Fellows in Residence

Dance

Eva Chou

Professor in the Department of English, CUNY Baruch College — United States

Eva Chou has written on the great eighth-century poet Tu Fu (Cambridge University Press) and the seminal twentieth-century writer Lu Xun (Association for Asian Studies Publications). Now researching ballet in China, she has published many articles on the subject and frequently reviews dance performances. Her work has been supported by the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University, Library of Congress, Japan Foundation, H.F. Guggenheim Foundation, NEH, ACLS, and Radcliffe Institute; she has held visiting positions at University of Cambridge and Charles University, Prague.

While in residence Eva will be working on a history of the project to create Chinese ballets, a project that developed in parallel to, and sometimes in rivalry with, the classical ballet repertory received from Soviet advisors. Its most long-lived works are "Our Red Army Girls" and "White-Haired Girl" from the 1960s while recent notable works were premiered in 2022 for the Communist Party’s 100th anniversary. Their development is used to show how creative works negotiated the state’s cultural policies; their dance analyses reveal the compromises and solutions that, taken together, make for a complex record that will be continuing.

Dance

Kristopher Estes-Brown

Choreographer, Composer, and Theater Director — United States

Kristopher Estes-Brown is an American multidisciplinary artist who has worked as a choreographer, composer, and theater director. His choreography has been described as athletic and expressive with unique musicality, and eye-catching theatricality. Kristopher has created over 90 contemporary dance works as well as 8 full-length ballets. Kristopher’s music melds a big cinematic sound with dance theater sensibilities. His music has been featured in dance, theater, short films and digital media.

While in residency at Bogliasco, Kristopher will be choreographing and composing When It Leaves. This work explores early life traumas and their physical manifestations throughout different stages of development. In 2026, When It Leaves will be produced into a dance theater production.

Film/Video

Henry Hills

Experimental Filmmaker — United States

HENRY HILLS has been making short, intensely rhythmic experimental films since 1975. A longtime resident of New York's East Village, he has maintained working relationships with the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poets, composer John Zorn, & choreographer Sally Silvers. From 2005-2018 he was Professor at FAMU, the Czech national film academy in Prague, and he currently lives in Vienna. He received a 2009 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship & has films in the permanent collection of Museum of Modern Art.

Henry will be both editing & shooting material for a short film using water imagery. While the frame will be filled with lovely abstract patterns, the focus of the progression will be on the periphery (eg., water from the Vaporetto in Venice with wooden foundation beams and reflections of the palazzos hovering in the corners, or from the East River water taxis with the Wall Street skyline creeping into the background). The film is about the transitory nature of earthly joy. Henry wants to be optimistic.

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Architecture

Marcel Sánchez Prieto

Architect and Associate Professor of Architecture, University of San Diego — Mexico/United States

Marcel Sánchez Prieto is an architect and educator whose work bridges architectural design, urban theory, and social practice. He is Principal of CRO Studio and founder of the Transborder Association of Architectural Education (TAAE), a network that connects academic and civic institutions across the U.S.-Mexico border. His design-research spans self-built housing and civic infrastructure, with a focus on spatial justice and the role of architecture in contested geographies.

At Bogliasco, Marcel will expand Transborder Ecologies, a research project and editorial series investigating architectural typologies shaped by migration, displacement, and transborder economies along the U.S.–Mexico border. Through design analysis, visual studies, and editorial development, he will explore how these dynamics generate new spatial conditions, contributing to frameworks for transregional urbanism.

Dance

Alexey Taran

Choreographer — Cuba/United States

Taran is a Cuban choreographer and transdisciplinary artist based in Miami. He is the co-founder of Bistoury Physical Theatre and Film and a 2007 Guggenheim Fellow. His work explores memory, displacement, and abstraction through the fusion of dance, film, and visual media. Alexey is the recipient of awards from the Knight Foundation, New Music USA, NALAC, and multiple Miami Dade Choreographer’s Fellowships.

Mechanical Ballet is a multimedia performance that explores the tension between organic movement and mechanical repetition. Drawing inspiration from early modernist experiments, the work integrates dance, sound, and projected imagery to examine the body’s relationship with labor, automation, and abstraction.

Film/Video

Mohammad Shawky Hassan

Filmmaker, Writer, and Video Artist — Egypt/Germany

Mohammad Shawky Hassan is an Egyptian filmmaker, writer and video artist living and working in Berlin. His video “And on a Different Note” was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York as part of its permanent collection in 2016, and his first feature-length film "Shall I Compare You to a Summer's Day?" premiered at the Berlinale Forum in 2022.

"Watch Before Deletion" is structured as a talk show episode that traces the elusive life of Amar, a fictional queer diva who escapes her native country, Egypt, where she was a revered cultural icon, first to Lebanon and eventually to Germany, where she spent the rest of her life in exile. Her sudden death sparks speculations about her enigmatic life, whose narrative unravels through a cast of celebrity guests consisting of disciples, rivals, critics and alleged lovers.