Base Residency Entry Point: Juliana F. May

Please join us Saturday, March 21, at 4 PM for NYC-based Choreographer Juliana F. May’s Entry Point!

Facilitated by Dayna Hanson, join Choreographer Juliana F. May and dramaturg Hilary Clark for a conversation about their working relationship over the last ten years as they reflect on their last piece, Optimistic Voices, and begin to think and envision May’s next work, “Dreams part III”.

A Guggenheim and New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, Juliana F. May has intertwined practices of choreography and teaching. Since 2002, her work has been presented by Dance Theater Workshop, New York Live Arts, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Joyce SoHo, The American Realness Festival and Abrons Arts Center, among others. May has been awarded grants and residencies through The Map Fund, The Jerome Foundation, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Foundation for Contemporary Art, The Brooklyn Arts Council and New York State Council on the Arts. In 2002, May received her BA in Dance and Art History from Oberlin College, and, in 2012, she received an MFA in Choreography from the University Wisconsin-Milwaukee. May serves as the Artistic Advisor for New York Live Arts’ Fresh Tracks Residency Program and has been on faculty at Sarah Lawrence College since 2017. May’s work “Folk Incest” was nominated for a 2019 New York Dance and Performance Award for outstanding production, and toured to ImpulsTanz in Vienna, Austria. In 2025, May received the Sam Miller Award for performance from LMCC and was the Caroline Hearst artist-in-residence at Princeton University. In November 2025, May premiered “Optimistic Voices” at BAM Next Wave Festival, where she was also named the Harkness Artist-in residence for BAM Fisher. In 2026, May will reprise Optimistic Voices at the Chocolate Factory Theater and MCA Chicago, among other national tours.

About Entry Points: Entry Points are opportunities for our Resident artists to share their process. They may take the form of a showing, a conversation, or another expression of the artist’s imagination. It’s an opportunity for the community to engage with the deep dives the artists undertook during their Residency and, possibly, discover a new artist or deepen their connection to an artist they support.

About the Base Residency: The Base Residency is a unique, artist-curated program offering unrestricted space, the opportunity to publicly share work, technical, marketing, and administrative support, travel and lodging for out-of-town artists, and a fee of $1,000 per residency week. The ‘25-’26 Residency Season was curated by Parisa Ghaderi, Joseph Hernandez, and Keyes Wiley. This year, the Base Residency offers six artists—three from the Seattle area and three from beyond—two weeks of immersive creative time at Base between January and July 2026. Since 2016, more than 30 artists have completed Base Residencies as the program continues to evolve and grow within a national context. Meet Base Residency Alumni here.

“The Base Artist Residency was crucial to the development of RoCoCoCoCo and indeed, my continued evolution as a creative artist. Having time and space to live in the questions of my work, to listen to my body, and to be in conversation with my dancing collaborators teaches me. Base offered me enough time to let the ideas establish themselves. This generosity feels like trust – like the institution/Base trusts the artists, and this allows the artists to trust the art/themselves.”