Kayla Farrish, a Black American director merging dance-theater, filmmaking, narrative, and sound score, is making her HGO debut as choreographer for Aida. She has received commissions from Limon Dance Company, Whim W’him, Ririe Woodbury, Armstrong Now!, Danspace, Little Island, Harlem Stage, American Dance Festival, and beyond. She creates live works, films, site-specific/immersive pieces, and collaborations with musicians such as Esperanza Spalding, Trixie Whitley, Moor Mother, and Melanie Charles. Presenting spaces include Chelsea Factory, Danspace, Lincoln Center, Park Avenue Armory, Symphony Space, National Sawdust, and Joyce Theater. She has received support from The Pocantico Center, The Watermill Center, Works & Process, Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective, Baryshnikov Arts, La Mama Theater, and others. She received the Sundance Uprise Grant for Emerging BIPOC Directors, Bessie Awards for December 8th and New York Live Arts’s Motherboard Suite, and New York Times Top 2021 Dance Performances—Roster and Breakout Star. She is a recipient of the 2022 Harkness Promise Award. She premiered reimagined archival work for Limon at Joyce Theater in 2024. She toured Put Away the Fire, dear supported by New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project. She received Watermill Center’s Baroness Nina Von Maltzahn Fellowship and the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation Choreographer Award (2023).  She is a 2025 City University of New York Dance Initiative Artist, New York Foundation for the Arts/ New York State Council on the Arts Choreography Fellow, 2026 New York Support for Artists Grantee, and a Danse Mirage Foundation Choreography commissioned artist.