Rosy Simas Explained

Rosy Simas
Birth Name:	Rosy Marie Simas
Birth Place:	Jacksonville, Florida
Occupation:	transdisiplinary artist, choreographer, performer, artistic director
Years Active:	1992-present
Current Group:	Rosy Simas Danse
Former Groups:	Shattering Feet
Dances:	she who lives on the road to war, yödoishëndahgwa’geh (a place for rest), WEave:Here, Weave, Within Our Skin, Transfuse, Skin(s), We Wait In The Darkness, Bloodlines, Threshold, i want it to be raining and the window to be open, Birds, Have Gun Will Shoot, Moments In Between, Four Years Later

Rosy Marie Simas is a Seneca multidisciplinary artist and choreographer in the United States.

Identity

Rosy Marie Simas is a Haudenosaunee Heron Clan woman and an enrolled member of the Seneca Nation of Indians.^[1]

Career

Simas is a dance and transdisciplinary artist^[2] and the founder and artistic director of Rosy Simas Danse.^[3]

As a choreographer, Simas creates work for stage and installation that unifies movement, time-based media, sound, and sculpture. Since 2012 she has collaborated with French composer François Richomme.^[4] Their collaborative works include: We Wait In The Darkness (2014); Skin(s) (2012); Weave (2019);^[5] Threshold, a film with photographer Douglas Beasley (2013); and WEave:HERE with Heid E. Erdrich (2019).^[6]

In addition, Simas has collaborated with Deborah Jinza Thayer. In 2016, Simas and Jinza Thayer performed together in 14 U.S. cities, and finished their tour with a performance at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.^{[7] [8]}

Exhibitions

Solo

• We Wait In The Darkness, All My Relations Art, Minneapolis, MN. (2014)
• All My Relations: A Seneca History, Mitchell Museum of the American Indian (2015)
• Blood Lines: Images of Attachments, Seneca Iroquois National Museum, Salamanca, NY. (2020)
• she who lives on the road to war, Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN. (2020)

Group

• SKEW LINES: a residency and installations, Heid E. Erdrich and Rosy Simas. SOO Visual Arts Center, Minneapolis, MN. (2019)
• Waasamoo-Beshizi (Power-Lines), Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND. (2019)
• Identity/Identify, Iroquois Indian Museum, Howes Cave, NY. (2020-2021)

Honors and awards

• Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Artist Fellowship (2013)
• Twin Cities City Pages Artist of the Year (2014)
• Sage Award for Film and Set Design (2014)^[9]
• Guggenheim Creative Arts Fellowship for Choreography (2015)^[10]
• McKnight Fellowship for Choreography (2016)
• First People's Fund Artists in Business Leadership Fellow (2016)
• Joyce Award from the Joyce Foundation with the Ordway Center of the Performing Arts (2018)
• Dance/USA Artist Fellowships (2019)
• Twin Cities City Pages Best Choreographer (2020)
• McKnight Fellowship for Choreography (2022)
• United States Artists Artist Fellowship (2022)
• Doris Duke Artist Award (2023)

Publications

• Simas . Rosy . My Making of We Wait in the Darkness . Dance Research Journal . 2016 . 48 . 1 . 29–32 . 10.1017/S0149767716000073 . 192540281 . .
• Simas, Rosy and Bodhrán, Ahimsa Timoteo (2019) Sovereign Movements Building and Sustaining Native Dance And Performance Communities A Dialogue, Movement Research Performance Journal, Sovereign Movements: Native Dance and Performance, Issue 52/53, Fall 2019.^[11]
• Simas, Rosy and Morgan, Christopher K. (2019) Longer Scores: Native Choreographic Turns, Curatorial Visions, and Community Engagement^[12]
• Simas . Rosy . Mitchell . Sam Aros . Playing Indian, between Idealization and Vilification: Seems You have to Play Indian to be Indian . American Indian Culture and Research Journal . October 2019 . 43 . 4 . 133–140 . 10.17953/aicrj.43.4.simas-mitchell . 242885536 .
• Simas, Rosy (2022) "The body is an archive: Collective memory; ancestral knowledge, culture and history". in Music, Dance and the Archive. Edited by Amanda Harris, Linda Barwick, and Jakelin Troy^[13]

Notes and References

1. News: Award-winning Seneca choreographer Rosy Simas creating dance performance "Weave". Indian Country Today . 7 June 2018 . en-US. https://web.archive.org/web/20201024211759/https://indiancountrytoday.com/the-press-pool/award-winning-seneca-choreographer-rosy-simas-creating-dance-performance-weave-irWRBHd6WEqua7eQBEy3mg. 24 October 2020.
2. News: Studio Stories: Reminiscing on Twin Cities Dance with Rosy Simas. Arena Dances on Buzzsprout. 10 June 2020. en-US.
3. News: MNIBA Business Directory. MNIBA Website. 30 September 2020. en-US.
4. Web site: Rosy Simas | Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography.
5. News: Rosy Simas, Seneca Choreographer, developing dancer performance, "Weave," to honor the Native world. First American Art Magazine. 12 June 2018. en-US.
6. News: With a theme of 'resilience,' Northern Spark flies into Rondo and Franklin Av. neighborhoods. Star Tribune. 3 October 2020. en-US.
7. Carleton presents A Shared Evening Of Dance: This special performance features acclaimed Twin Cities dancers Rosy Simas and Deborah Jinza Thayer. News. Carleton College. May 22, 2016. https://www.carleton.edu/news/stories/carleton-presents-a-shared-evening-of-dance/
8. ArtZany!-Radio for the Imagination | Dance Artist Deborah Jinza Thayer. KYMN Radio. May 20, 2016. https://kymnradio.net/2016/05/20/artzany-radio-imagination-dance-artist-deborah-jinza-thayer-05202016/
9. News: Nine artists honored with SAGE Awards for Dance. Star Tribune. 14 October 2014. en-US.
10. News: Native artist Rosy Simas pulls various threads to build a bold new dance work, 'Weave'. Star Tribune. 11 January 2019. en-US.
11. News: Sovereign Movements: Building and Sustaining Native Dance And Performance Communities — A Dialogue. Movement Research Performance Journal, Sovereign Movements: Native Dance and Performance,Issue 52/53. 30 October 2019. en-US.
12. News: Sovereign Movements: Building and Sustaining Native Dance And Performance Communities — A Dialogue. Movement Research Performance Journal, Sovereign Movements: Native Dance and Performance,Issue 52/53. 30 October 2019. en-US.
13. Web site: Music, Dance and the Archive . Sydney University Press . 6 August 2024.