The recipient of the 2023 Ellis-Beauregard Foundation Choreographer Award, Kayla Farrish is a Black interdisciplinary artist merging dance, theater, filmmaking, narrative, and sound score. Her work captures the ranging identity, mythical dualities of history and present survival of Black and Brown lineages, and powerful dreaming leading to liberation.

Embracing radical movements of freedom and humanity, Farrish works in collaboration with musicians and other artists to create live performance, films, and site-specific/immersive experiences. Inspired by jazz musicians, poets and writers, and community, she reflects our stories as we together imagine new futures. Farrish has been commissioned by Limon Dance Company, ODC Theater, Louis Armstrong House Museum, Harlem Stage. Her work has been featured at Lincoln Center, Park Avenue Armory, Symphony Space, and National Sawdust, and has received support from Baryshnikov Arts Center, La Mama Theater, Watermill Center for the Arts, and others.