Founded in 2015 by Anya & Mitsuko Clarke-Verdery, MICHIYAYA Dance is a queer-led dance company that pushes boundaries and centers the divine feminine by creating space for multidisciplinary performances and programming. Anya and Mitsuko created MICHIYAYA as a way to combine their voices—Anya, a Black queer choreographer/dance artist from Brooklyn, and Mitsuko, a white & Japanese queer visual/performance artist from Manhattan. Their performance work has spread to venues such as Yale University, Brooklyn Museum, Andy Warhol Museum, Gelsey Kirkland Theater, among others. They were selected as 2021 guest resident artists at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and 2019 guest resident artists at Carnegie Mellon University. MICHIYAYA has been featured in Art Forum, Thinx, Vice i-D, and more. Their educational and community initiatives have reached the Alonzo King LINES Ballet Training Program, Gibney, Center for Anti-Violence Education, among others. MICHIYAYA’s vision has been supported by Microsoft, CVS Health, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and more.