Artists
Zachariah Bigbee
RESIDENT ARTIST
CHOREOGRAPHER-DANCER
ZACHARIAH BIGBEE was born and raised in Taos and went on to dance across four continents. Seeing the world has brought him to understand the deep history of his homeland; one of the first places on this continent ever to be occupied by humans. He now seeks to forge connections to that unbroken timeline that stretches back into infinity.
For this reason, tradition and biomechanics are at the heart of his artistic work. Tradition is the loom that allows us to take up the threads of the ancient past and weave them into the stitches that bind our common future together. The purpose of his weaving is to show that the same old stitches can come together into an infinity of unexpected forms. All we need to realize them is imagination and a courageous heart.
Anaka Weiss-Jones
RESIDENT ARTIST
CHOREOGRAPHER-DANCER
ANAKA WEISS-JONES is originally from Longmont, Colorado. She works as a freelance contemporary ballet dancer and arts administrator for companies across the United States, and performs in Taos several times a year with Zikr Dance Ensemble and as a guest artist with Ballet Taos. Through the time she has spent here, she has found community and built a connection with the town that keeps calling her back.
She believes that there is something very special to be experienced and learned in Taos, and her work for Rio Hondo Artists’ Residency begins with an open mind, seeking to learn more about the relationships and stories of and between the land and community from the people who make their lives in this beautiful place. Through conversations and research, Anaka seeks to understand many perspectives of spirituality, religion, the earth, and humanity. She believes strongly that there is a symbiotic relationship that comes from embracing these elements as parts of a whole, and that the cycle of symbiosis breaks down when the same are abandoned.
Athena Dunleavy
RESIDENT ARTIST
CHOREOGRAPHER-DANCER
ATHENA LUNA DUNLEAVY was born and raised in Taos, New Mexico. She believes her art is a reflection of her ancestros, her relationships, and her life in mirror to nature. She is a writer, teacher, choreographer, poet, researcher, and pre-nursing student. Her process seeks to explore the fine-line between everyday mundanity and the space where the divine breaths when observed; allowing something bigger than herself to move. Interweaving science and magic of the human experience ultimately guides her practice.
Athena’s work for the Rio Hondo Artists’ Residency explores intimacy, memory, and transformation through dance as ritual. Rooted in personal and collective narratives, especially the complexities of love and the multitudes that it is embodied beyond romance; like the love of land, family, friends, practices, and stories. Athena aims to create a living environment rather than a fixed performance: one that evolves in real time, invites audience participation, and reflects the emotional landscapes of the community. Through inviting the elements into the performance space, she aims to “naturify” a human space, blending form into nature, and nature into form. Creating a ceremonial space that allows the audience and the performers to transcend the separation of viewer and artist. Creating oneness as a living, breathing, evolving, piece that reflects the community, the land, the people, and the audience as a part of the dance.
She is very proud to be born and raised in Taos, and desires greatly to create the spaces that don’t exist here for the benefit of the whole creative community in the Northern New Mexico region. She believes in the deep creative well that she has witnessed through her upbringing here, and desires to connect the amazing web of artists that she knows and is yet to know through collaboration and access to resources. Her vision goes beyond concert dance and she desires to have a multimedia collage, breathing through her loved ones, shared with the audience of Taos and the world.