Administrative Team

  • Nicole Klaymoon is a dance-maker, poet, and visual artist, and the Founder and Artistic Director of Embodiment Project (EP), a Bay Area–based performing arts organization that envisions a world where dance is integrated as a critical dimension of social and cultural revolution. Her work centers underrepresented narratives and is informed by ecofeminism, Kingian nonviolence, restorative practices, and advocacy against childhood sexual abuse. EP has premiered 12 original evening-length multidisciplinary works, including Music of the Actualized Child, Ancient Children, Belly of the Whale, and X RATED PLANET. Klaymoon has also choreographed three dance films produced by the San Francisco Dance Film Festival. Klaymoon has been recognized as a KQED Woman to Watch and has served as a resident choreographer at ODC Theater, Headlands Center for the Arts, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the National Center for Choreography Akron. She co-founded SEEDS, the first hip hop youth dance company at the ODC Dance School, and holds a B.A. from UCLA and an M.F.A. from CIIS.

  • Sydney Bradshaw Lozier is an arts producer, educator, and artist, supporting the creation of community-centered performance through care, organization, and creative partnership. With over a decade of experience in interdisciplinary art-making, Sydney brings a values-driven approach shaped by their background in Performing Arts and Social Justice and graduate training in education from the University of San Francisco.

    Alongside their work with Embodiment Project, Sydney has been a core collaborator with 13th Floor Theater since 2017 and performs with Evie Ladin’s MoToR/Dance. Through their production and performance company, On Beyond, they help build the structures and relationships that allow artists to tell meaningful stories and thrive in collaborative process.

  • Leonie Smith is a first-generation Canadian with Jamaican heritage, dedicated to empowering people from traditionally marginalized communities to fully participate in their living, working, and social environments. She is on the Leadership Team of Building Belonging, and brings over two decades of experience in senior management within nonprofit sectors—spanning communications, fundraising, and human resources. Leonie has established three pivotal organizations. The Thoughtful Workplace focuses on fostering people-centered work cultures for organizations and nonprofits. People of Colour for Nonviolent Communication (POC4NVC) serves as a network for individuals of the global majority pursuing nonviolence and Nonviolent Communication. Additionally, the Necessary Trouble Collective (NTC) offers consultancy to movement and activist groups, emphasizing nonviolence, conflict resolution, and training principles. Holding certifications in Nonviolent Communication from The Center for Nonviolent Communication and Sociocracy from Sociocracy for All, this professional works from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, as an organizational consultant, restorative and transformative justice mediator, coach, and trainer.

  • Assistant Programs Manager of the Soledad Project since 2022.

  • Jenelle Gaerlan - Seeds Co-Director since 2021

  • Juanita is an accounting professional with more than 20 years of accounting experience, including 3+ years in a non-profit sector. She has held roles ranging from accounting manager to controller and holds a Bachelor’s degree in accounting from Humphrey’s University. She's grateful to have developed a skill set in alignment with her passion and takes pride in her work product and the relationships built. In her spare time, she enjoys hiking, music and spending time with family.

  • Seeds Co-Director since 2021.

  • Jeddie Kawahatsu is a writer, dancer, and marketing strategist whose work bridges movement, narrative, and community engagement. Born and raised in San Francisco and now based between Honolulu and California, she brings over 18 years of experience in creative and performance practices that inform her artistic and professional pursuits.

     As a Marketing Associate with Embodiment Project, Jeddie shapes brand storytelling and integrated campaigns that center artists’ voices, cultural context, and authentic connection. Her background spans arts marketing, social media strategy, content production, and project management across nonprofit and creative sectors. Whether dancing, writing, or building campaigns, she is passionate about creating spaces where stories are felt in the body and shared in community.

    Alongside their work with Embodiment Project, Sydney has been a core collaborator with 13th Floor Theater since 2017 and performs with Evie Ladin’s MoToR/Dance. Through their production and performance company, On Beyond, they help build the structures and relationships that allow artists to tell meaningful stories and thrive in collaborative process.

  • Assistant Artistic Director of Wishbone since 2025.

Board Members

  • Cindy Shearer, Professor and Program Chair for the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts and Writing at CIIS, is the author of Stay With Writing: Practices for Sustaining the Writer’s Work and Life. A writer/text-image artist, she also designed and co-leads the Creative Dissertation Pathway, focusing on art practice as research, for the PhD in East-West Psychology at CIIS. Her essay, ‘Thirteen Acts of Seeing Further: Creative Writing as Text-Image Art and A Quest for Care,’ appears in Harper, Grame, ed., Empathy in Creative Writing: Ethics, Diversity and Communication.

