AIR Updates – December 2025

The 2025-26 Artists In Residence – Violet Moon, Andrew Smith, and Karmetra Shy – are developing new works to share at Barnstorm Dance Fest next April. Each month leading up to the festival we’ll be checking in with the cohort to learn more about their background, artistic practice and creative process, and how you can follow along.

Dance artists wear a wide variety of hats in many different parts of the dance field – dancer, choreographer, arts administrator, educator, activist, etc. Tell us more about your place and identity within the community.

Violet Moon: My name is Violet Moon (they/them) and I am a queer, genderless polymathic artist. In action, this means I am a feminist choreographer, arts activist, and working mental health professional who weaves stories and experiences through practiced, embodied movement to tell what has been made secret. 

Beginning at age 10, I started training intensively, performing, and touring. I’ve been in numerous dance companies, festivals, music videos; I’ve studied in Brussels and Paris and continue to receive numerous guest artist contracts. However, it wasn’t until I started choreographing my own work that I became a multi-time grant recipient and residency awardee, and have been invited to perform my original work across the U.S. Today, I choose to explore choreographic themes that are honest to me. They are not always pretty, and they’re rarely resolved, but they’re resonant and they’re true, as I know them.

Which takes me into my mental health professional practice. I studied for 3 years, earning my master’s in clinical mental health counseling. I completed a year-long internship as a therapist helping people with severe complex and developmental trauma, addiction, and core attachment wounds. It surfaced and further reinvigorated my belief in the power of art, creativity, and the body’s inherent wisdom. There’s so much to be said in the unsaid, and a resilience that only speaks in spirit.

So, I practice two things. First is a principle called the Creative Connection by Natalie Rogers, which, at a cursory glance, means one creative practice informs, strengthens, and inspires another. In my life, this looks like making music, writing, painting, drawing, sewing, crocheting, beading, anything really. Although I’ve been able to turn this into music that’s been in shows, artwork that’s been in small galleries, costumes that have seen the stage— my second belief is, I need to make bad art. Mediocre, underwhelming, cliche. As artists, we’re externalizing life, our experiences, and our stories. This is part of that. Externalizing the fullness of ourselves means there’s space to tap into what connects me to you.

That’s why I started more arts activism related projects. I believe creativity is a primary language necessary for meaning, and everyone should have access to it in some way. So, I offer free events when I can, gather other creatives wanting to resource share, offer donation-based therapy groups, write free relational consent in dance and eating disorder recovery ebooks, and build extensive psychoeducation and wellness resource lists— so anyone who needs it can in some way explore it.

Karmetra Shy: My identity within the dance community lives at the intersection of dancer, choreographer, educator, and cultural preservationist, particularly in the lineage and legacy of Black dance. I have had the privilege of studying and training across many forms, but over the past seven years, my work has been deeply rooted in street styles, immersing myself in Hip Hop, House, Funk styles, and Authentic Jazz. My goal is not only to continue training and gathering information, but also to pass it on to my community, especially to those who may not have access or the means to participate in these rich cultural practices.

In 2018, I was diagnosed with two rare illnesses, an experience that brought a new perspective to my role within both the arts and my community. That chapter allowed me to become a recipient of immense love and service from God, my church, my family, friends, and even strangers. Navigating invisible illnesses reshaped the way I teach, train, and choreograph. It deepened my empathy, sharpened my purpose, and pushed me to create work that gives visibility and voice to others living with similar experiences.

As a certified educator of nine years, I have taught in public schools and internationally, working with students of all ages and backgrounds. Today, I continue that work through a broader, more community-centered platform as the founder of The Shyne Project, a local nonprofit dedicated to expanding access to dance, theatre and wellness. Through this work, I am able to merge my artistic practice with education, wellness, and cultural preservation, ensuring that dance remains not only an artform, but a vehicle for connection, empowerment, and collective healing.

Andrew Smith: I am a dance artist whose practice sits at the intersection of choreography, performance, and pedagogy. As a queer, Mexican-American artist and educator, my work is deeply informed by lived experience, critical inquiry, and a commitment to expanding how bodies, particularly male-presenting bodies, are seen, trained, and understood in dance spaces. Within the community, my work spans teaching at the university level, mentoring emerging artists, and creating and performing dance across multiple genres. Whether in the studio, classroom, or rehearsal space, I am invested in conversations around embodiment, identity, and how bodies and identities are represented on the concert dance stage.

Tell us about the work you’re developing through the AIR program. What are you investigating? What is the work about?

VM: I am creating a solo projected to be part of a larger full-length production coming 2027, with select variations debuted throughout Fall/Winter 2026. To launch this full scale work, I am creating the first excerpt titled, Touched, through Dance Source Houston’s AIR program. 

This is a ballet about the history of ballet. It is the dragon’s underbelly, the old stone turned over, the on-stage curtain thrown open. This contemporary ballet explores the continued sexual exploitation through needed sponsorship, the impact of socioeconomic class on access, and the ongoing threat of violence to dancers as a result of artistic, rehearsal, and studio director abuse of power, all set in 1800s France, at the founding of the Paris Opera.

As part of my work, I have been conducting extensive historical and archival research in English and French into how ballet companies were/are structured, why, the impetus behind the style, and how working class people were ultimately able to gain access. This research also includes first-person, anonymous accounts of exploitation in ballet today, tracing lines between what has been to why it continues, asking, how does the past haunt the present and the body move as a result? Further, I’m watching and studying old archival ballet footage for historically accurate costuming, movement, and staging ensuring this work remains as authentic and immersive as possible.

