Brave New Works Lab 2025
Featuring
WINDSHIP BOYD & TUMELO MICHAEL MOLOI
LANDRY BUTLER & INGLEWOOD SOCIAL CLUB
STACIE FLOOD-POPP / FOUND MOVEMENT GROUP
KOURTNEY “KOKO” FRENCH
May 15-17 at 8PM
Tickets from $20
“One of the most interesting and dynamic presentations of locally grown talent.”
– Nashville Scene
Celebrate local innovation and creativity with a bold evening of entirely original short-form performances featuring dance, theater, music, and multimedia. The fourth-annual Brave New Works Lab invites daring Nashville artists to transform OZ Arts into a laboratory for the creation and premiere of new works and works-in-progress. Encouraging multimedia experimentation and collaboration across disciplines, the lab creates a safe space for high-risk artistic adventures. Following up on the success of 2024’s ambitious Lab presentations, this year’s event promises to be the biggest and bravest Lab yet.
2025 ARTIST LINE-UP
Windship Boyd & Tumelo Michael Moloi
BA TSAMILE
It is impossible to resist the rhythmic artistry created by the convergence of two visceral percussive dance forms, originated around the same time, but in different continents: South African gumboot dance and the Southern tradition of stepping. But when the artists add in the core instruments of a marching band, the result is nothing short of transcendent. South African artist and dancer Tumelo Michael Moloi, known for his rousing work with famed Cirque du Soleil, collaborates with French-born Nashville choreographer Windship Boyd to create this explosive new production, which also features projections by artist Sari Hoke and performances by stepper extraordinaire Aniya Coleman alongside Guinean drummer Ibrahima “Ibro” Dioubate and brass instrumentalists from TSU.
Choreographer, visual artist, and performing artist Tumelo Michael Moloi was born in 1981 in the apartheid-era township of Katlehong, near Johannesburg, South Africa. Michael began his dance career at age 16 as a member of the highly acclaimed company Via Katlehong. With them, he performed a mix of the street dance forms known as pantsula (town dance) and gumboot (mine workers). Micheal was then invited to the US with Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas where he stayed 11 years. Today he performs for Shiners at the Woolworth Theatre and has exhibited his paintings at the Chauvet Art Gallery in Nashville. His passion is also to empower and engage underserved youth in the US and around the world.
Windship Boyd was born in France and raised in the US. Trained at UNCSA, she danced professionally then moved to London and then France where she lived for 25 years. She created the company Itchy Feet and choreographed for Lyon’s bi-annual dance parade 7 times. She has taught, trained and choreographed in West Africa since 2004 when she received a scholarship from UNESCO to create a work in Senegal, where she returns each year. In 2016, she moved back to Nashville. Between teaching, inviting artists from abroad, and accompanying students to West Africa, her objectives are to promote African and multicultural art and help foster cultural exchanges and the creation of artistic works. In 2022, she co-founded AfricaNashville, a platform for artistic expression and cultural exchange that promotes the importance of African heritage in Nashville’s music scene. She manages the company, teaches, and performs with them around the city.
Landry Butler & Inglewood Social Club
WELCOME TO PARADISE
A large-scale projected supercut of visually arresting black-and-white images sets the stage for this new multimedia production by incisive spoken word artist Landry Butler and the multi-instrumentalists of the underground collective Inglewood Social Club (one of the best kept secrets of East Nashville’s thriving music and art scene). At a time of global chaos, these long-time collaborators are imagining possible futures in Welcome to Paradise, drawing on their collective experience with such influential musical outfits as JonesWorld, The Shapeshifters, The Emancipators, and Landry’s nom de plume Seventh Sister.
Nashville-based Inglewood Social Club (ISC) is a quartet of veteran rock club musicians who fuse multimedia with live music to create singular performance experiences. John Smith and Brian Relleva have played together in several bands including the Shapeshifters and Andy Boy. A skilled metalworker and all around smart ass, John Weatherly was a member of The Emancipators and Some Awful Bridge. Landry Butler is an accomplished poet and visual artist who has released albums of his experimental spoken word songs under the name Seventh Sister. The funkiest guitar player in town, Sam Naff, is well known for his work with JonesWorld.
ISC rarely plays live gigs, preferring instead to record long, improvisational jams which are carefully workshopped into concise, insightful observations that celebrate the absurd life of the Angsty American. While their recordings offer a window into their world, this performance in the Brave New Works Lab is a rare chance to see them perform live.
