About the Halcyon Dance Project Residency at BlackBox Studios

BlackBox Studios & Halcyon Dance Project offers short residencies for independent choreographers to create new works at BlackBox Studios.

The residency is intended to offer an opportunity to choreographers who are in need of support. Creating art requires financial resources to rent studio space and pay artists. The goal of the residency to help alleviate the cost of producing work by awarding free studio space as well as an opportunity to showcase their work in progress.

The residency includes:

12 hours of free studio space to workshop and rehearse.

Option to present work in process, or completed work, at BlackBox Studios.

To Apply for a Residency please email

hello@blackboxstudiosoakland.com

Please include:

  • CV, headshot/dance photos, bio

  • Artist statement

  • Links to work samples

  • Statement about the project you intend to work on during the residency

  • Preferred dates & times for 12 hour residency

Alyson Abriel

November & December 2025

Alyson has over 40 years of experience in ballet and modern dance. She trained throughout New England as a child, and later on in NYC, Boston, and San Francisco.

She earned an MFA in Photography and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts in NYC in 2001. She was a Designer/Multimedia Specialist at the American Museum of Natural History (NYC) and the Exploratorium (SF). In parallel,  Alyson danced professionally with José Mateo Ballet Theater in Cambridge, MA, The DanceWright Project (SF), Labayen Dance/SF, and the Santa Clara Ballet. Alyson was the lead teacher for the younger summer dance campers at Shan-Yee Poon Ballet School for two summers and also held her own adult ballet classes in the city, and private lessons over Zoom since 2020. She has designed and constructed costumes for PUSH Dance Company and the DanceWright Project.

For the past decade, Alyson has been raising her two children in Oakland and has been serving on multiple Boards of Directors and committees in OUSD. She’s been hands-on in the realms of special education and disability justice as a parent advocate. She identifies somewhere within the spectrum of neurodivergence and is bringing this awareness to deepen her ballet practice through mindfulness and somatic explorations.

Alyson hopes to present two dances at the end of this residency. A group work will explore a “decision”. One made through a slow steady, resolve. A solo work will explore the concept (and act of) “tending to”.

Photos courtesy of Alyson Abriel & Andrew Faulkner for Labayen Dance

Tatianna Steiner

January & February 2025

Tatianna Steiner (she/her) has been training since the age of five in ballet, jazz, tap, hip hop, improvisation, and modern dance. Tatianna is a 24’ graduate of UC Berkeley (Cal) with a B.A. in Dance and Performance Studies. While at UC Berkeley, she worked with renowned choreographers such as Lenora Lee, Iu Hui Chua, and Lisa Wymore. Additionally, she choreographed multiple movement works, including duets and large-scale group pieces. Tatianna co-founded Tether Dance Company, a premier modern dance troupe at UC Berkeley, where she cultivated a cooperative and inclusive environment and explored innovative movement and scoring techniques.

As a choreographer, Tatianna fuses modern and contemporary styles to create works that are expressive, emotional, as well as technically complex. Beyond graduation, she has been an active freelance performer in the Bay Area, collaborating with artists and organizations such as Printz Dance Project, SanSan Kwan, APAture, and NACHMO.

Tatianna will be utilizing the BlackBox Studios residency hours to work on an upcoming project that will be featured at Dance Mission Theater in April 2025 in a shared bill. She will be investigating the intersection between authenticity, code-switching, adulthood, and childhood with a cast of five dancers. In this 10-minute piece, she intends to explore her intangible connection to knee-high colorful socks and utilize them as a prop and costume piece, and utilize techniques of body percussion, weight sharing, and floorwork.

Meredith Webster

January 2024 & 2025

Meredith T. Webster grew up in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, studying under Jean Wolfmeyer. She worked with Sonia Dawkins's Prism and Donald Byrd's Spectrum Dance Theatre in Seattle, and earned a B.S. in Sustainable Resource Sciences from the University of Washington before moving to San Francisco to work with Alonzo King LINES Ballet. She danced with Lines for 9 seasons, served as Rehearsal Director for 6, and currently stages Alonzo’s work. Meredith has created site-specific work in collaboration with the visual artist Ana Teresa Fernandez, performed with Ledoh/Salt Farm and Maureen Whiting & Co, and co-created the Ladysmith Draw and Empress Archer evening-length duets. Her work for film includes Mirrors, Evidence of it All, Miles Away, and Numenon. She currently sits on the Board of Directors for Maureen Whiting & Co and lives on the unceded Ohlone land of xučyun (Huchiun), also known as Oakland, California.

Photos by: Justin Sorensen