Dance On Screen is the newest addition to Dance City Festival Detroit, providing a space for dance filmmakers to present their work. Presented at the majestic Detroit Institute of Arts, Dance On Screen highlights local, national and international dance films in diverse styles of dance.
Saturday, september 19
Idy Vandepas
nk + collaborators
Margaret Wiss
Sarra LaCour
Lampo Leong, Yanxiu Zhao, Dan Wang
Paula Gelly
Jasmine Powell & Daniela Simart
Heather Coker Hawkins
Cottia Thorowgood
Jody Oberfelder
Read about our 2026 filmmakers
Cottia Thorowgood “Snapshot” - Cottia is a filmmaker with experience in film, television, music videos and commercials. After graduating as a director from the London Film School, she worked as a development producer collaborating with writers and commissioners to bring scripts to screen. Cottia is developing her portfolio as a writer and director, creating narrative shorts, fashion and dance films, and music videos. She is currently directing a series of short dance films across Europe and developing her first feature film.
Jasmine Powell & Daniela Simart “Unveiling the Real” - Jasmine Powell, MFA, is a creative expressionist from Hillsborough, NC, whose career has led her to PHILADANCO, Dianne McIntyre, Milton Myers, Ronald K. Brown, Okwui Okpokwasili, Bill T. Jones, Justin Turnow, and Culture Mill all with social awareness and activism at its core to align with her artistry. She currently performs with KT COLLECTIVE Dance Company in Durham and serves as an Elon University Professor. Her personal mission and active artistry investigate the interrelation of conscious views to embody the diaspora, invoking a connection to source through a contemporary nature. Connecting to community, Jasmine's choreographic premieres, including Approximation of a Woman, have influenced performance theaters, conferences, film festivals, music videos, the Wake Forest Dance Festival, North Carolina Dance Festival, and recently the International Detroit Dance City Festival. Jasmine smiles at the opportunity to share work rooted in conceptual storytelling and is always relating to others through a creative expressionist lens.
Sarra LaCour “Trial” - Sarra LaCour is a teacher, choreographer, and performer originally from Aurora, Illinois. She is projected to graduate in the Spring of 2026 from Hope College in Holland, Michigan, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Performance and Choreography and a minor in Dance Pedagogy. During her time at Hope College, she has been a company member of Nicole Flinn-Culver’s Striketime Dance Theatre, a choreographer in the dance department Student Dance Showcase, President and founder of Hope College Tap Club, currently a company member of Matthew Farmer, Jasmine Mejia, and Ray Tadio’s H2 Dance Company, and a prior Chicago Tap Theatre Production Intern. She has had the pleasure of working with and performing works by Tré Dumas, Heather Cornell, Mark Yonally, Sharon Wong, Ray Tadio, Nicole Flinn-Culver, Jasmine Mejia, Lindsey Hanson, Kara Brems, and Matthew Farmer. She has taught classes for all ages and styles, including tap, jazz, ballet, modern, lyrical, hip-hop, and pointe. In addition to this, she has choreographed three pieces, one of which was selected and performed in the Detroit Dance City Festival in September 2024. LaCour’s directorial debut began with her piece “Trial,” which was remounted into a film in August 2025 in Chicago, IL.
Heather Coker Hawkins “Shadow Self” - Heather Coker Hawkins is a multi-disciplinary artist who combines the vocabularies of dance and cinema to connect with audiences. Explorations with moving image and body have manifest in various forms most neatly categorized as screendance and live performance. Installation is the newest addition to the list—designing and choreographing immersive and democratic environments.
Lampoo Leong, Yanxiu Zhao, and Dan Wang “Frost and Flame” - Lampo Leong is currently a Distinguished Professor, Doctoral Advisor, Director of Centre for Digital Arts in the Department of Arts and Design at the University of Macau. He is also a tenured Professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia and a Visiting Professor at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. Leong holds a PhD from the Central Academy of Fine Arts and an MFA from the California College of the Arts. Leong has served as judge or curator for over 80 art competitions and exhibitions and has delivered over 300 lectures at institutions such as Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and the China Academy of Art. His works have been featured at Christie’s, and in art expos, museums, and galleries worldwide through more than 70 solo exhibitions and over 470 juried or curated national or international group exhibitions in museums such as Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, the Pacific Heritage Museum in San Francisco, the Southern Nevada Museum of Fine Art, the Museum of Communication in Berlin, the Carrousel de Louvre in Paris, Museum of Outstanding Design in Italy, the Palace Museum in Beijing, the National Museum of China, National Art Museum of China, Today Art Museum in Beijing, Times Art Museum in Beijing, Art Museum of China Academy of Art, Liu Haisu Art Museum in Shanghai, Hubei Museum of Art, Shenzhen Art Museum, Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning, Guan Shanyue Museum of Art, He Xiangning Art Museum, and Guangdong Museum of Art. Leong has received over 130 awards, including Red Dot Award: Best of the Best in Germany, the Gold Medal at American Good Design, the Gold Medal at the Creative Quarterly international art competition in New York, Silver MUSE Award, A’Design Silver Award in Italy, and China National Arts Fund. Leong’s works can be found in more than 10 museums and hundreds of corporate collections, including the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, and the University of Hong Kong Museum and Art Gallery. He has also completed public art commissions for Columbia City Hall and an 8-meter-diameter granite inset calligraphic medallion for a San Francisco public park. Leong’s achievements have been documented in over 1,100 reviews and publications in magazines, books, and on TV internationally, including the front cover of New Art International in New York, Creative Genius: 100 Contemporary Artists in London, and Art Frontier in the USA.
Margaret Wiss “tender to and tenderness” - Margaret Wiss (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist and her work seeks to be shaped by each environment and the individuals who contribute to its development. She values the vitality of collaboration. She has an MFA in Dance from New York University’s Tisch School for the Arts and DPT from Columbia University.
Idy Vandepas “Story Time” - For nearly a decade, Idy Vandepas has been a proud Dance teacher and Choreographer. She has produced many Dance and Musical productions and has impacted the lives of countless students of all ages. It wasn't until the summer of 2021 that she decided she wanted to do something more. She felt inspired to form a dance film company called The Âme Project so as to preserve her vision on film and to share it with a wider audience. Her first film, Headway, was a deeply personal film that dealt with depression and trying to "get out of the woods". It was shown at multiple Dance film festivals and viewed by many. Since then, she’s directed and choreographed numerous other films, each of which hold a special place in her heart She's eager to continue on this journey and is looking forward to creating even more thought-provoking works. She would like to thank all of her Âme company members and her husband for sharing her vision and for all their love, support, and dedication to creating something timeless and beautiful.
Paula Kelly “Porcelain” - Born and raised in Sao Paulo, Brazil. A larger than life love for dance, took Paula at 18 years old from SP to LA. Auditions to Alvin Ailey Dance in NY gets a scholarship. Becomes a professional dancer. Self-taught musician plays the guitar and sings. Performed on Broadway Musicals: Fosse ( massive influence) and Sweet Charity. Through Ford Models, becomes part of commercials and photo editorials. Returns to LA to pursue her formal training in acting with Mr Arthur Mendoza (Stella Adler’s protégée). Works on over 27 plays and films. In 2016 - turns into a script a fable she wrote "The Story Of The Little Girl Who Loved Butterflies" - she produced, directed and acted in her short film debut winning best film in 5 countries and selected to 18 festivals. She has been working on 2 books, and 2 feature film scripts (one a documentary) and Musical. Back to Brazil, creates Porcelain an experimental short film uniting the talents of phenomenal Brazilian artists she had always admired.