Bios

Co-Founding Directors:

PAZ TANJUAQUIO has been active in New York City since 1990 as a choreographer, performer, visual artist, curator, educator, and an 8-time marathon runner. Paz is Co-Founding Director of TOPAZ ARTS, Inc. since 2000. Her work has been presented by Pioneers Go East, LaMaMa Moves! Dance Festival, 92Y Harkness Dance Center, Fisher Landau Center for Art, Danspace Project, Norte Maar’s Dance at Socrates, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Performance Space New York (formerly PS122), Aaron Davis Hall, Symphony Space, Dixon Place, Thelma Hill Performing Arts, Yangtze Repertory, among others; nationally, at Operation Unite in Hudson NY, San Diego Trolley Dance, American Dance Festival Int’l Screen Dance, Philadelphia Fringe Festival; and internationally at Le Commun, Bâtiment d’Art Contemporain in Geneva, Switzerland, and residencies in Cambodia, Japan, Korea and her birthplace, the Philippines. Awards for her choreography include City Artist Corp Grant, National Endowment for the Arts, Dance/NYC’s Dance Advancement Fund, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, New York Foundation for the Arts BUILD Award, Queens Council on the Arts, and the Suitcase Fund where she participated in the Mekong Project’s Cambodia Creative Residency and artistic research travel in Vietnam. She has been an artist-in-residence at Kaatsbaan in Tivoli, NY, Akiyoshidai International Art Village in Japan, The Yard at Martha’s Vineyard, Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida, and Movement Research in NYC. As a dancer, she has performed with Molissa Fenley and Dancers, and Marlies Yearby’s Movin’ Spirits Dance Theater from 1991-96, and has performed for  Nicky Paraiso, Dean Moss, Carl Hancock Rux, Clarinda Mac Low, Maureen Fleming, among others. She currently teaches Adjunct at The New School/College of Performing Arts, and at NYU Tisch School of the Arts/ Experimental Theater Wing; from 2018-2020 full-time at SUNY/Nassau Community College; and as guest artist at CUNY/Queens College, Sacramento State University, Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, and Vargas Museum at Univ. of the Philippines. She received her MFA in Dance from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and her BA in Visual Arts from University of California, San Diego. A member of NYS DanceForce since 2009 and formerly Chair of the Bessie Awards Steering Committee, Paz continues to create, support, promote dance as an artform.

 View the projects of TOPAZ ARTS Dance Productions – click here >

TODD B. RICHMOND is a NYC-based artist whose creative practice includes painting, design, film, and sound, encompassing an ongoing conversation across mediums, drawing inspiration from nature, form, movement, and architecture. Richmond received his MFA in Fine Arts at Otis College of Art & Design, and California Institute of the Arts/CalArts MFA Graduate Program of Art & Technology; BA from City College of New York in Music & Audio Technology with Film Studies, where he was awarded The ASCAP Foundation Louis Dreyfus Warner/Chappell City College Scholarship honoring George and Ira Gershwin. As a visual artist, he was assistant to renowned artist Richard Artschwager from 1990-95 creating major works for museums and galleries worldwide. Richmond’s large-scale paintings and installations have been shown in New York City and Los Angeles including solo exhibitions at TOPAZ ARTS, NY; solo show “Coast/Coast” at 733 Third Avenue in NYC, Jan-Jun 2022. Group shows include at Private Public Gallery in Hudson, NY; collaboration artist Manuel Ocampo at Tyler Rollins Fine Art, NY; Fountain Art Fair at the Armory; P.E.S. Limited in Midtown Manhattan. In CA, solo exhibition at Bolsky Gallery; group shows at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery; Otis Open Studios; CalArts Grad Show, among others. Richmond has designed sets, sculptures, and music for choreographers including Paz Tanjuaquio, Molissa Fenley, among many others. His films have been selected for the 2020 Fifth Wall Fest, American Dance Festival’s International Screendance Festival, Queens Museum, and Dance on Camera Festival at the Donnell Media Center, where his dance films are in the permanent archives at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. He has received awards from the 2021 City Artist Corp Grant; National Endowment for the Arts, Meet The Composer Commissioning/USA, Queens Council on the Arts, among others. Richmond is Co-Founding Director of TOPAZ ARTS, Inc. – a nonprofit arts organization, which he founded with Paz Tanjuaquio in 2000, establishing a creative development center for contemporary performance and visual arts.

  View a selection of works by Todd B. Richmond – click here >