Known for his innovative and collaborative choreographic projects, Stephen Mills has works in the repertoires of dance companies across the United States and around the world.

His international career began in 1998 after being chosen Prix d’Auteur at les Rencontres Chorégraphiques Internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis in Paris.  In his inaugural season as Artistic Director of Ballet Austin in 2000, Mills attracted national attention with Hamlet, hailed by Dance Magazine as “…sleek and sophisticated.”

Mills’ works showcased at The Kennedy Center include A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, and performances at the Ballet Across America Festival in collaboration with The Suzanne Farrell Ballet.

In 2005 Mills developed a community-wide human rights collaborative dialogue culminating in his signature work Light/The Holocaust & Humanity Project for which he received the Audrey and Raymond Maislin Humanitarian Award from The Anti-Defamation League. Mills contributed a podcast about Light to the Voices on Anti-Semitism series at The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and was invited to speak about the work at The United Nations in 2014.  Light has been performed in five U.S. cities, in three cities in Israel, and was recently featured in an Emmy Award-winning PBS documentary, Sharing Light.

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Called “the quintessential modern composer” by the London Independent, Austin-based composer-bandleaderimproviser Graham Reynolds records and performs music for film, theater, dance, rock clubs, and concert halls. He recently scored Richard Linklater’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette (Annapurna Pictures) with Cate Blanchett, Kristen Wiig, and Laurence Fishburne, Happy Jail (Netflix), Stop Hitting Yourself (Lincoln Center Theater), Out of Her Mind (BBC), Grimm Tales (Ballet Austin), and a multi-year commission from Ballroom Marfa, The Marfa Triptych, culminating in his Creative Capital Award winning project Pancho Villa from a Safe Distance. Amidst his many other projects, Graham also serves as the Artistic Director of the new music focused non-profit Golden Hornet. In 2020, Graham signed with London-based record label Fire Records and released his original score for Alfred Hitchcock’s silent classic, The Lodger, with a forthcoming album of original material in 2024.

Shawn Sides has been a performer, director and producer in Austin, TX and occasionally New York for 20 years. She’s a founder and a Co-Producing Artistic Director of Rude Mechs in Austin, TX where she has co-conceived, co-adapted, and directed a new work every year, give or take, since 1996, including Off-Broadway and touring productions of Lipstick Traces, Get Your War On, Stop Hitting Yourself, rudes’ Creative Capital supported project The Method Gun, and their ”re-enactment” of The Performance Group’s Dionysus in 69. Current projects include Rudes’ adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov Field Guide, and From the Pig Pile: Requisite Gesture(s) of Narrow Approach by Sibyl Kempson. Shawn is an Alpert/Hedgebrook Prize recipient and was inducted with her fellow Rudes into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame in 2010. She recieved a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award in 2015.

Erin Earle Fleming is a NYC based lighting designer whose art illuminates the human experience through inclusive storytelling. Her work encompasses opera, dance, and plays across the United States. Her selected credits include: Kiss (Yale Repertory Theatre); Tosca, The Medium (Northern Lights Music Festival); A Woman’s Life (Da Camera); Xander Xyst, Dragon:1 (ArsNova ANT Fest); Sweat, If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka: An understanding of a West African Folktale, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Blood Wedding, and Macbeth (Yale School of Drama); The Feels…(KMS), Re:Union, MoonSong, Current Location, Kaspar (Yale Cabaret); Les Enfants Terribles (Butler Opera Center); Bus Stop, Love and Information (Mary Moody Northern Theatre); Pinocchio, ScienceTricks (ZACH Theatre); Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (Doctuh Mistuh Production); and The Attic Space (Palindrome Theatre). Erin also previously worked as the assistant production manger of Ballet Austin. She is the Resident Associate Lighting Designer at Texas Ballet Theatre and teaches at Mississippi State University. A native Texan, she holds a BA from St. Edward’s University and an MFA from Yale School of Drama.

Wendy Sanders has been working in wigs, hair, and makeup for theater, film, television, and photoshoots for over 20 years. She has won awards for her theatrical makeup and wig work here in Austin as well as in Colorado where she went to college. Her work can be seen on the stages of Austin Opera, Atlanta Opera, the occasional local theatrical production, and of course Ballet Austin. She is thrilled anytime a production wants to bring drama, fantasy, or especially glitter to the stage! When not slinging wigs and makeup, Wendy is an award-winning performance artist in aerial arts and burlesque, performing and teaching around the globe, under the name Ginger Snaps.