The BIPOC New Work Presentation Track creates opportunities for individual artists of color, and collectives and small companies run by artists of color to present new, full-length performance works at Cannonball Festival.

We are thrilled to announce the inaugural recipients of the BIPOC New Work Presentation Track for Cannonball Festival 2022! All of the selected artists will have their works fully produced by Cannonball as a part of this year's Philly Fringe, and will receive a $2500 stipend along with additional marketing support. These powerful, risk-taking projects will be centerpieces of this year's Cannonball Festival. They spark imperative dialogue, create spaces of resistance and healing, and highlight the virtuosity of some of Philly's most incredible artists.

Shavon Norris is an artist, educator, and facilitator. She uses movement along with text and sound and imagery to reveal and highlight the stories living in our bodies. Her work explores our relationship to our identities, our experiences, and to each other. An examination and celebration of what we feel, think, and believe. She received a BA in Biology from Manhattanville College and an MFA in Dance and Choreography from Temple University. Presently she teaches at Temple University, Thomas Jefferson University and Swarthmore College. As an artist her work has been presented at venues in New York City and Philadelphia. As a performer, she has participated in performances for Silvana Cardell, Leah Stein, Merian Soto, Jumatatu Poe, David Brick and has toured with Pig Iron Theatre Company. As an educator and facilitator, Shavon has worked with Headlong Performance Institute, Pig Iron School, Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Need in Deed, LiveConnections, and Arts and Business Council for Greater Philadelphia. In partnership with these organizations, as well as others, Shavon has offered short and long-term learning to diverse communities on topics of Movement, Intentional Inclusivity, Mindfulness, Wellness, and Healing Centered/Trauma Informed Practices. Shavon’s artistic and educational philosophies are rooted in the desire to offer herself, learners, performers, and audiences, opportunities to deepen the understanding of self and the collective. To explore ways to light us up, lift us up and shift what needs transforming. She loves all of the living and working she gets to do in the world.

Sohrab Haghverdi is a theatre artist from Tehran, Iran. Since arriving 8 years ago, he has received a Bachelor’s degree in Acting from University of Northern Colorado and a Master's in Devised Performance from Pig Iron/University of the Arts. Isolation even in the presence of others has been a recurring experience for Sohrab as a cancer survivor, a member of a marginalized community, and one of a few Iranian creators in the Philly theatre community. He uses theatre to go to uncomfortable, shameful, fear-invoking places and attempt to take the audience on that journey with him. His goal is to offer an experience that reveals more of himself and those who suffer the same pains.

Sophiann Mahalia uses her fusion of african, hip hop, and waacking to promote the limitless and regal qualities of womanhood within the black dancing body. She moved from Hartford, Connecticut to receive her BFA in Dance Choreography and Performance from Temple University, where she graduated Summa Cum Laude and received the Rose Vernick Most Promising Performers Award. Her recent works include Gilead's commercial campaign “Press Play”, Black & Mild commercial shoot, and music videos for Saleka Night Shyamalan's  "Clarity" (directed by Ishani Shyamalan and M. Night Shyamalan) and Ari Lennox’s "Shea Butter Baby" featuring J Cole. In the commercial world, Sophiann has had the opportunity to do work for companies such as BOMBAS, and gone on tour with the Clothesline Muse starring six time nominated jazz singer Nnenna Freelon. She performed in New Freedom Theatre’s Black Nativity directed by Rajendra Maroon Maharaj.  She promotes body positivity and uses dance to tell stories that can’t be understood with just words, and aspires to inspire other artists to take their artistry to the next level as she does the same.

Chachi Perez: cultura, rebellion, comunidad, y el movimiento del cuerpo. Transporting into different avenues of the unexpected, to reach the bridge of the unapologetic. How can I push the boundaries the world has placed on this vessel of a body I call mine? How can this working body be a means of transportation for taking me to another world? How can I as an artist fill the gaps with my work to help my community? How can I as a latina, a lesbian, a woman, work to push through the barriers people have placed on us? Using my body and my work to create my fuck you dance, to uplift the future of our community that is running through la callè.

Nathaniel Justiniano (he/him+) is a queer Cali-Rican actor, deviser, movement designer, educator, activist, and the founding Artistic Director of Naked Empire Bouffon Company. Recently, his arts-based racial justice work was featured in Howlround and American Theatre Magazine. As an actor, he has worked with Shakespeare Orange County, Son of Semele Ensemble, Cornerstone Theater Company, The Dell’Arte Company, Thrillpeddlers, We Players, and Cutting Ball Theater. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of Comedic Performance at Emerson College and he has served as the Director of Physical Comedy for the Sacramento Shakespeare Festival, Movement Designer at UC Berkeley, core faculty of the SF Clown Conservatory, and guest faculty at the Juilliard School. 

2022 panelists were Almanac Company Member Nathan Alford-Tate and Rhonda Moore.

Rhonda Moore is a dancer, performance artist, educator and a founding member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. Moore has danced with Jamie Cunningham’s ACME Dance Company and began her dance career with intensive training in Dunham technique, performing with the Akosua Afro-Haitian Dance & Drum Troupe. Currently a teaching artist for the award winning Pierre Dulaine’s Dancing Classrooms Program, Moore previously served as Choral Director for the Singing City-in-the-Schools Program. Moore’s extensive international and domestic portfolios include conducting professional sound and movement workshops; creating site-specific interdisciplinary installations that integrate sound, movement and visual art through shared experience collaborative elaboration; teacher-specific professional development laboratories geared to generate curriculum development with a focused, integral inclusion of visual art, design, movement; and music and vocal concerts as jazz soloist in small combos as well as with chamber and full orchestral formations. She holds a BFA from SUNY Purchase, a diploma in classical piano performance from Hoff-Barthelson Music School in Scarsdale, NY, and full, permanent certification in Italian as a second language, conferred by the Foreign University of at Sienna, Italy. Ms. Moore serves as adjunct professor, dance faculty at Boyer College of Music and Dance, teaching a variety of courses spanning from dance composition to the study of the development of jazz music and dance in the United States.

Nathan Alford-Tate is a devising artist, and educator from Detroit, MI. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Western Michigan University and a Masters of Fine Arts from University of the Arts/Pig Iron School. He has performed throughout Philadelphia, at The Museum of the American Revolution, The National Constitution Center, Arden Theatre Company, Theatre Exile, Quintessence Theatre Group, and Tribe of Fools.
He’s been a company member with Almanac Dance Circus Theatre since 2018, helping to devise and perform in multiple shows such as, Grounds That Shout, The Fleecing, and Permission to Monster. He’s currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor at University of the Arts where he teaches Neutral Mask.