ARTIST SUPPORT
ARCOS offers support and mentorship to independent dance artists in Austin throughout the process of supporting their practices and projects, providing logistical and creative guidance. Current artist support programs include the DADA microgrant and ARCOS Presents production mentorship.
ROUTING / MY BODY, YOUR CHOICE
October 4, 6, 9, 11 at 7:30pm
October 5, 12 at 7:30pm
CRASHBOX, 5305 Bolm Rd Unit 12
ARCOS is committed to relational, rather than transactional, practices of sharing resources, knowledge, and care in art-making. ARCOS Presents awardees receive financial support, including an artist stipend, production budget, studio rehearsal space, technical inventory access, and performance venue. Additionally, mentorship provides awardees creative thought-partnering, production and technical support, and community outreach guidance.
Routing by Sanchita Sharma
A personal and communal practice that traverses the “migrant’s time” (Guha 1998; Mathur 2011), attempting to interweave a life left behind and a life begun in the diaspora—to connect with the “Other” made to feel like an outsider, longing to be seen and to belong.
My Body, Your Choice by Al Hamauei
A retaliation, a femme-punk manifesto, a vocally rebellious, audience interactive, rage-infused piece of dance theater attacking what it’s like to move through the world as a femme-bodied person.
Routing by Sanchita Sharma
A personal and communal practice that traverses the “migrant’s time” (Guha 1998; Mathur 2011), attempting to interweave a life left behind and a life begun in the diaspora—to connect with the “Other” made to feel like an outsider, longing to be seen and to belong.
My Body, Your Choice by Al Hamauei
A retaliation, a femme-punk manifesto, a vocally rebellious, audience interactive, rage-infused piece of dance theater attacking what it’s like to move through the world as a femme-bodied person.
AL HAMAUEI ︎ Al Hamauei (they/them) is an emerging artist, choreographer, and performer in Austin, TX, pushing the boundaries of dance, acting, and comedy. A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with a BFA in Dance, Al uses their body as a weapon for social change—turning movement into a raw, unfiltered commentary on mental illness, queerness, and misogyny. With each piece, they create fearless spaces where intersectional identities collide and flourish. Through provocative, unapologetic performance, they invite audiences to face uncomfortable truths and find liberation in the chaos of it all.
SANCHITA SHARMA ︎ ︎
Sanchita Sharma (she/her) is a New Delhi-born, Austin-based performing artist, choreographer, and dance scholar. She earned her PhD in Culture and Performance from University of California, Los Angeles, where she researched the politics of corporeal dissent in Indian contemporary dance. Through an interdisciplinary approach to dance-making, Sanchita explores themes such as attention, hyper-visibility and migration as manifested in her female dancing body. Layering movement, language, visual media and sound, she dreams of creating robust worlds that integrate her emotional landscapes. Her dances have been presented at Austin Dance Festival, Preheat Film Festival, ACC’s Faculty and Guest Artist Dance Concert, and Day of Dance Festival (Austin), UCLA Broad Art Center, Inside/Outside Festival (New Delhi), and Maya Dance Theatre (Singapore), among others, and will be showcased at Small Plates Choreography Festival and Dance Carousel (Austin) in September 2025. She currently works as an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Dance and Instructional Associate at Austin Community College, and volunteers as the Chair for Dance Studies Association’s working group, Practice-as-Research.
Sanchita Sharma (she/her) is a New Delhi-born, Austin-based performing artist, choreographer, and dance scholar. She earned her PhD in Culture and Performance from University of California, Los Angeles, where she researched the politics of corporeal dissent in Indian contemporary dance. Through an interdisciplinary approach to dance-making, Sanchita explores themes such as attention, hyper-visibility and migration as manifested in her female dancing body. Layering movement, language, visual media and sound, she dreams of creating robust worlds that integrate her emotional landscapes. Her dances have been presented at Austin Dance Festival, Preheat Film Festival, ACC’s Faculty and Guest Artist Dance Concert, and Day of Dance Festival (Austin), UCLA Broad Art Center, Inside/Outside Festival (New Delhi), and Maya Dance Theatre (Singapore), among others, and will be showcased at Small Plates Choreography Festival and Dance Carousel (Austin) in September 2025. She currently works as an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Dance and Instructional Associate at Austin Community College, and volunteers as the Chair for Dance Studies Association’s working group, Practice-as-Research.
Past ARCOS Presents awarded artists include:
- Adrian José Flores for
MESTIZO, Anna Bauer with Celeste Camfield for delicates, The Clubhouse (Gabbi Melton and Sarah Smith) for The Tale of the Swamp Witch, Saraswati Nandini Majumdar and Venese Alcantar for Empty Beat (2025) - Kelly Goetz for Menstruator and Ciceley Fullylove for Rhythm & Grooves (2024) at CRASHBOX
- Angelica Monteiro for Narratives of the Migrant Body (2023) at Motion Media Arts Center
- Interdisciplinary tap artist Michael J. Love for The Auralvisual Mixtape Collection, Part II: Dope Fit! (2019) at Carver Museum and Cultural Center
- University of Texas at Austin alums anxious 20yr olds (Gianina Casale, D’Launa Lawson, Oluwaseun Samuel Olayiwola, Lizzette Chapa, Hunter Sturgis) for This Isn’t New (2017) at Museum of Human Achievement
This project is supported in part by the City of Austin Economic Development Department.
Dance Artist Development Award
ARCOS Foundation for the Arts provides the Dance Artist Development Award (DADA) to honor independent professional dance artists in Austin seeking to deepen, expand, or refine their practices. While many grants provide funding for artistic projects, the impact of which can be quantified (for example, by measuring artists paid or audience members directly affected), this award is intended to provide dance artists the opportunity to take a risk to explore a practice- rather than product-based pursuit that may have profound, long-term effects on their creative development and work going forward. Prior recipients have used the development funds to explore new movement modalities within and outside of our community, work with mentors to strengthen their self-producing capacity, and conduct leadership training in art as social engagement and activism.
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2018
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2017
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2016
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2015
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Fiscal Sponsorship
Previously, ARCOS served as a nonprofit fiscal sponsor primarily to Austin-based artists by providing financial management and administrative support for municipal arts grants. Since the City of Austin Cultural Arts Division launched revised funding programs that no longer require fiscal sponsorship for application, this is no longer one of ARCOS’ currently offered forms of arts service.
Past fiscally sponsored artists and projects include Magdalena Jarkowiec’s In Here at Fusebox Festival (2018) and Us Kids Are Alone In The House at Salvage Vanguard Theater (2016), Millie Heckler’s SoulFunktion Yes Body summer dance parties (2018), Esther Bramlett’s Articulate Austin Series (2019), and Michael J. Love’s virtual-hybrid Beatbox Series (2020-21).