I (they/them) am a spiritual being with roots in the Northeast and Southeast regions of the United States. A non-binary trans person creating as process, processing while creating, creating to express my interior world, and process this exterior one. I am an interdisciplinary artist, movement facilitator, memory worker, and embodied storyteller working in dance, sound, video, and ethnography. I am a highly sensitive person, feeler, and creator who is neurodivergent, and navigating chronic pain and illness. My layered corporeality shapes the lens through which I investigate, create, and express my experiences. I am a glitched body (as coined by Legacy Russell) navigating multiple realities, living underneath and within systems that seek to oppress and shape my body and self. As a navigator, I offer reflections on society, time, and place in its present. My practice takes shape through the use of performance, installation, improvisational and somatic techniques, collaboration, and writing. My work allows for me to make sense of the present by examining it alongside the past in the hopes of creating otherwise possibilities in our nearest future, the present.
Photo by Jordan Plain
Inside of this journey I am concerned with the body as an archive, spatial and temporal orientation, and care.
to take seriously the body as an archive is to understand that our experiences, memories, and traumas are with us always.
My work is rooted in valuing first person narratives and experience as knowledge, Black Feminist Theory, storytelling and reflection. These components of my practice aide in my orienting, dreaming and articulation. Creative space making, collaboration, and facilitation are parts of my practice that allow for me to invite others into my investigation of the body as an archive.
care as an ethic and intentional embodied practice guiding us closer to a love ethic (bell hooks).
I consistently pursue an ethic of care in an effort to create safe spaces, foster community accountability and reduce violence in embodied/somatic and dance/movement work. I imagine what an ethic of care can bring to our history/story sharing, teaching, space making, interactions and relationship building. I understand that to be in relationship is to know that harm will be caused, feelings will be hurt, and conflict will arise. However, violence is neither imperative nor is it synonymous with or to various degrees of hurt or harm.
spatial and temporal orientation; examining the distance between past, present, and future, existing somewhere inside of the overlap.
As a navigator and deep feeler, I often find myself struggling to orient in this liminal space we call the present. My choreographic practice offers space to explore the liminality of the present through deep listening, storytelling, ethnography, and imagining.
current investigations
Themes that myself and my work are currently living inside of are orienting in the present, care as embodied practice, and the prefix “re” in rituals of becoming.
TP Photography
AB Contemporary Dance’s Quare Dance
AF Project’s Nascent
Photo: love onwa photography
Jasmine Powell’s The Light
Lela Aisha Jones | FlyGround’s Native Portals Photo: Aidan UN
I am originally from Mount Vernon, NY, on land that was stewarded by the Wappinger, Munsee Lenape, and Schaghticoke Nations. My love of dance was first nurtured at home to the sounds of RnB, Jazz, and WBGO’s Rhythm Revue. I began creating performances at family gatherings, and was a praise dancer at my home church, Mother A.M.E. Zion (Harlem, NY). My formal training started at The Dance Theatre of Harlem School, under the direction of Arthur Mitchell and Endalyn Taylor. I also trained at Earl Mosley Institute of Arts, Ouagadougou dance intensive in Burkina Faso, and received my BFA in Dance from The University of the Arts, Philadelphia (2015).
From 2015-2020 I showcased work throughout Philadelphia, New York, New Jersey, and Detroit, including The Outlet Dance Project (2016), KYLD 31st Inhale (2017), Detroit Dance City Festival (2018), APAP at Jazz at Lincoln Center (2019), and UNDER EXPOSED at Dixon Place (2020). I have performed with companies Lela Aisha Jones | FlyGround, Putty Dance Project, Dancespora, KCBC, and Jo-Me’ Dance, and worked with choreographers Michael Mao, Jasmine Powell, Raphael Xavier, and Joanna Kotze. My writing has been featured in works by iKada Dance, and Drye Marinaro Dance Company. I am a past artist in residence with The Wassaic Project , and Activation Residency.
I completed my MFA in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis and Master's Certificate in African and African American Studies from Duke University (2022). I have served as a Project Manager for the Black Artist Space to Create Residency under New Dance Alliance, worked on production for various artists including Alyah Baker’s Quare Dance, and was the 2024 Collegium for African Diaspora Dance (CADD) Conference Manager. As an educator, I have taught with Out-of-School Time, St. Malachy IMS, Harlem Children’s Zone, Duke University, Elon University, and Empower Dance Studio.
Most recently, I was awarded the 2021-2022 Kenan Institute of Ethics Graduate Arts Fellowship in Social Choreography and Performance, presented work in the 2023-2024 North Carolina Dance Festival, and was a recipient of the 2023-2024 Durham Arts Council Artist Support Grant.
I am currently dancing with Souloworks/Andrea E. Woods and Dancers, Brownbody, and AB Contemporary Dance.
I have immense gratitude for the dance lineages, instructors, professors, colleagues, collaborators, friends, family, and ancestors who have continued to encourage and support me. Without this village I would be not here.
I am currently based in Durham, NC on land that was stewarded by the Shakori, Lumbee, Cheraw, Tuscarora, Catawba, and Occaneechi band of Saponi Nations.