Public Speaking and Consulting
Topics: Dance, Diversity/Equity, and Afro-Fusion Techniques, to name a few.
My administrative work is notable for a balance of visionary and deliberate progress in the arenas of curricular, artistic, and systemic diversity, cultural relativity, collaboration and inter-disciplinarity. I have dedicated much of my work as a dance artist to cultivating space for diverse dance forms to exist in pluralist relationship to one another. To date, I have facilitated the development and presentations of such diverse programs as the Dance Improvisation Festival, the B-Series (a series of Hip Hop focused mini-festivals), and the Afro-Latin@ Two-Week Summer Dance Intensive (which explores the rich relationship between Africanist and Latin@ aesthetics) all at the Dance Center at Columbia College. Additionally, I bring together diverse groups of movers to evolve techniques, processes and performances that engage the city of Chicago in new and changing ways. Most recently, I have spoken at Illinois Institute of Technology TEDx event (2012) and Camille A. Brown’s “The Gathering” [of Black Female Choreographers] at the Association of Performing Arts Presenters annual showcase in NYC (2015).
Workshops
Technology of the Circle — an improvisational process ideal for dance and non-dance participants
This workshop explores the circle as a structure for performed improvisation. The circle as it functions in human, social engagements will emerge as a foundational and fluid tool for the crafting of layered, powerful individual and communal performance. We will work with contemporary dance movement, singing, writing, story telling and drawing in an integrated process toward a group performance of improvised sophistication.
Since 2008, I have been invested in Technology of the Circle as a group improvisation and interdisciplinary performance process. Most significantly, I was invited to utilize the process to facilitate a national gathering of African American female choreographers hosted by Camille Brown in New York City for January 2015. Nationally, I have conducted workshops and staged performances using Technology of the Circle at Dancing While Black in New York City (2015); the Chicago Artists Month across the city of Chicago, IL (2015); Velocity Dance’s Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation in Seattle, WA (2015); Links Hall in Chicago, IL (2014); Earthdance Workshop and Retreat Center in Plainfield, MA (2010); and Boulder International Fringe Festival in Boulder, CO (2009).
Technique
Contemporary Dance Technique-– grounded, rhythmic, energy cultivating technique, employing both floor work and upright forms that draws heavily of West African and African Diaspora dances, Chinese and Japanese martial arts, yoga, and Modern dance — not always in that order!