  • Kusum Crimmel, LCSW, is a facilitator of transformational change and generative conflict in service of healing, truth-telling, and collective wholeness. With more than two decades of experience working with youth and adults across mental health, restorative justice, and somatics, her work helps individuals and communities navigate conflict, complexity, and difference with rigor and relational depth.

  • Nicole Klaymoon is a dance-maker, poet, and visual artist, and the Founder and Artistic Director of Embodiment Project (EP), a Bay Area–based performing arts organization that envisions a world where dance is integrated as a critical dimension of social and cultural revolution. Her work centers underrepresented narratives and is informed by ecofeminism, Kingian nonviolence, restorative practices, and advocacy against childhood sexual abuse. EP has premiered 12 original evening-length multidisciplinary works, including Music of the Actualized Child, Ancient Children, Belly of the Whale, and X RATED PLANET. Klaymoon has also choreographed three dance films produced by the San Francisco Dance Film Festival. Klaymoon has been recognized as a KQED Woman to Watch and has served as a resident choreographer at ODC Theater, Headlands Center for the Arts, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the National Center for Choreography Akron. She co-founded SEEDS, the first hip hop youth dance company at the ODC Dance School, and holds a B.A. from UCLA and an M.F.A. from CIIS.

  • Arisika Razak, is a core teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center, in Oakland, who has served the San Francisco Bay Area as a midwife, healer, spiritual educator, activist, and ritual dancer for over forty-five years. She was a core member of San Francisco’s Purple Moon Dance Project for over twenty years, and has performed and/or led movement conferences nationally and internationally at venues including: the 14th Juksan International Arts Festival, Korea; Cancer as a Turning Point Healing Conferences, Northern California; Destiny Arts Elders Project, Oakland California; Jennifer Berezan’s Praises for the World concerts in Oakland and Atlanta;  the National Women’s Music Festival;  and the Bay Area ritual celebration: Women of the Fourteenth Moon. Professor Emerita and former Director of the Women’s Spirituality Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, California, Arisika is a contributor to numerous books and journals, on the subjects of embodied spiritual modalities, African wisdom traditions, Buddhism and womanism, and multicultural feminisms.

Artistic Roster

  • Rama Mahesh Hall is a full time professional dancer based out of the Bay Area, California. He’s been studying and training in Street Dance styles for the last 15 years. His main style is House Dance, but he also studies Freestyle Hip Hop, Popping, Locking, Breaking, and other Street Dance styles, as well as various African Styles, Contemporary, and Capoeira.

    For 14.5 years and continuing Rama has been a core member of the Bay Area dance theater company Embodiment Project, performing for sold out audiences in the Bay Area and other prestigious venues in the country.

    Rama has spent several months a year, for 13 years, in NYC training with the pioneers and leaders there of these dances, especially in House Dance. Rama was a full time student for two years at a street dance school in Sweden, Åsa Folkhogskola, between the years 2012-2013, and 2017-2018. Every year till the present Rama spends time traveling in Europe connecting with dancers in many different countries, and challenging himself to enter the battle culture there.

    One of Rama’s greatest passions is teaching dance to adults, young adults, and youth in the Bay and abroad, and has been teaching weekly adult classes for 11 years, including 8 years at Dance Mission Theater in San Francisco. Since 2020, Rama has held his adult House Dance class as a part of the iconic “Days Like This” weekly community gathering and party. Since 2022 Rama has co-taught an adult class with his wife Michaela, every Thursday at Destiny Arts Center in Oakland.

    Rama is currently also a co-director of Embodiment Project & ODC Common’s youth theater company “Seeds” in San Francisco, along with Janelle Gaerlan, passing on the cultures of Street Dance and Theater to the next generation. For many years and continuing Rama has also been a Teaching Artist for the non-profit Destiny Arts Center teaching youth of all ages and servicing schools primarily in East Oakland and in Destiny’s onsite facility.

    Rama stewards and co hosts the Bay Area’s weekly House Dance Session “Rebearth.” He is a co-organizer of “Hella House Collective'' producing events in the Bay Area, a core co-organizer of Embodiment Projects yearly “Get Free Festival ,” and the manager for up to 35 dancers each year at Suncébeat House Dance Festival in Croatia/Portugal as well as South Port Weekender in London.

