UCI Arts Awards the 2025–26 Research & Innovation Grants

Creative Research in the Arts

Now in its fifth year, the UC Irvine Claire Trevor School of the Arts (UCI Arts) Department of Research and Innovation continues to prioritize projects that feature cutting-edge research and interdisciplinary collaborations with potential for external recognition and support. The Research and Innovation Advisory Committee (RI Committee) reviewed a competitive pool of 38 research proposals from UCI Arts faculty and graduate students requesting a total of $166,000 for the 2025–26 academic year. 15 projects have been awarded, with $40,000 distributed to fund an array of research, performances and exhibitions. These initiatives underscore UCI Arts' commitment to uplifting scholarly research and creativity at UC Irvine.

Image: Cyrian Reed.

Cyrian Reed, Assistant Professor, Dance ($8,000 Faculty Art Prize): Reed Me

Cyrian Reed is an Assistant Professor of Dance at UC Irvine. She holds a B.A. in Dance/Performance from California State University, Long Beach, and a Master of Arts in Education/Adult Education and Training from the University of Phoenix. With a career spanning concert dance, commercial choreography, and screen performance, Reed has collaborated with artists including Beyóncé, David Foster, Gnarls Barkley, CeeLo Green, and KC & The Sunshine Band, and has created work for Nike, Adidas, Skechers, and Häagen-Dazs. She is the choreographer and producer of DoggyLand, which earned a 2024 Telly Award for Best Online Animation Series and a 2024 NAACP Image Award. 

Reed Me is a digital platform that uses body mapping, structured scoring and studio-informed feedback to help dancers develop movement skills through the camera lens, making dance education more accessible beyond the traditional studio setting.

Image: Composer Robert Owens (1925-2017), courtesy of The New York Times. Photo by Sandor Domonkos.

Darryl Taylor, Professor, Music ($4,000 Faculty Art Prize): Robert Owens Centennial Year

Darryl Taylor is a countertenor whose career has centered on expanding the recorded and performed repertoire of African American art song, spirituals and gospel-influenced works, and music by women composers. His recordings — among them Dreamer: A Portrait of Langston Hughes (Naxos American Classics), Fields of Wonder: Songs and Spirituals of Robert Owens (Albany), How Sweet the Sound: A Charm of Spirituals (Albany) and Dear Friends & Gentle Hearts: African American Art Song Essentials — have established him as one of the most extensively recorded classical singers in this repertoire. He has also championed the work of women composers through recordings and premieres of major cycles by Juliana Hall, Deon Nielsen Price, Persis Vehar, Lori Laitman and Zenobia Powell Perry, and produced the first complete recording of the solo cantatas of Baroque composer Rosanna Scalfi Marcello (Naxos). As founder and president of the African American Art Song Alliance, Taylor has organized four international conferences and established the Willis Patterson Research Award, George Shirley Performance Award, and H. Leslie Adams Robert Owens Composition Prize. 

Robert Owens Centennial Year commemorates the centennial of composer Robert Owens (1925–2017) through performances and programming across the country. Taylor collaborated extensively with Owens during his lifetime and has long championed his work as a defining voice in African American art song.

Image: Irene Messoloras. Photo by Jeanine Hill.

Irene Messoloras, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Music ($4,000 Faculty Art Prize): Unheard Voices​, a Meridian Album Recording

Irene Messoloras, Ph.D., serves as director of choral Activities at UC Irvine, where she conducts the UCI Chamber Singers and UCI Concert Choir and teaches conducting. Before joining UC Irvine, she held choral director positions at the University of La Verne, Northwestern Oklahoma State University and Gonzaga University. Her collegiate ensembles have completed more than 20 international tours and have performed at state and national NAfME conferences. Messoloras holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in choral conducting from UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music.

Unheard Voices, a new album recorded by Meridian, amplifies choral works by underrepresented composers, centering women and composers of color to broaden representation within the choral canon.

2025–26 Research & Innovation Grant Recipients:

Andrew Borba, Professor and Head of Acting, Drama: Continuity
In this production of Bess Wohl's play Continuity, which depicts a film crew struggling to shoot a climate change movie on a New Mexico soundstage. The production will utilize self-powered machinery to achieve a zero-carbon footprint.

Deborah Oliver, Associate Professor, Art: The Art of Performance and High Performance Magazine
A three-day program presented as part of The Art of Performance at UC Irvine that activates the critical writing of performance art editor Jacki Apple as a curatorial framework, bridging the legacy of the foundational journal High Performance (1978–1997) with contemporary Los Angeles performance practice through artist talks, student workshops, and live performance.

Yee Eun Nam, Assistant Professor, Drama: The King’s Language: New Musical
An original musical that merges pansori vocal tradition with rock composition and digital visual design to tell the story of King Sejong’s creation of Hangul, developing a new sonic and theatrical vocabulary that reshapes both Korean and Western performance forms.

Tara Rodman, Associate Professor, Drama: The Panpan Girl
A research project exploring the intersections of sex work, dance, theatrical entertainment, and female entrepreneurship during the post-WWII Allied Occupation of Japan, utilizing generative AI to support large-scale archival research.

Janeth Aparicio Vazquez, M.F.A., Art: Estamos Buscando La Libertad 1972/2025 (working title)
An interdisciplinary project tracing a historical and conceptual throughline between generations of indigenous organizing efforts across the American continent.

Beatrice Schleyer, M.F.A., Art: Automata Garage
An immersive installation created by Ash Arder and Beatrice Schleyer in the Experimental Media Performance Lab in the Contemporary Arts Center.

Haihua Chiang, M.F.A., Dance: Embodied Calligraphy: Developing a Multi-media Movement Method
Embodied Calligraphy is an interdisciplinary research project that translates the energetic principles of Chinese calligraphy — lift, press, pause, and release — into modern dance technique and multimedia movement creation. 

Zoe Rose Davidson, M.F.A., Drama: On Ice
A one-woman show drawn from Davidson’s experience as a professional figure skater, exploring the cost of elite athleticism, female identity, and the will to hold on to one’s dreams. On Ice will perform live figure skating on stage.

Kaylee Kollins, M.F.A., Dance: Screen Dance — Bicultural Identity and What It Does To One
A dance film that uses autoethnographic inquiry and embodied movement research to explore the lived experience of biracial identity, treating the body as both subject and method while weaving choreography, voiceover and cinematic form into a hybrid scholarly-artistic work.

Xuanqi Liu, Ph.D., Music, and Tianding He, Ph.D., Music: 心esthesia: A Multidisciplinary Deaf Dream Journey
A collaborative practice-as-research project that explores the potential of inclusive digital performance through trans-sensory artistic processes.

Lisa (Risa) Yoshida, Ph.D., Music: Yoshida’s Ph.D. Dissertation Concert
An autobiographical capstone concert concluding Yoshida’s doctoral degree, featuring original compositions developed through her research in violin bow-arm gestures informed by Japanese narrative art forms.

Brian Shank, Ph.D., Music: Louie the Loon! An Innovative Multi-media Concert for Children
A reimagining of the children’s orchestral concert for the 21st century, drawing on technological resources to create a multi-media experience with improved accessibility and interactivity.

Special Thanks

Associate Dean of Research and Innovation Jesse Colin Jackson and the RI Committee would like to thank Claire Trevor Dean of the Arts, Tiffany López and the Claire Trevor Society for providing major funding for this program.