Born: 4 April 1967, United States
Died: NA
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40.
At 30, Rosy Simas was running a Santa Cruz dance studio in the late 1990s that she was forced to close when the dot com boom sent real estate prices in the area soaring. It would be more than a decade before she founded Rosy Simas Danse in Minneapolis in 2012. “There was no way for me to get grants, though people were generous about letting me teach and present my work,” she has said of the years in between, when she worked as an independent artist and choreographer. But with the creation of her own company, she was able to focus on building relationships and sharing the work of other artists. “This is really the first time I’m doing it in a way where we’re directly supporting other artists,” she has said.
Simas is an enrolled member of the Seneca Nation, and her award-winning company supports the creation and presentation of Indigenous contemporary dance. She is also an installation artist and later became artistic director of three thirty one space, a creative studio for Indigenous and other artists of color in Minneapolis. Her major works as a choreographer include: she who lives on the road to war, Weave, Skin(s) and We Wait In The Darkness. 2025’s mind of peace was commissioned by Jacob’s Pillow and the Walker Art Center. Since the 2010s, she has been the recipient of a variety of accolades, and is a Doris Duke Artist, a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Choreography Fellow, Guggenheim Creative Arts Fellow, McKnight Foundation Choreography Fellow and Dance/USA Fellow. Her awards include a Joyce Award from The Joyce Foundation and a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation SHIFT award, as well as multiple awards from NEFA National Dance Project, the MAP Fund, and NPN Creation & Development Funds.