Arien Wilkerson

Arien Wilkerson is a choreographer, movement, video, and installation artist based in Hartford, CT. He has trained with Jolet Creary, and has been a student at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, The Artists Collective, Earl Mosley Institute of the Arts, and the Batsheva Dance Company’s “Gaga Intensive” in Tel Aviv, Israel.In 2008, he traveled to Cape Verde, Africa to participate in CulturArte, a youth arts residency program. There, he studied with Deborah Goffe (Artistic Director of Scapegoat Garden) and Mano Preto (Artistic Director of Raiz di Polon). As a high school senior in 2009, David Dorfman and Nicole Stanton selected Arien’s work for inclusion in Wesleyan University’s Dance Masters programming, recognizing his potential as a groundbreaking choreographer in New England. 

In his role as founder and Artistic Director of TNMOT AZTRO, Arien prodcued ground-breaking performance works that have shown at art galleries, institutions and incubator spaces in Connecticut such as The Historic Town and County Club of Hartford, The Wadsworth Atheneum, University of Saint Joseph, Scapegoat Garden Center for Contemporary Dance, Ted Hershey Dance Marathon, New Britain Museum of Art, Connecticut Dance Alliance, The CT Dance Awards, Hartbeat Ensemble, Housatonic Community College Theater Arts, Amistad Center for Art & Culture, as well as Philadelphia-based venues Little Berlin, HighTide Gallery, and Vox Populi.

Wilkerson was listed as Take magazine’s 2017 “Artist to Watch” with a six page feature in the magazines Oct/Nov 2017 issue. In 2017 Wilkerson was also awarded the “Spirit of Juneteenth” Emerging Choreographer award given by The Amistad Center for Art and Culture Inside of The Wadsworth Atheneum. Most recently, he was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts “Big Read” Grant and was selected as NEFA’S 2018 Rebecca Blunk Fund Awardee.