Rosy Simas

Rosy Marie Simas is a Seneca multidisciplinary artist and choreographer in the United States.

Identity Rosy Simas is Haudenosaunee Heron Clan and an enrolled member of the Seneca Nation of Indians.

Career Simas is a dance and transdisciplinary artist and the founder and artistic director of Rosy Simas Danse.

As a choreographer, Simas creates work for stage and installation that unifies movement, time-based media, sound, and sculpture. Since 2012 she has collaborated with French composer François Richomme. Their collaborative works include: We Wait In The Darkness (2014); Skin(s) (2012); Weave (2019); Threshold, a film with photographer Douglas Beasley (2013); and WEave:HERE with Heid E. Erdrich (2019).

In addition, Simas has collaborated with Deborah Jinza Thayer. In 2016, Simas and Jinza Thayer performed together in 14 U.S. cities, and finished their tour with a performance at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.

Exhibitions Solo We Wait In The Darkness, All My Relations Art, Minneapolis, MN. (2014) All My Relations: A Seneca History, Mitchell Museum of the American Indian (2015) Blood Lines: Images of Attachments, Seneca Iroquois National Museum, Salamanca, NY. (2020) she who lives on the road to war, Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN. (2020)

Group SKEW LINES: a residency and installations, Heid E. Erdrich and Rosy Simas. SOO Visual Arts Center, Minneapolis, MN. (2019) Waasamoo-Beshizi (Power-Lines), Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND. (2019) Identity/Identify, Iroquois Indian Museum, Howes Cave, NY. (2020–2021)

Honors and awards Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Artist Fellowship (2013) Twin Cities City Pages Artist of the Year (2014) Sage Award for Film and Set Design (2014) Guggenheim Creative Arts Fellowship for Choreography (2015) McKnight Fellowship for Choreography (2016) First People's Fund Artists in Business Leadership Fellow (2016) Joyce Award from the Joyce Foundation with the Ordway Center of the Performing Arts (2018) Dance/USA Artist Fellowships (2019) Twin Cities City Pages Best Choreographer (2020) McKnight Fellowship for Choreography (2022) United States Artists Artist Fellowship (2022) Doris Duke Artist Award (2023) Forge Project Fellowship (2025) First People’s Fund Performing Arts Fellowship (2025)

Publications

Simas, Rosy and Bodhrán, Ahimsa Timoteo (2019) Sovereign Movements Building and Sustaining Native Dance And Performance Communities A Dialogue, Movement Research Performance Journal, Sovereign Movements: Native Dance and Performance, Issue 52/53, Fall 2019. Simas, Rosy and Morgan, Christopher K. (2019) Longer Scores: Native Choreographic Turns, Curatorial Visions, and Community Engagement

Simas, Rosy (2022) "The body is an archive: Collective memory; ancestral knowledge, culture and history". in Music, Dance and the Archive. Edited by Amanda Harris, Linda Barwick, and Jakelin Troy