Rosy Simas

Rosy Simas

Rosy Simas is an enrolled member of the Seneca Nation. A Doris Duke Artist in the dance category, Simas is an artist whose brilliant transdisciplinary creations appear in galleries and on stages.

Her work embodies the concept of movement —moving people, moving image and moving objects—and interweaves themes of personal and collective identity, family, sovereignty and healing.

Simas has been honored as a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Choreography Fellow, Guggenheim Creative Arts Fellow, McKnight Foundation Choreography Fellow, Dance/USA Fellow and a United States Artists Fellow. Her other accolades include the Joyce Award from the Joyce Foundation, a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation SHIFT award, as well as multiple awards from New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, the MAP Fund and National Performance Network.

Simas’ work draws upon the many generations of her family who were and are of Seneca, Stockbridge-Munsee, Oneida, Mohawk, Cayuga, Onondaga and European descent. Her extensive knowledge of her family and her lineage informs her own relationship to culture and history, which is in turn expressed and materialized through her creative practice.

Simas’ celebrated dance works include “Weave,” “Skin(s),” and “We Wait in The Darkness,” all of which have toured throughout Turtle Island. Her installations have been exhibited at institutions including the Seneca Iroquois National Museum, Colorado College, All My Relations Arts and Soo Visual Art Center. Her latest work, “she who lives on the road to war,” premiered in September 2022 and is currently touring through 2025.

Simas is also the artistic director of Rosy Simas Danse and three thirty one space, a creative studio for Native, Black, Indigenous and artists of color in Mni Sota Makoce.