Year: 2026-2027
DanceForce Member: Paz Tanjuaquio
Artists: Blakely White McGuire; Xin Ying
Community Partners: Margaret Kaiser; Topaz Arts
Audience: 400
County: Queens
TOPAZ ARTS will support dancemakers Xin Ying and Blakeley White McGuire. Both recognized as principal dancers of the Martha Graham Company, each artist will participate in residencies at TOPAZ ARTS to explore their own distinct works, supporting each choreographer with time and space to focus and develop new work. Often supporting dancemakers who are dancers in major companies (such as Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Co., Trisha Brown, Molissa Fenley, among others) who are exploring their own creations, this year we will focus on supporting Martha Graham dancers. The TOPAZ ARTS residency provides each artist with space and artist stipend to support the creative process during July 2026 to June 2027.
A new partnership in Upstate New York with DanceForce member Margaret Kaiser will support the presentation of their new work in Buffalo, NY on Friday, Sept. 18, 2026, including a live performance and workshop opportunities with Xin Ying and a dance film by Blakeley White McGuire.
About the artists:
Xin Ying is a dancer, choreographer, mother, and interdisciplinary artist exploring the intersection of movement, technology, and digital legacy. A principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company since 2011, she has performed many of Graham’s most iconic roles, including Herodiade, Errand into the Maze, Chronicle, Cave of the Heart, and The Chosen One in Rite of Spring. Beyond performance, Xin is a boundary-pushing creator, blending AI, generative technology, and dance archives. Her improvisational work has garnered attention across major media and social platforms, and her choreographic commissions include Co.Lab Dance, Ballet Arkansas, Art Bath, and 92NY’s 90th Anniversary Celebration. She has collaborated with choreographers Nacho Duato, Annie-B Parson, and Hofesh Shechter and assisted Martha Graham Artistic Director Janet Eilber on creative projects, including The Feast with Long Beach Opera. Xin holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Research from NYU and was a featured panelist at Romancing the Machine| Dancing at the Edge of Intelligence, a symposium on AI and movement. She continues to push the boundaries of dance, archive, and emerging technology—ensuring that history is not just preserved but activated, questioned, and reimagined.
Blakeley White McGuire is a choreographer, dancer, author and recipient of a 2024 Fulbright Specialist Award. An interdisciplinary artist, Blakeley merges her passions for nature, dance, writing and liberatory activism with performance. As a choreographer for the stage, Blakeley has created original dances for Flightpath Contemporary Dance, Axelrod Contemporary Ballet, Ballet Metropolitano de Medellín, Buglisi Dance Theater, Movement Migration and New Ballet Ensemble; as well as for her own art collaborative C.A.V.E.S. Project with Colombian choreographer, Daniel Fetecua Soto. Her work has been commissioned and presented by festivals and venues including Jacob’s Pillow, Museum of Arts and Design, Grounds for Sculpture, American Dance Festival, Dancing Human Rights (Oxford, U.K.) and Danza in Arte a Pietrasanta, Italy. Her work for C.A.V.E.S., The Tongue of the Flame received a 2023 O’Donnell/Green Grant for Dance and Music, and her first book The Martha Graham Dance Company: House of the Pelvic Truth, was released by Bloomsbury Publishing UK in 2022. Blakeley’s performance career as Principal Dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company earned her international critical acclaim including the Premio Positano Leonide Massine Award for Contemporary Dance. Blakeley continues to stage Graham’s masterworks on companies around the world including on Semperoper Ballet Dresden, Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, the Paul Taylor Dance Company, and is part of the current rehearsal direction team of the Martha Graham Dance Company in New York City.