ARTIST SPOTLIGHT
Nicole DeMaio (she/her/they)
@nicole_demaio
Nicole DeMaio is a composer, performer, and music educator. She has worked as a substitute musician on a number of Broadway shows including Gypsy, Aladdin, A Strange Loop, Some Like It Hot, and Kimberly Akimbo. As a woodwind doubler, she plays flutes, clarinets, saxophones, bassoon, and oboe. Nicole is a member of The Broadway Sinfonietta, and is the director of Black Sheep Contemporary Ensemble. As a composer, she has been commissioned by groups including Yale School of Music and Infrasound. Her composition “Solo for Bassoon Alone” was part of the repertoire for the 2021 Meg Quigley Bassoon Competition. She currently teaches woodwinds at Kent Place School.
Ayumi Ishito (she/her)
@ayumimimi33
Ayumi Ishito was born and raised in Ishikawa, Japan. At the age of 19, she began playing tenor saxophone in a college big band at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto.
In 2007, Ayumi received a scholarship to attend Berkee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. She spent three years there studying performance and composition.
After graduating from Berklee, Ayumi moved to New York in 2010. Ayumi has been playing with many different groups. One of her recent projects Open Question received 4 stars review in DownBeat magazine in 2022. Also her another project The Spacemen was selected for the Best Jazz of 2021 in Bandcamp.
Gaby "Gabalanche" Machuca (she/they)
@gabalanche
Gaby Machuca is a first-generation Ecuadorian and a born-and-raised New Yorker with over a decade of experience in boxing, martial arts, and fitness. After building STRIKE at Neo U Fitness, IMPACT at TMPL, and The Ring Project at Equinox; opening three Rumble studios as a founding trainer in California; and honing her expertise at gyms across the five boroughs, Gaby is taking everything she’s learned and putting it into HAVEN Boxing. Central to everything she’s done and everywhere she’s worked, Gaby has kept a laser focus on decolonizing fitness and breaking down toxic gym culture to create space for all people to connect with their bodies. Gaby uses the art of boxing as a way for clients to connect to their higher selves, embody the fighter within, and fight back against the oppressive society we live in today. She approaches each client with an open heart, an ear to listen, and a world of support. Get ready for the stage mom you never had — but always needed!
Charlotte Munn-Wood (she/her)
@tt_nn_oo
An outspoken proponent of experimental sounds and expression, violinist Charlotte Munn-Wood is an improviser, chamber musician, and sought-after educator in New York City and beyond. Her music and visual art explore the textures and timbres of the natural world and of inner psychological environments. Munn-Wood is a founding member of Du.0 (du-point-oh), a two-violin ensemble specializing in experimental contemporary and noise-based improvised music, formed with Aimée Niemann in 2015. The duo has forged a path of innovative, inclusive programming in non-traditional venues. The ensemble released its debut studio album, Thoughts From the Future, in 2024. Munn-Wood is a founding member and Executive Director of the Telos Consort, a group of creatives seeking to reimagine the concert experience through the performance of new and newer works by living composers.
Munn-Wood is a graduate of the Contemporary Performance Program at the Manhattan School of Music where she studied with Dr. Curtis Macomber, and of Western Michigan University as a student of Renata Knific. Away from the violin, she is an avid runner, rock climber, and prolific fiber artist.
https://www.charlotte-munn-wood.com/
AJ Santillan (she/her)
@ajlovestacos
Aeryn Jade Santillan (she/her) is a composer, guitarist, and bassist whose work is heavily influenced by the DIY punk scene and actively aims to blur the lines between band/ensemble and song/composition. Aeryn Jade Santillan (she/her) is a composer, guitarist, and bassist whose work is heavily influenced by the DIY punk scene and actively aims to blur the lines between band/ensemble and song/composition. When she’s not writing music and touring with her bands, she works as an Adjunct Professor at NYU. She enjoys skateboarding, RPGs, video games, and vegan junk food. She lives in Ridgewood, NYC with her partner and cat.
Kiara Santos (she/her)
Kiara is a born and raised New Yorker of Ecuadorian and Puerto Rican descent. Kiara is a passionate educator who’s spent the past 12 years teaching students from all walks of life. Originally from East Harlem, growing up Kiara’s family always emphasized the importance of education and community as a means to see and understand the world. Kiara has deep passion for education, community wellness and enrichment, which she graciously brings here to HAVEN, too. At HAVEN, Kiara hopes to serve as an anchor for all members to lean on, and as a friendly face always ready to support.
