Keynote Speaker: Suzanne Ryanstrati: Suzanne Ryanstrati (MFA Dance) is a professional dance artist, working as a choreographer for professional dance companies and as a faculty member of the Kansas City Ballet School and Community Partnerships. Her choreography has been performed in Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Texas, Washington, Virginia, and internationally in England (2012 & 2015), France (2015, 2019), Germany (2016, 2019), and Ireland (2016). Future plans include research and creative work in Nairobi, Kenya.

She has worked in higher education for 18 years at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, Avila University, Störling Conservatory, Southern Illinois University, University of Iowa (paid position GA), and founded the dance department at Missouri Western State University. 

Ryanstrati experienced the health benefits of dance first-hand following a brain hemorrhage. Her work in the community are rooted in creativity, inspiration and tradition. She has worked with people living with 

Her work extends beyond the classroom, facilitating classes with dancers living with visible and invisible diagnosis’.  This includes dancers with Multiple Sclerosis, Cystic Fibrosis, Polio, Depression, Cystic Fibrosis, Osteoporosis, Anxiety, Low vision/Blind, Spina bifida, Parkinson’s Disease, and conditions as a result of suicide attempt. She founded Dancing Together with Cystic Fibrosis, Brain in Motion for people living with brain injuries or disease, and started the dance class at the National Parkinson’s Foundation. She is a brain injury survivor and used dance in the recovery process.

(Headshot taken by Mike + Julie | Storytellers)

Performance by Theatre in the Park’s Blue Curtain Project: Theatre in the Park presents professional theatre through a new initiative focused on educational theatre for the ever-growing young mind.  This project presents plays and musicals at the performance level you’ve come to know and love with Theatre in the Park, while choosing stories that invite audiences to think AND learn.  Activities and workshops tied to current educational standards surround each performance.

This fall’s tour features performances of “El Otro Oz.” Book by Mando Alvarado and Tommy Newman  Music & Lyrics by Jaime Lozano and Tommy Newman. Presented through special arrangement with TheaterWorksUSA.

Click your heels together tres veces and take a transformative journey with this salsa, merengue, and Mexican folk-infused musical inspired by The Wizard of Oz. As her fifteenth birthday approaches, Dora, a contemporary Latiné teenager, struggles with her family’s ideas about tradition and dreads her impending quinceañera! But, when Dora gets swept away to a strange new land, she learns how to celebrate her unique rhythm and embrace her cultural identity.

Poet Huascar Medina: Huascar Medina is a father, poet, and editor living artfully in Topeka, Kansas. He’s the author of three books of poetry: How to Hang the Moon (Spartan Press, 2017), Un Mango Grows in Kansas (Spartan Press, 2020), and Protest as Love Poem (Meadowlark Press, 2026).  He served as Poet Laureate of Kansas from 2019 to 2022. His work has appeared in the Flint Hills Review, Gasconade Review, Green Mountains Review, KANSAS! Magazine, Latino Book Review, The New York Times, and elsewhere.

Read his poems and profile at poets.org

JCDS Emerging Artists is an art as employment program offered by Johnson County Developmental Supports. The artists are adults who are passionate and driven to create and have and intellectual or developmental disability. Artwork can be purchased at the studio located in side the Johnson County Arts & Heritage Center: Monday-Friday from 9am-3pm, or through the online store.

Follow Emerging Artists on social media @JCDSEmergingArtists for the latest news and creations!