Vice Versa Collective
An Artist Collective for interdisciplinary
improvisers, performers, and dreamers
Our Mission
Vice Versa creates engaging and mesmerizing interdisciplinary collaborations, where performers from various artistic mediums exchange ideas, roles, and expressive elements equally over time. With a philosophy of "as for one, so for the other," Vice Versa is a platform for artists seeking equal exchange in process, product, and practice.
EVENTS
New York City
7pm May 25th
Green Space
37-24 24th Street, Suite 211
Long Island City, New York
11101
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Kansas City
7pm June 13: Faculty Performance
7 pm June 14: Participant Open-Mic
2pm June 15: Participant Showcase
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Just Off Broadway Theatre
3051 Central in Penn Valley Park
Kansas City, Missouri
64141
The Collective
Who We Are
Vice Versa brings together world-class artists of every medium imaginable to create unique and dynamic performances that are experienced in a specifc instance. A self-governing cooperative, Vice Versa is made up of Partner and Associate artists, leading to different combinations of artists on every project.
Brendan Sweeney
Partner
Brendan Sweeney (he/him) is an award-winning educator, arts technologist, and internationally-performed composer whose music and research explores the intersection of modern technology and human expression. His work often employs acoustic rendering of electronic techniques, quotation, collage, and humor to explore idiosyncrasies of music throughout human history, as well as quirks unique to the sonic arts and their exhibition. Sweeney’s works have had performances across 3 continents, with works featured on programs for the the 2025 Chamber Music America National Conference, the 2025 International Clarinet Association Annual Conference, the 2024 North American Brass Band Association Championships, the 2024 Cortona Sessions for New Music, the 2023 Penn State International New Music Conference and Symposium, the Contemporary Art Music Project annual festival (CAMPGround 2022), as well as festivals and performances in France, Italy, Austria, and Brazil. He regularly collaborates with world-class new music chamber ensembles and is currently composer-in-residence with Tampa Brass Band through 2026, and teaches applied Music Composition and Technology at George Mason University.
Daniel Townsend
Partner
Dan Townsend (he/him) (PhD) is a pianist, composer, and improviser currently based in New York City. Dan’s love of musical expression pours effortlessly into students and audiences alike. An adept teacher in both private and classroom settings, Dan’s fresh approach to personal musicianship revolves around improvisation and mastery of various fundamental musical theories. Dan’s primary instrument is piano, but his holistic teaching style reaches into every instrument imaginable.
Elena Collins
Partner
Elena Collins (she/her) is a clarinetist and composer based in Kansas City, Missouri. She has attended multiple festivals including Mostly Modern, Wintergreen LEAD co-op, Madeline Island Chamber festival, Cortona Sessions for New Music, and Bang on a Can summer festival. Elena was the co-founder and former clarinetist of Full Gremlin quartet, a KC-based new music ensemble that focused on commissioning new music for their unique instrumentation. Moreover, she founded Art Walk, an interdisciplinary arts festival on DePauw's University's campus, that showcases student and community art. On top of playing clarinet, she composes music and collaborates frequently with other composers and performers alike. Her compositions focus on themes of literature, nature, family, and loss: her works are often interdisciplinary, tying multiple fields and concepts together, and use both acoustic and fixed media processes.
Valerie Green
Associate
Valerie Green (she/her) has been an active choreographer, dancer, healer, and teacher in the New York City dance community since 1995. She created her own company, Dance Entropy, in 1998, and established a permanent company home, Green Space, in 2005. Green Space serves the dance community by providing an affordable and welcoming environment for rehearsals, classes, and performances. To date, Ms. Green has created 44 dances and 11 evening-length works, which have been showcased extensively throughout NYC and toured across various venues in the US. Internationally, she has taught and performed in numerous countries across Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa.
Sarah Albee
Associate
Sarah Albee is a dancer and choreographer based in New York City, whose work seeks to expand the idea of what dance can be for the individual. With training in contemporary, modern, ballet, pointe, and a multitude of other dance styles, she brings a dynamic, expressive quality to her movement, using dance as a way to explore and express her own identity. Dance is a daily practice that informs who she is, both artistically and personally.
Her choreographic work blends emotional storytelling with innovative movement and has been presented at venues such as the Harn Museum of Art and the American College Dance Association. Sarah strives to create work that celebrates individuality and invites audiences into an intimate exploration of connection and transformation. She holds a Dance in Medicine certificate, underscoring her belief in the profound connection between dance and holistic well-being.