    Rama has made a name for himself in the battle/competitive scene in the US and Europe winning many competitions in places such as the Bay Area, NYC, DC, Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, London, Mexico City, and Peru. One of Rama’s biggest highlights is competing at the Juste Debout Finals in Paris in front of 16,000 people, and placing top 4 and top 6 in House Dance Forever in 2022, and 2023 respectively.

    Outside of dance, Rama has grown up practicing meditation his whole life, and spent 10 years up until the pandemic at Visitacion Valley Middle School in San Francisco, working with a non-profit program that offers the students Transcendental Meditation as an outlet to their stress and hardships, and for the student’s self development.

    Rama is deeply rooted in the community, and supports the Bay Area, as well as the international dance community in many ways through his organizing and leadership. Rama is a passionate steward and educator of House Dance and Street Dance culture.

  • Francis Anthony Cailles (any pronouns with loving-kindness) is a multidisciplinary artist that enjoys exploring the dance of life. He is local to the ancestral lands of the Ohlone peoples in Oakland, California. Rooted in an inquiry of diasporic practices, transformative justice, and healing arts he facilitates programs and performs with intentions to move us towards collective liberation and deeper connections to inner/outer peace. Love speaks through his movement to express stories of our shared humanity, finding pathways to building community well-being in the spirit of kapwa.

  • Leah (she/her) is a Bay Area native and lifelong dancer. She dreamed of being a ballerina ever since seeing the Nutcracker for the first time and began her classical training in Menlo Park at age three. She studied at San Francisco Ballet School for seven years and spent several summers dancing in New York at the School of American Ballet and Kaatsbaan Ballet Intensive. At Princeton, she danced with two student-run companies and served as artistic director of Princeton University Ballet, collaborating with musicians and choreographing original works. After completing her degree in ecology and evolutionary biology, she spent a year studying baboon social behavior as a field researcher in Kenya before moving back to San Francisco to pursue a career in writing.

    She got her start in journalism as an editor and writer for California magazine in Berkeley and later as a news reporter for the Redwood City Pulse. She has since become a full-time freelance writer and dancer, writing about science and social issues for local and national publications. In San Francisco, Leah has danced and performed in whacking and other styles with No Mirror Movement, as well as with local contemporary artists, Kyle Limin and Jocelyn Reyes. After stumbling upon Nicole Klaymoon’s weekly house class, she began training in house and never looked back. Nic and Rama Mahesh Hall have been her greatest inspirations and mentors through this new journey into house and freestyle.

    A storyteller at heart, Leah is deeply curious about people and the things that move and motivate us. With Embodiment Project, she’s learning to channel these questions and explorations through movement and the deepening of relationships with her fellow artists. She also likes to get weird—isn’t there wisdom in the absurd?—and hopes you do, too.

  • Mindy is a Bay Area-based street dancer, STEAM educator, and data visualization engineer dedicated to social change through movement arts, education, and data-driven storytelling.

  • Karen A. Smith (she/her) is a vocalist, sound healer, birth doula, ho'oponopono practitioner, dancer and lifelong student of sacred chant, music and dance from around the world. Her work encompasses traditions from Brazil, Cuba, Ghana, Haiti, Hawaii, India, Nigeria and the U.S. She studies and performs with numerous cultural organizations in the Bay Area and beyond. She shares her gifts in singing circles, sacred sound and movement workshops at community organizations and  spiritual communities. She holds a degree in BioPsychology and knows, firsthand, the power of sound and music to heal and connect us all. A New York native of Jamaican, West-African, Native American and Artivist, ancestry, Karen feels honored and grateful for the opportunity to embrace DEEP healing with Embodiment Project in the Belly of the Whale.

  • Originally from Ukraine, Anastasia Ryzhova has a background in freestyle hip hop as well as some classical training. Anastasia started teaching dance at the young age of 12, and ever since then her students have been her most impactful teachers. Coming up in the bay area house scene under the wings of legends such as Shinobi Jaxx, Sonia Savitskaya, Coflo, Jardy and others, she was led steadily to Embodiment project. Today, for Anastasia, dance is a deep meditation. Moved by the music, her journey as an artist lays in trust to her inner world.

