Crossroads with Liberty Styles, Vanessa Rappa, and Diovanna Obafunmilayo

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

Liberty Styles

Vanessa Rappa

Diovanna Obafunmilayo

BIOS

Liberty Styles (they/them) is a tap dancer, electronic musician, and performer based in NYC. Satire, collaged sound, drag, and rhythmic improvisation are all pillars of their practice. Their research engages with histories of tap dance and queer performance art, drawing connections between embodied rhythm, nightlife, and experimental sound as sites of memory, mischief, survival, and futurity. Liberty produces and performs in sold-out events that bring in collaborators to explore the intersection of tap dance and drag performance. In 2023 they toured the UK as a tap soloist with BBC Jazz Musician of the Year Xhosa Cole and featured on his 2025 album On a Modern Genius Vol. 1. They also perform regularly across the UK and Europe with artists including Edi May and electronic duo Zyggurat. Liberty has performed in Ayodele Casel’s Diary of a Tap Dancer at the American Repertory Theater, and also collaborated extensively with Michela Lerman, Orlando Hernández, Naomi Funaki, and Ian Berg. Other stage credits include the Guggenheim, New York Live Arts, The Joyce Theater, and the Apollo Theater. Their work has been mentioned in The New York Times, Jazzwise, and Billboard.

Vanessa Rappa (she/they/vee) - is an interdisciplinary artist, exploring in and creating for the realms of poetry, music, theater, and movement as a poet, singer/song-writer, actor, and dancer. Their music, plays, and poetry have been presented by Undiscovered Countries, Judson Memorial Church, Loisaida Center, Pioneers Go East Collective, Nuyoricans Poets Café, CreateART, New York Theater Workshop open mic events, and Poetic Theater Productions. In Fall 2021, they performed their first fully produced, original piece "Scribbled Lines", presented by Poetic Theater Productions. Their last notable shenanigans include a 2023 Artist Residency at BAM with Pioneers Go East Collective in development of dance-theater and media piece "My Name'sound" and performing in "The Healing Shipment" created by Maria Camia as part of La Mama Puppet Festival in 2023. They had since taken a short performance-hiatus after giving birth in November 2024.

Diovanna Obafunmilayo is a Grammy nominated multidisciplinary artist whose body of work spans performance, music, film, writing, and fine art. She is deeply rooted in a spiritual approach to her practice, seeing each work as a collaboration with intangible forces which seek to be expressed.

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 community. Based in NYC, the collective is led by BIPOC and/or immigrant artists and cultural organizers Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte, Daniel Diaz, Philip Treviño, Joyce Isabelle, Joey Kipp, Remi Harris, 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, 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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