ABOUT THE CREATORS
Proudly based in Seattle, WA, Maya Soto (Dancer/Choreographer) + Nico Tower (Musician/Multidisciplinary Artist) have partnered to create a new, exciting performance art world. For more than a decade Maya and Nico have cultivated successful careers in dance and music. Maya as a performer, teaching artist, award winning arts educator, and choreographer. Nico as a passionate music educator, visual designer, arts outreach advocate, and touring composer/performer.
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Maya Soto is a choreographer, performer and award winning arts educator. In 2014, she was acknowledged for her contributions to the Seattle dance community with Velocity Dance Center’s Dance Champion Award – where she is a creative resident and teaching artist. She has created a vast body of work over 12 years, including concert performance, movement installations, dance for theater and for film. Her movement vocabulary integrates a wide variety of forms, styles and cultural influences. Her work brings together classical dance training and a sense of play and entertainment. Truly a Pacific Northwest artist, she is originally from the Portland area and has been calling Seattle home since 1999.
Maya was a founding member and Co-Artistic Director of collaborative dance company, Northwest Dance Syndrome (2003-2012). Through her long standing collaboration with NWDS, she created three evening length works Americanism (2005), Red Tent (2006) and Junknation (2009) along with numerous shorter dances and dance films Nocturne (2007) and The Snapping Point: The Movie (2012). Her work with NWDS received support from Allied Arts Foundation and Walrus Performance Productions. She now works as a successful freelance artist.
Her choreography has been showcased by venues including On the Boards, Velocity Dance Center, the Firehouse Performing Arts Center, Merlino Arts Center and Tacoma Museum of Glass. Festival commissions include: Northwest New Works Festival (SEA), BOOST Dance Festival (SEA), Pacific Dance Makers (PDX), Seattle International Dance Festival (SEA), Conduit's Dance+ Festival (PDX), Juan De Fuca Festival of the Arts (Port Angeles), SITEWORKS (Tacoma) and the Arts in Nature Festival (SEA).
She is currently a Creative Resident at Velocity Dance Center, in special partnership with 10°. As a performer, she has worked with many notable artists/companies including LeGendre Performance Group, Amy O’Neal, Sandstrommovement, KT Neihoff, and Marlo Martin. Currently, she dances for Michele Miller/Catapult Dance.
She teaches modern technique at Velocity Dance Center and is on faculty at the Northwest School. Passionate about outreach, she is a lead teaching artist for Seattle Youth Dance Collective, Seattle Theater Group and the EMP Museum. Maya is a graduate of Cornish College of the Arts.
Nico Tower is a multidisciplinary artist. Over the past fourteen years, she has released ten albums, and presented her original works in more than 40 cities. Educated in multimedia design, she has worked extensively in graphics and photography. Among her passions are music and outreach. She teaches music both privately and through youth programs, and is a licensed youth soccer coach. She is a student of Chinese martial arts, and enjoys studying dance improvisation.
She currently collaborates with several of Seattle's contemporary dance entities, and has scored works featured in venues such as Velocity Dance Center, Erickson Theatre, Washington Hall, and On the Boards. Other recent collaborations include works with choreographers Michele Miller//Catapult Dance (SEA), Martin Piliponski (ARG), Viko Hernandez (MEX), and Elia Mrak (SEA), Victoria Jacobs (SEA), Maya Soto (SEA), Anna Conner (SEA), Adrianna Hernandez (SEA), Kim Holloway (SEA), Coleman Pester (SEA), Amy Johnson (SEA), Theresa Elliot (SEA), and Alana O. Rogers (SEA).
In addition to commissions, she works in the Dance community as a class accompanist. She Works through various programs such as Dance for Parkinson's, Path with Art, and the Cornish College of the Arts Dance Department. She has accompanied instructors such as Michele Miller, Maya Soto, Corrie Beffort, Mary Margaret Moore, Shannon Stewart, Wade Madsen, Deb Wolfe, Matt Drews, Amy Johnson, Etienne Capko, Dora Oliveras, Shawn Roberts, and Patrick Kilbane.