In many ways, I have been working on this project for years. With a French mother whose pointe shoes I would slip on so quietly, gently, and with such adoring reverence, there was no mistaking the maternal bloodline sang their ache, their cries, and their hope to me. Those visions of ma maman on stage at my age, performing to audiences in our language, she was learning her role. The ancestral role. One of vile compromises, clever spectacles, and crafted pleasures. I have witnessed firsthand all the ways culture shapes how we appear and the performances we must put on. This work is the start of that story finally told.

KS: My work in the AIR program is centered around women; specifically the women connected to me through family, community, and lived experience. I am investigating preservation, lineage, and the historical gathering of stories that often go undocumented. Through this work, I want to explore the complexities of a woman’s experience in society: in the workplace, outside of it, and within the home. I am asking questions like: What is required of women? Has it always been this way? How have roles shifted or stayed the same across generations? What is the unseen labor of a stay-at-home mother whose work is to nurture, guide, and hold a household together? By examining these narratives, I hope to honor the women who shaped me while also expanding the conversation around womanhood, labor, identity, and worth.

AS: Through the AIR program, I am developing a trio that investigates the Man Box as an embodied and relational system, focusing on how men are conditioned to physically interact with one another. The work examines how masculine norms shape movement behaviors; how touch is restricted or coded, how proximity is negotiated, how strength is performed, and how bodies regulate themselves both consciously and unconsciously. The dancers move between moments of containment, surveillance, disruption, and vulnerability, revealing how the Man Box is not something one simply escapes, but something that continually pulls bodies back into alignment. Rather than offering a fixed narrative, the piece invites audiences to witness masculinity as an ongoing performance shaped through contact, resistance, and repetition.

How is this work or your approach to this work different from past projects?

KS: This approach differs from my past projects because I am creating from the stories of others, not just my own perspective. I am incorporating interviews, personal narratives, and filmed moments to build the foundation of the work. This process of gathering voices, documenting experiences, and shaping movement from real stories is new territory for me.

I’m also expanding into another medium film, and the creation of a short documentary to accompany or complete the piece pushes me beyond my usual choreographic practice. Blending dance with documentary storytelling is both new and exciting. 

AS: This project builds from my MFA thesis, Deconstructing Adonis, a 25-minute choreographic work for four male-presenting dancers that examined how queer masculinity is performed and aestheticized on the concert dance stage. That work drew heavily from popular culture, body image, and archetypes of male strength and desirability, framing masculinity as something viewed, constructed, and consumed.

My choreographic practice also includes works such as my latest stage work, Noir et Rouge, which explores glamour, spectacle, and performance as choreographic inquiry. Rooted in jazz dance aesthetics and theatrical presentation, this work explores how bodies are framed, displayed, and received by an audience. This engagement with spectacle and performance informs how I think about visibility, audience relationship, and theatrical structure.

What distinguishes this AIR project is the way it brings these strands together while shifting the focus toward relational inquiry. Rather than centering spectacle or overt narrative, the work investigates masculinity as a lived, physical negotiation between bodies. The trio format allows intimacy, surveillance, and regulation to become the choreography itself, moving the research from how bodies are seen on stage to how they move, touch, and monitor one another in real time.

How can folks follow your process and support your work?

VM: All records of my completed works, performances, workshops, and collaborations can be found on my website, violetdanse.com. For updates on upcoming performances and teachings, deeper look into process, and a more in-depth look into myself as an artist, you’ll find everything on my (pretty active) artist Instagram page (@violetdanse). If you want to reach me to speak, collaborate, or perform, I reply best at violetdanse@gmail.com or through direct message on Instagram.

I am currently raising funds through Kickstarter to reach my production financial goal of $3,600 for my Barnstorm 2026 piece titled, Touched. Currently, I have raised $2800 through Dance Source Houston AIR residency and will be offering donation-based, 1.5hr Embodied Contemporary Movement + Repertoire workshops each month at MET dance until the performance in mid-April. The dates for those are: Dec 19, Jan 16, Feb 20, and Mar 20 at 10:30AM. All donations are welcome, encouraged, and deeply appreciated in helping produce this project, sustain my practice, and build an empowered creative arts community!

KS: You can follow my process on Instagram @K_shy and Facebook, where I’ll share updates, and behind-the-scenes moments. There are a few meaningful ways to support this work. Share it! Share what’s happening with those around you. From now until April, 100% of the donations from my pay-what-you-can Community House classes will go directly to the artists dancing in my piece. It is deeply important to me to pay artists what they are worth, and while that can be challenging, it’s not impossible when the community comes together. If you’re unable to attend class but still want to support, you can make a donation at paypal.com/donate?campaign_id=ZLMJZ4R7XZGZY

AS: People can follow my process throughout this residency on Instagram at @andrew.rob10, where I share moments from rehearsal, research, and development. The work will also be presented alongside my AIR cohort at Barnstorm Dance Fest in April 2026, offering an opportunity to engage with the project via performance.

Support also means showing up for the broader dance community. Attending performances, engaging with local artists, and supporting dance at all levels (professional companies, independent choreographers, dance studios, high schools, and college and university programs) helps sustain a vibrant and connected dance community.