Choreographer / Director 

Shannon Stewart /  Screaming Traps explores the intersection of dance with embodied identities and social choreographies. She works across and through disciplines but her creative practice is body-centered.

Shannon was born in the South and came of age as an artist in the Pacific Northwest, San Francisco, and Europe. She has an MFA from Tulane University in Interdisciplinary Dance Performance, a BA in Urban Design from the University of Washington and is based in New Orleans.

Her work has been presented by Velocity Dance Center, On the Boards (Seattle), RISK/REWARD, Performance Works Northwest (Portland), Philadelphia Dance Projects, the Hinterlands (Detroit), Definitive Figures Festival, Marigny Opera House, Tulane University (New Orleans), Bryant Lake Bowl, Cowles Center (MPLS), the Work Room (ATL), Pivot Arts Incubator (Chicago), Future Oceans (NYC), Good Children Gallery, The Front Gallery and invited to the V&A London in 2019. Her collaborative film work has been screened at film festivals big and small.

Composer / Collaborator 

Aurora Nealand is a sound artist and multi-instrumentalist based in New Orleans and NYC.  Voted "Best Female Performer” in the 2015 & 2016 Gambit awards, she is widely recognized as a saxophonist, composer and band leader for The Royal Roses. Nealand's other musical projects span from The Monocle (her ‘solo’ project of original music accordion), to the 2-piece collaborative Instigation Orchestra. Nealand has performed as a featured artist at national & international festivals including Summerstage NYC, Istanbul Jazz Festival, Copenhagen Jazz Festival, Natal (Brasil) Jazz Festival, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Stockholm Festival of New Music & New Orleans Jazz Festival.

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She has worked in musical collaboration with artists Arto Lindsay, Joe Lally (Fugazi), Germaine Bazzle, Pretty Lights, Tim Robbins, John Boutte, Solange Knowles, The Ross Brothers (film score). Nealand has appeared on HBO's TV series Treme and NCSI: New Orleans. Recently she was awarded residencies at the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center, Atlantic Center for the Arts and the MacDowell Colony to develop an original operetta about female hysteria. She regularly works with Found Sound Nation, an organization based in NYC, which facilitates international musical collaboration and sonic diplomacy.

Filmmaker / Collaborator

Performer / Collaborator

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//Sierrah Dietz is a dance performer and creator originally from Northern California, who has been living in New Orleans since 2013. Using movement styles including improvisation, contemporary, contact, low-key tap, performance art, and lightweight drag, she has been performing in venues all over the city with Shannon Stewart (screaming traps creator and fellow collaborator) and Ellery Burton (fellow traps member, drag partner and dance collaborator) for the last four years. Sierrah works as a Pilates instructor and freelance mover and can be found around NOLA singing karaoke, hanging with her dog Caryn or enjoying a cheap glass of fine wine. \\

Performer / Collaborator

Ellery Burton is a dancer and performance artist and shopkeeper and caregiver and housecleaner and tambourine player residing in New Orleans. After graduating from the New School, she moved to New Orleans where she dances for films, music videos, and various choreographers. 

Lori Crosthwait, Ann Glaviano, Kimmie Allen, Aaron Richmond-Havel, Sierrah Dietz, Ellery Burton, Rebecca Allen, Millie Brown, Katya Chizayeva.