Meet the artists
Round 1
Cassandra bishop
Cleveland, OH
Cassandra Bishop (she/her) is a musician and performance artist residing in Cleveland. She has been an active member of the music community for twenty years, performing in various bands and working as a solo artist. She is currently involved in three musical projects; Mulberry Moon, She1Him2, and The Elder Goths. She studied modern dance along with tap dance, and was a member of the Cleveland State Modern Dance Company during her time at graduate school. Since then she has partaken as a guest with various dance performances, such as the Butoh group The Birds Who Walk at Night, and previously worked with Maelstorm Collaborative Arts in a performance session called Rising Tide. She also provides dance and choreography with her musical group She1Him2. She looks forward to working on more collaborations of music and dance for 2025.
Emily Baird | Drift Dance Collective
Wooster, OH
Emily Baird (she/her) is a dancer, choreographer, and educator originally from Steubenville, Ohio. She holds a B.A. in Theatre & Dance from The College of Wooster and is an alumna of the American Dance Festival Six Week School, where she performed in both the International Choreographer’s Residency Concert and the Student Concert. After graduating, Emily worked as a dance instructor in Chicago for several years before returning to Ohio to complete an M.S. in Kinesiology & Health with an emphasis on dance kinesiology at Miami University. In 2021, Emily was awarded the Doug Risner Prize for Emerging Dance Researchers by the National Dance Education Organization for her research focusing on the role of body awareness in collegiate modern and contemporary dancers. Her recent travels have taken her to the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London and the Women in Dance Leadership Conference in Chicago, Illinois. Emily currently serves as the Assistant Professor of Dance at The College of Wooster, where she choreographs for and directs departmental dance concerts and offers classes in choreography, modern dance technique, dance history, and movement for the performer. Emily is a registered yoga teacher (RYT-500®), and she holds professional memberships with the National Dance Education Organization and the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science. Emily is also the founder and artistic director of Drift Dance Collective, a non-profit dance company focused on multimedia performance and accessibility.
Drift Dance Collective is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in the northeast Ohio/Cleveland area. We first met as members of our college dance company, and although we have each since moved into different career paths, we wanted to find a way to keep dance as a part of our lives. We believe that artistic expression, physical movement, and dance specifically are not things that should be reserved for a particular age or demographic. We meet regularly to choreograph new work, rehearse, and explore new ways of moving. Our primary movement styles are modern, postmodern, and contemporary, and we function as a "collective” instead of a hierarchical company structure. We are currently working on our third dance film, and are always exploring other ways to spread an appreciation of dance to our community and beyond.
Genevieve Jencson
Lakewood, OH
Genevieve Jencson (she/her/hers) is a poet and performance artist based in Cleveland, Ohio. Her interdisciplinary approach to art-making combines poetry, visual imagery, and dance. Genevieve performs with the butoh dance collective The Birds Who Walk at Night who offer process-based, site-specific sound & movement experiences. Genevieve also creates and performs solo work. She recently presented her 15-minute choreographed solo, The Little Bird Ascends at IngenuityFest in September 2024. She presented Incantations, a 10-minute piece of spoken word poetry and improvised dance at MicroTheater Cle in November 2024. Her chapbook of poems Lanugo was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2015. Genevieve holds an MFA in creative writing from Cleveland State University and the NEOMFA. She is a dedicated student of Vangeline of the Vangeline Theater/ Butoh Institute New York. Genevieve also sings harmony for the band Mulberry Moon.
Marcia Custer
Cleveland Heights, OH
Marcia Custer (she/her/hers) is a movement and sound-based performance artist with a penchant for both the bizarre and the sublime. Her original work has been performed at Pitchfork Music Festival, Elastic Arts Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Transformer Station, and basements, backyards, and bookstores across the U.S. Custer’s performance work is rooted in feminist and queer approaches to embodiment, experimental sound, and radical community dance practice. She is a somatic educator and creative producer currently living and working in Cleveland, Ohio. Marcia holds a Bachelor of Arts in Dance from Kent State University, where she received the School of Theater and Dance Scholarship Award for Excellence in Creative Scholarship and for Outstanding Choreographer. She received a scholarship to attend Headlong Performance Institute in 2016. Most recently, she and collaborator Ben Oblivion received an Andy Warhol Foundation Satellite Fund project grant for their ongoing video performance project “Two Divorced Moms.” Along with her community dance project, OPEN Movement Performance Group, she spent the pandemic producing films and events to support local mutual aid organizations. After taking a much needed rest from solo performance, she is returning gleefully and ready to connect with audiences anew!
Jailyn harris
Cleveland, OH
Jailyn Sherell Harris (she/her/hers) Jailyn Sherell Harris is a native of Cleveland, Ohio and a graduate of Bowling Green State University, where she received her BAC in theatre, with a minor in dance. As a performer, she has had the opportunity to perform in film, festivals, arenas and in theaters across Northeast Ohio and beyond with credits from Dobama Theatre, Ohio Shakespeare Festival, Ensemble Theatre, Karamu House, Lakeland Civic Theatre, the Players Guild Theatre, and the A.R.T. in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She enjoys working on and developing new works and had the opportunity to perform in the world premiere of VELVETEEN: A NEW MUSICAL (Playhouse Square) and HEARTBREAKERS IN HELL by Joey Contreras and Benjamin Halstead (Rubber City Theatre). She has also choreographed productions at Near West Theatre (THE MUSIC MAN, BRING IT ON, LEGALLY BLONDE), Dobama Theatre,Cleveland Public Theatre, and Clague Playhouse, to name a few. Directing credits include MATILDA (M.A.D Factory), The Marian Bianchi Young Playwright’s Festival (Dobama Theatre), a staged reading of the new musical WISHFUL THINKING by Jamie Maletz (Rubber City Theatre) and a virtual production of RAGTIME (M.A.D. Factory Theatre). In addition to her directing and choreographing credits, she is also a 2023 Room in the House Fellow. Jailyn has a strong dance background and extensive experience in Jazz, Hip Hop, step and Musical Theatre. She is an Associate Member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC). Jailyn has choreographed for theaters and organizations across the northeast Ohio area and beyond, including the Sitar Arts Center in Washington, DC.