between competitive and concert dance, encouraging young artists to explore deeper creative expression. She has produced and choreographed six original productions with the company. Jen trained in ballet, jazz, tap, lyrical, and modern, and has a BA in Dance with a concentration in Jazz from Point Park University. While in New York City, she studied closely Pam Chancey, Traci Stanfield, Michelle Barber, Calen Kurka, Chris Hale, and Wes Veldink. While working at Broadway Dance Center, Jennifer discovered a passion for theatre production. She taught herself lighting design and stage management and began working behind the scenes for various artists. She continues to offer her skills as a lighting designer and technician in support of fellow creatives. Now pursuing her MFA, Jen focuses on how somatics and phenomenology can be used as pathways to healing trauma through movement and embodied awareness.
“Taking a Walk With My Darkness“ is a multidisciplinary performance and film work by McClary that weaves together movement and poetry to explore the process of healing from trauma. Rooted in personal experience, the piece invites audiences into an intimate journey of transformation—confronting pain, reclaiming the body, and releasing the weight of memory.
Jess McNely | “Civil DISCOurse”
Jess McNely is a collaborative dance-maker and educator based in San Diego. As an MFA student, her research focuses on elevating foundational American street and club dances to affirm them as fine art, ensuring that the history of these dances is shared and preserved. Through interactive and imaginative movement vocabulary, she uses whacking as her primary dance language. As an educator and former dancer in a professional troupe, Jess has elevated street and club dances with Culture Shock, a hip-hop-focused non-profit organization. Her work with Culture Shock has allowed her to create enriching dance experiences with the public of San Diego. Additionally, she is the assistant director and administrative lead for THAE, a performing arts collective that aims to make arts education accessible through donation-based workshops, performance opportunities, and partnerships with local nonprofits and community organizations.
“Civil DISCOurse” is a work that combines screen dance and live performance. Inspired by the history of disco and funk dances, the work portrays dances created in pedestrian settings and reveals the interconnectedness of dancing and being. Most importantly, this work is meant to honor the BIPOC, immigrant, and queer dance pioneers who created movement languages that continue to be performed globally.
Karishma Sharma | “Finding My Dha”
Karishma Sharma has been a performer, choreographer, and dance educator in the Bay Area for over 20 years. She is the founder and artistic director of Monsoon Dance Company, which aims to present work rooted in cultural themes and storytelling. She produced and choreographed her first new work in San Francisco and Palo Alto in 2022. In 2023, she performed at the New York Kathak Festival with Prashant Shah & Dancers. Sharma teaches Kathak and Contemporary dance in her studio in Palo Alto. Her teaching encourages students and artists to explore their individual dance voice through technique, self-inquiry, and creative growth. Sharma trained in jazz in India with Shiamak Davar Dance Company and was a company member for ten years. She studied Kathak for over 15 years with Kumudini Lakhia, Prashant Shah, Anuradha Nag, Urja Desai, and performed their works. She studied Limón with Kurt Douglas and continues learning from local contemporary dance teachers. She is pursuing her MFA with a focus on creative practice that explores expanding boundaries of Kathak through phenomenology and contemporary lenses.
“Finding My Dha” is a two-fold work; the first being an inquiry and deconstruction of the Kathak lexicon, and the second as an exploration of the in-between state experienced as a multicultural identity cultivated from India and the US. This work asks the question, “When tradition is deeply woven into our bodies, why do we resist and how?”
Marcella Torres-Sánchez | “Lost in Translation”
Marcella Torres-Sánchez (she/her/hers/ella) is a first-generation Mexican American movement artist and choreographer from Tijuana, México. Her work sits at the intersection of visual and performing arts. Torres-Sánchez’s academic achievements include an associate degree in Visual and Performing Arts from San Diego City College and a BA in Dance and a BS in Education Sciences from UC San Diego, where she graduated magna cum laude. She has performed professionally and earned choreography awards, artistic residencies, grants, and scholarships. Rooted in compassion, kinesthetic empathy, and creativity, her work challenges societal misconceptions and promotes understanding and respect for diverse narratives, advocating for cultural relevance, equity, and inclusivity. She aims to amplify marginalized voices and challenge stereotypes through embodied storytelling.
“Lost in Translation” is an exploration of identity, cultural duality, and migration through the lens of a first-generation Mexican American woman. It reflects the complexities of belonging and displacement, weaving personal and collective narratives to challenge stereotypes, promote empathy, and foster solidarity with marginalized communities, particularly around the migratory experience.
Suzanne Guyot-Rice | “Other”
Suzanne Guyot-Rice is a multidisciplinary dance artist whose work explores the realm of Nepantla, “the midway point between the conscious and the unconscious, the place where transformations are enacted” (Gloria Anzaldúa). She was introduced to the José Limón technique while in high school by former Limón company members Fred Matthews and Gary Masters, who trained under Limón’s tenure as artistic director until his death. She has trained in multiple dance disciplines such as ballet, jazz, tap, and musical theater. While living in NYC, she toured in several Broadway musical theater productions and performed for Disney Productions at the Hyperion Theater. She holds a BA in the Creative Arts from SJSU and two yoga certifications, including a 500-hour yoga certification with Sri Dharma Mittra. She taught jazz, ballet, and tap at Mission Dance for the Performing Arts in Fremont, California, and yoga at various studios in New York City and San Francisco.
“Oٳ”&Բ;is a metaphorical dialogue between the three aspects of herself on a journey of reconnecting with her intergenerational Mexican ancestry, healing colonial wounds, and reclaiming identity. It reflects the shared struggle of those whose cultural complexities and ancestral traumas are carried through bloodline to embodied memory. Many marginalized and assimilated individuals navigate feelings of not belonging to their cultural community while being perceived as inferior through a Westernized white gaze. Through this work, she asks: How can dance investigate the corporeal to access kinesthetic history, cellular memory, felt emotion, and kinesthetic empathy?
Veronica Silk | “Citizens of the Unseen and Unpublished”
Veronica Silk (she/her) is an Atlanta-based dance artist, educator, and choreographer whose work centers on empowerment, expression, and social justice. She is the middle school dean of students at Woodward Academy and a thesis candidate in the MFA program in Creative Practice in Dance at ǿմý. Silk earned her BFA in Dance from New World School of the Arts, graduating summa cum laude, and has performed and created work internationally in Brazil, Puerto Rico, and the Czech Republic. She has led impactful arts education initiatives, including directing the middle school dance program at Woodward, chairing the Dance Department for Georgia’s Governor’s Honors Program, and serving on the board of the Dance Education Society of Georgia. She has worked with the Atlanta Dance Collective, the Aurora Theatre, the Atlanta Opera, and Walt Disney World as a performer. Her work is infused with the pride of her identity as a Black woman, using movement to amplify voice and imagine liberated futures. (Instagram: , )
“Citizens of the Unseen and Unpublished” explores the intersection of racism and misogyny that renders Black women invisible, offering a choreographic response that both names and resists that weight. Through movement, it becomes a ceremony of radical becoming, where joy is resistance, love is legacy, and preservation is protest. Rooted in sisterhood, ancestral memory, and sacred space, this work holds space for the layered, radiant complexities of Black womanhood. It is not just a dance, it is a celebration, a reckoning, and a movement toward freedom that already lives within us.