Nora Burkitt
Associate
Nora Burkitt-Davis is the Children’s Division & Adaptive Dance Coordinator at the Kansas City Ballet School. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Conservatory of Music and Dance at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Under her direction as the Adaptive Dance Coordinator, the program has doubled in size and is now available at both Kansas City Ballet campuses for children and adults. Nora dances professionally in Kansas City with groups such as KC Contemporary Dance, BLEEPBLOOP, Extemporaneous Music and Arts Society, and Westport Center for the Arts and freelances with local choreographers such as Suzanne Ryan-Strati. Nora is passionate that every body can dance and making an accessible dance environment!
Olivia Emert
Associate
Olivia Emert (she/her) is an independent choreographer based out of Kansas City, Missouri. Emert graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Conservatory of University Missouri Kansas City. In Spring of 2024, Emert completed her third season with Geometry Dance Company, an Los Angeles based contemporary and movement research company directed by Mackenzie Martin. With the company, she was featured in works such as “Naeem” and “Sit Me Back Down.” Emert’s choreographic work focuses on emotional awareness, tactile partnerwork, and building tangible environments. Her choreography has been commissioned by Kansas City Ballet, Creative Intersections with Owen Cox Dance Group, Art in the Loop, KCPublic Theater, Messenger Coffee Company, City in Motion, University of Missouri Kansas City, NoDivide, and Charlotte Street Foundation. Notably, Emert was jury-selected as featured artist with the Making Moves series, which funded and supported her evening length work, WOMB.DIRT.SKY. As a recipient of Charlotte Street’s two year residency program, Emert has produced her own evening length and short works, taught widely through the community, and started her own dance company, CLOUDS. Her evening length work, VESSEL was presented in partnership with KCTherapy, Research Psychiatric Center, PsychPros Kansas City, Ed Care, and Fractured Atlas. In addition, Emert has founded, FLOW, her own open movement classes highlighting somatic awareness, released based floorwork, and contemporary phrase work. Olivia seeks to create and hold space for individuals to deepen their own artistry and find themselves in movement.
Sarena Johnson
Associate
Sarena Johnson, is an Oil Painter with a concentration in figure painting. She graduated from The University of the Arts with her BFA in 2018. She received her MFA from The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 2020. Sarena has shown in gallery's across the country and internationally including Washington state, Philadelphia and New Jersey, and Portugal. She taught as a professor of drawing and painting in the Fine Arts program at The University of the Arts. She was a Resident Artist at Gigi Peter's Gallery in Portugal. As an artist seeks to empower the feminine, exercise authenticity and absolute freedom
Anne Yoncha
Associate
Anne Yoncha (US) is currently Assistant Professor of Art + Painting Area Coordinator at Metropolitan State University Denver. She was born and raised in Wilmington, Delaware. After earning her MFA at the University of Montana in 2019, she was awarded a Fulbright fellowship at the Natural Resources Institute Finland, working with restorationists to make collaborative art-science work about former peat extraction sites outside Oulu. Her practice combines digital sensing technology, such as bio-data sonification, and analog, traditional processes including painting with ink she makes from locally-sourced plant matter. Her ongoing research with the HAB (High Altitude Bioprospecting) working group began in Fall 2019 at Field_Notes, a residency of Finland’s Bio Art Society at Kilpisjärvi Biological Station in subarctic Lapland, where she worked with artists, biologists, and programmers to detect high-altitude microbes using a heli-kite. Outside the studio she can often be found doing another kind of environmental “research” via bicycle.
Bri Barton
Associate
Bri Barton is an artist, witch, plant grower, and organizer. Her work elevates and embodies racial and environmental justice, anti-imperial history, earth worship and defiant celebrations of life. Bri graduated valedictorian from Moore College of Art in 2011, where she double majored in Fine Art and Curatorial Studies. She uses paint, ink, shadows and light to create art that is collaborative, participatory, and informative. Bri is a founding member of the multi-disciplinary painting troupe, ROMPUS. She is also a member of Soil Generation, a black-led coalition of Philadelphia organizers and individuals who support community managed green spaces, gardens and farms, through advocacy, grassroots organizing, and education.