Stacie Flood-Popp / Found Movement Group
BOSCH
Eleven of Nashville’s most dynamic contemporary performers take inspiration from a surreal, 500-year-old painting by Hieronymus Bosch for this vital new production by choreographer and artist Stacie Flood-Popp and her Found Movement Group. With a highly visceral movement dreamscape, Flood-Popp and collaborator Kat Driver bring new life to The Garden of Earthly Delights, drawing connections between current issues and the painting’s themes of debauchery, temptation, chaos, sin, bliss, and utopia/dystopia.
After receiving her degree in Visual Arts from Wittenberg University, Stacie Flood-Popp moved to Paris, France to apprentice under visual artist and professor David Loeb at Parsons School of Design. While in Paris, Stacie found herself falling in love with another form of visual art: dance. After one year, she trained professionally under Dominique Lesdema, Christopher Huggins, and Bruno Collinet. When she returned to Nashville, Stacie worked closely with world renowned choreographer Andre Fuentes and danced with Collide Dance under Erica Sobol. For 19 years, Stacie taught at Nashville School of the Arts (NSA), where she trained dancers who performed with The Louisville Ballet, Pilobolus, Celine Dion, Donna Summer, DCDC, and various other professionals in the concert and commercial dance community. She has served as dance faculty at Vanderbilt University Dance Program and was chosen to be a visiting artist at American College Dance Festival, RADfest, and Big River Dance Festival.
In 2016, Stacie earned her certification in Laban Movement Analysis through the Integrated Movement Studies Program at the University of Utah. After her certification, Stacie has studied with Deborah Hay, Christopher Roman, KJ Holmes, and other great dance makers of the current times. In 2019, Stacie left teaching to give back to her community by developing safe and supporting environments for Nashville artists.
Kourtney “Koko” French
ON TIME
The infectious and virtuosic Hip-hop moves of Kourtney “Koko” French are powerfully delivered by 8 inexhaustible dancers, creating a non-stop powerhouse performance examining the concepts of time and urgency. The soulful choreography expounds upon the ways our time is borrowed, spent, wasted, or cherished. Koko has helped shape the Nashville performance scene as the founder and director of Ink Movement and as the inventor of her individualized Ko-Style Method, in addition to serving as a choreographer for legendary Gospel performers like Cece Winans and Kirk Franklin. As a sought-after teacher and performance creator, she has assembled a breathtaking team of hyper-committed performers for this dynamic new dance work.
Kourtney “Koko” French is a dancer, choreographer, creative director of Ink Movement, and CEO of Ko-Style Method. Graduating from Nashville School of the Arts, she studied under Stacie Flood- Popp, Travis Cooper, Andre Fuentes & Erica Sobol. She’s been a choreographer for 15 years and has choreographed and directed a total of six dance productions including two projects that were featured in the Kindling Arts Festival hosted at OZ Arts Nashville. She also has worked in the Gospel industry and has choreographed for Gospel artists such as Cece Winans, Kirk Franklin, and other local artists here in Nashville. Koko established her company back in 2017, and the company focuses on making your permanent mark for Christ through movement. She also launched her very own dance faith-based brand called Ko-Style Method back in 2022. It’s a brand that lets people know you do not have to limit yourself to be accepted. She believes that with dancing, faith without works is dead, so put in the work and walk by faith, not by sight. Her mission is to help every generation embrace their purpose and really believe that God knew what he was doing when he gave them the gift of dance and choreography.
COMMUNITY EVENTS
Gumboot & Pantsula Masterclass with Tumelo Michael Moloi
Artist Chat: Art as a Spiritual Practice with Landry Butler
Tuesday, May 6 | 6-7PM
Artist Applications for the 2025 Brave New Works Lab have closed. 2026 Lab applications will open in Fall 2025. Sign up for our email list to receive announcements and updates about future opportunities.
Through the Brave New Works Lab and other local programs, OZ Arts strives to create meaningful opportunities for artists from Middle Tennessee to imagine, develop, and premiere new performance works. We hope artists can focus on the creative process and collaboration, without being overly burdened by the normal trappings of self-production, such as marketing, administration, detailed technical matters and venue management.
Questions about the Brave New Works Lab?
Contact OZ’s Associate Director of Programming & Partnerships Daniel Jones at daniel@ozartsnashville.org.
