Crossroads w/Orlando Hernandez, Cara Hagan, Heather Dutton, Anna Witenberg

A curated series presented by Pioneers Go East Collective, Crossroads Series features interdisciplinary artists who explore new genres and known performance and art-making modes to share their creative practices with other artists and their audiences. Each evening, we witness different generations of artists dealing with actual, day-to-day, contemporary challenges to further discussion between artists and to activate a network of exchange and inclusion with social and artistic intervention.

PERFORMERS

BIOS
Orlando Hernández is a tap dancer and choreographer based in NYC. He has presented his work at New York Live Arts, On the Boards, Joe’s Pub, Jacob’s Pillow, and La Casa Ruth Hernández Torres. He was a Fresh Tracks Artist at New York Live Arts, an Artist-in-Residence at the Center for Performance Research, and is a 2025-2028 Jerome Fellow in Dance, and he has received grants and residencies from Guggenheim Works & Process, the New England Foundation for the Arts, Yaddo, the CUNY Dance Initiative, and Snug Harbor. Orlando is a member of the group Music From the Sole, and he leads The Knee-Heart Connection.

Cara Hagan (She/They) is a mover, maker, writer, curator, champion of just communities, and a dreamer. She believes in the power of art to upend the laws of time and physics, a necessary occurrence in pursuit of liberation. In their work, no object or outcome is sacred; but the ritual to get there is. Hagan’s adventures take place as live performance, on screen, as installation, on the page, and in collaboration with others in a multitude of contexts. Mama Piranha, Hagan’s most recent work for stage, is a solo work of physical theatre that explores themes of loss and reclamation of agency and what happens when we decide to tear down a world that no longer serves us to build a new one. The work premiered at JACK! Brooklyn in June of 2025 and was subsequently performed at PhysFestNYC in January 2026. The Dance Enthusiast described Mama Piranha as “concise and evocative; precisely-executed stage magic.” Hagan’s most recent short film, “Cut Me Summa Dat Noise,” premiered at the Grrl Haus Film Festival in Cambridge, MA in December of 2024. In 2025, the film garnered eight awards, including “best dance film” at the Bronze Lens Film Festival, “best music video” at the Harlem International Film Festival, “best music video” at the Allentown Film Festival and “best choreography for the camera” at the festival Videodanza de Puerto Rico. Hagan joined the faculty of The New School in 2022 and works as an Associate Professor for the MFA in Contemporary Theatre Performance. Hagan also works for Dance on Camera, the world’s longest-running dance film festival as its Executive Director since 2025. They were a co-curator for the festival for the 2023 and 2024 seasons.

Middle Child Dance Theatre is an emerging NYC based dance company under the direction of Heather Dutton. Our work is an ongoing practice of play in many forms and we are committed to uplifting queer stories and artists. Middle Child's work is all about negotiation, sensitivity, toggling, and comedic relief. It is the home base for the kids in us who never quite knew which lane we fell into. We officially launched last April with the premiere of "You're Actually the Last Person I Wanted to See Today" supported by Mare Nostrum Elements and Flushing Town Hall, which we later took to the Performance Garage for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Middle Child recently had a residency at the American Dance Festival, where we also hosted a week-long workshop for teens in the community. We were presented at ODC Theatre through the Fact SF Summer Dance Festival last August and recently performed as part of the International Human Rights Arts Festival in NYC.

Anna Thérèse Witenberg is a choreographer and dancer living in New York. Her first evening length show “Heat” was presented this fall at Pageant, Kestrels, and excerpts shown at Canada Gallery in conjunction with the solo exhibition by Lee Mary Manning. Her collaboration with Shade Théret called “Mal Intent” was presented by the Lament series and staged at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin. As a dancer, she has collaborated extensively with Maya Lee-Parritz, Isa Spector, Anna Sperber, Sarah Michelson, Joanna Kotze, and visual artist Nick Mauss, performing in their work at venues such as Whitney Museum, the Kitchen, the Walker Art Center, the Shed, American Dance Festival, Judson Memorial Church, and Abrons Art Center. She will be touring the EU this spring with choreographer Anna María Häkkinen on her commission for Perfoma. She is a Visual Arts MFA candidate at Hunter College.

About Pioneers Go East Collective
Pioneers Go East Collective is a radical Queer laboratory collective dedicated to dance-theater and video art to empower the LGBTQ experience. An artist-driven collective, we create works of high artistic merit, speak out about social issues and build a platform to positively impact the LGBTQ+ and Feminist communities. Based in NYC, the collective is led by BIPOC and/or immigrant artists and cultural organizers Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte, Philip Treviño, Remi Harris, Joyce Isabelle, Sugar Vendil, Daniel Diaz, Joey Kipp, and Anabella Lenzu. We portray same-gender-loving experiences, memory, and marginalization that resonate with contemporary lives. The collective combines stories of vulnerability and courage with popular culture to facilitate communal meaning and advocate for cultural integrity. Our work has been widely presented in NYC at Judson Church, La MaMa, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, St Ann's Warehouse, Socrates Sculpture Park, The LGBT Center, JACK, Exponential Festival, LMCC's Process Space at Governors Island, Chashama Gallery, Incubator Arts Project, New Dance Alliance, and Goethe Institut. For more information about their work please visit their website here.

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