Haven Boxing
@havenboxing
Gabriela Machuca (they/them)
Bushwick-based boxing gym Haven Boxing is a woman, queer, and POC-owned space that focuses on radical inclusivity within the fitness scene. It has been founded by Gabriela Machuca (they/them) and Andrea Martinez (she/her) who are the ones who create, nourish, and uphold the culture at Haven. We use functional training and boxing to build not only technique and power but also confidence and resilience for everyday life. Our goal is to push back against an all-too-often exclusionary and oppressive fitness industry by fostering this simple thought: One can be healthy at any size, skillful at any level, and strong in any and every form. From boxing classes, functional tips, to even emotional support- they focus on creating a safe environment for *anyone* who has been othered or marginalized to thrive.
Andrea Martinez (she/her)
Caitlin Cawley (she/her)
@caitlincawleymusic
Caitlin Cawley is a percussionist, improviser, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. She’s interested in the ability of live performance to engender empathy and facilitate authentic contact between human beings. She has played, sung, danced, and yelled in concert halls, garages, bars, living rooms, kitchens, streets, forests, art galleries and rooftops – using megaphones, triangles, gongs, drums, balloons, lamps, speaker drivers, vibraphones, EMT pipes, plastic buckets, tin cans, wine glasses, styrofoam, power tools, and paper airplanes – with newts, birds, elephants, Talujon, Mantra Percussion, Talea Ensemble, Heartbeat Opera, Chamberqueer, Cantata Profana, The Walter Thompson Orchestra, Slavic Soul Party!, Novus NY, Brass Queens, Gamelan Galak Tika, Brian Adler’s Human Time Machine, Danse Theatre Surreality, Bash The Trash, I Dewa Ketut Alit, Paul Pinto, Richard Kim, Sarah Chien and MYLAR. She studied with David Cossin, Jeff Milarsky, John Ferrari, Tim Genis, and Sam Solomon.
Kyra Hauck (she/her)
@kyra_hauck
Paris Artistic Director Kyra Hauck is a multi-disciplinary choreographer, dancer, and teacher, as well as a co-founder/co-director (with Lauren Hlubny) of a transcontinental performing ensemble Danse Theatre Surreality, active in New York and Paris, France, where Kyra has been living and creating since 20217.,Her work is dynamic, challenging, and feminist. She has choreographed and performed in works in Paris, Lille, New York, Chicago, and Detroit. Kyra has trained in styles ranging from classical ballet to contemporary and modern dance to contact improvisation with master teachers throughout the United States and Europe. A holistic healer and experienced teaching artist, she brings this rich blending of movement styles, a deep understanding of the body in motion, and an eye for energy to her work. Her latest work, Il faut leur dire (2024) was performed in venues around Paris, including Espace Canopy, a gallery where she is an artist in residence, and an official Paris Olympics Games Fanzone.
Lauren Hlubny (she/her)
@laurenhlubny
NYC Artistic Director Lauren Hlubny is a Brooklyn-based maker of dance theatre and co-founder/co-director (with Kyra Hauck) of a transcontinental performing ensemble Danse Theatre Surreality, active in New York and Paris, France. Hlubny’s professional directorial debut was at the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, FL— an original 40-minute surrealist dance-theatre work titled DALI. Since then, she has created and mounted experimental works for communities in San Francisco, New York City, Seattle, Boston, Birmingham, Portland (ME), Paris, and Florence. Hlubny’s theatre training is in Stanislavski, Grotowski, and Meyerhold, with a distinct focus on the intersection of movement and storytelling. Hlubny has an extended background in classical ballet, intimacy direction, art history, and anthropological research. Her latest works with Danse Theatre Surreality include Play Like A Girl (2022), a collaboration with Talujon Percussion Ensemble featuring music by Eve Beglarian, and Thoughts & Prayers (2019), a call to action for social justice, which premiered at TADA! Youth Theatre.
Kate Barry (she/her)
@kate.k.barry.
Kate Barry is an Ithaca College grad with a passion for live events. With a theatrical stage management background, she is thrilled to be combining her love for events and theatre with this unique movement and music piece. New to New York City, Kate has spent the past 4 months working in various industries such as corporate events, new musicals, and New York Fashion Week.