Soomi Kim & Paloma McGregor
2013-2014 ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Soomi Kim is a Korean born, New York City based actor/movement artist (dancer, stage combat/martialarts, choreographer, former gymnast). She has worked as a company member with several artists as well producing, creating and performing her own work, almost always in the collaborative setting. She has created 2 original full length productions as a lead artist (developed in collaboration with director Suzi Takahashi) and is currently developing a third (Chang(e)) as a HERE Arts Resident artist. Her pieces are: Lee/gendary (inspired by the life of Bruce Lee, winner for Outstanding Production of a Play and Takahashi for Outstanding director at the 2009 NYIT Awards), Dictee: bells fall a peal to sky (presented at the 3rd National Asian American Theater festival in LA 2011 and Women Center Stage in NYC- 2012).

Chang(e) is a political theater performance piece inspired by the life of Kathy Change, a Chinese American performance artist who self immolated in front of the Peace sculpture on the campus of U Penn in 1996 as an act of protest. For 2 years straight Kim has participated in the Asian Arts Initiative’s Artist Exchange residency, where her work is presented in Philadelphia, PA. A workshop of Chang(e) was recently shown at HERE’s annual Culturemart festival of new work by current HARP artists. Soomi has been featured in KoreAm Journal, Asiance magazine, Kung Fu magazine, The Korea Times, Tsing Tao newspaper, the L.A. Times and has appeared as a guest on PBS's show Asian America, Art on Air radio station and on NYtheatre.com podcasts. www.soomikim.com
photo credit: Gil Seo

Paloma McGregor is a choreographer, writer and organizer living in Harlem. Her performance work has been presented throughout New York, including at The Kitchen, Harlem Stage, EXIT Art, SummerStages, Brecht Forum, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Dixon Place, Fordham University and Bronx Academy of Art and Dance, as well as at UCLA, U.C. Berkeley, Yale University, The Dance Place in Washington, DC, Cleveland Public Theatre and the McKenna Museum in New Orleans. She has collaborated with directors Patricia McGregor, Niegel Smith and Emily Mendelsohn, multidisciplinary artists Mendi+Keith Obadike and LaTasha Nevada Diggs and musician Greg Tate.

Paloma is co-founder of Angela's Pulse, along with her director-sister, Patricia McGregor. Angela’s Pulse devises collaborative performance work; collaborates with diverse communities, including artists, activists, educators, students, seniors and scientists; and is dedicated to building community and illuminating undertold stories. Their first evening-length work, Blood Dazzler, was based on poetry by Patricia Smith and premiered in a sold-out run at Harlem Stage in 2010. Paloma is currently developing Building a Better Fishtrap, a performance project that explores water, memory and home, as well as examines what we carry with us, what we leave behind and what we reclaim.

Among her awards: 2013 Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics Artist in Residence; 2013 Wave Hill Winter Workspace grant and creative residency; 2012-13 arts leadership fellowship from the Kennedy Center's DeVos Institute; 2012-13 iLAND grant and creative residency; 2012 Jerome Foundation Travel Grant; 2011 Earthdance E|Merge creative residency; 2010 QuAD creative residency; 2010 Harlem Stage Fund for New Work; 2009 Voice & Vision creative residency. Paloma toured internationally as a dancer with Urban Bush Women for six years, and she continues to perform. In 2010-11, she was in the award-winning cast of Liz Lerman’s The Matter of Origins and is currently a collaborator on Cassie Meador’s How to Lose a Mountain and Jill Sigman’s Last Days / First Field, both of which will premiere in Spring 2013.