  • Jenelle Gaerlan is a multi-disciplined creative and freelance dancer hailing from Portland, Oregon. Having trained under BodyVox's Junior Artist Generator (JAG) program, Jenelle has danced for DarVejon Jones Dance Ensemble, BodyVox Dance Company, Soulskin Dance, FRAY Show at Stanford Live, and now dances for Robert Moses’ KIN in San Francisco, Embodiment Project, and Concept o4. She also reps Assassins Crew from the west coast (U.S. chapter based in Washington, D.C.), rooting her style in house dance with essences of waacking and breaking in classes, cyphers and battles. With expertise in dance, choreography, video production, design and creative direction, she is now relocated in the Bay Area to build and connect with other multifaceted artists.

    Jenelle is an Alumni of the School at Jacob’s Pillow (Ann & Weston Hicks Choreography Fellowship 2023) and has recently done work with the SF Symphony as a dancer. She is currently is the Co-Artistic Director of ODC Seeds Youth Company and teaches at the Alonzo King LINES Dance Center (SF Dance Center). Additionally, Jenelle has taught workshops at the late MVMNT Arts Academia in Albany, CA, at Mark Sanchez (aka Hippie’s) Soul Movement Retreat, Rae Studios SF, and also at the University of San Francisco.

  • Clarissa Rivera Dyas (she/they) is a Bay Area, Ohlone land, based dancer, choreographer, curator, and arts producer. Her artistic practice flows from the truthfulness of improvisation, is rooted in her communities, and centered around movement as a spiritual practice and a conduit of change.

    Clarissa grew up in a mixed-race black and immigrant Filipino family in Berkeley, graduated from San Francisco State University in 2017 with a B.A in Dance and a B.S. in Health Education, and has remained in the Bay Area. They have continued to locate their life and work in the complex intersections of diverse Bay Area communities by lifting up their concerns, celebrating their bodies and cultures, and being visible+present in the places we choose to be.

    Clarissa is in constant investigation, using artistic landscape as a site for optimistic and futurist world building.

    They have had the honor to be a company member of Robert Moses’ Kin, Zaccho Dance Theatre, and Flyaway Productions and have performed in works by Lenora Lee Dance, Megan Lowe Dances, OYSTERKNIFE, Sarah Crowell, Talli Jackson and many others.

    Clarissa is a co-conspirator with black, queer Bay Area artists: jose e. abad, Styles Alexander, Gabriele Christian, and Stephanie Hewett in RUPTURE (2021). She is most recently in collaboration with Sara Shelton Mann (2020), Embodiment Project (2023) and GRAVITY (2022). They have performed throughout the U.S. such as in New York, Jacob’s Pillow, Seattle, and internationally in Berlin and Vienna. She has presented work in CounterPulse’s SEED Residency and REYES Dance, Dance Thrill Fest in 2021 and in the Black Choreographers Festival in 2020. In partnership with Jakob Pek through the Dresher Ensemble Artist Residency, they premiered Something Remains in October 2022. They also opened a short-lived art performance space in 2022 in SF called The 3rd Floor. She presented a duet with Gabriele Christian, baby, in Queering Dance Festival’s FROLIC! in April 2023. In collaboration with ainsley tharp, they presented the first iteration of forever failing in KH FRESH Festival February 2024. She recently was awarded Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” January 2024 for her choreographic work and is nominated for two Izzies that will be announced this year. Clarissa works as the Associate Artistic Director of Circo Zero, is a member of the Queering Dance Festival Steering Committee and is on the KH FRESH Festival Curatorial Team.

  • Tyrone Bellamy (he/him) a lover of movement, automotive technician, street dancer/battler, and Be Movement Collective member. He has briefly explored many street styles since high school(when his dance journey started). Since moving from Hawaii to the Bay in 2016 Tyrone he has trained house, breakdancing, hip hop through clubbing and currently exploring contemporary floor work, krump, & capoeira (through Batuque lineage Mestre Versátil Ismail). He strives to spread joy & freedom through movement. Tyrone has been working with Nicole Klaymoon performance training over the past couple of years and now working with EP Tyrone has widen his range of dancing with emotions & letting the body be guided intention.

  • Marc Cunanan Chappelle is an Oakland, CA-based dancer from Sacramento, CA. He is an Artist at PUSH Dance Company and Embodiment Project. He performed in AsiaSF’s 25th anniversary performance at SF Pride (2023) and with Bill Hopkins’ Celebrity House Band in Cabo San Lucas, MX (2023). At Stanford University, he performed in Ronnie Reddick’s “Show Up to Show Out,” Raissa Simpson’s “FALL/FLIGHT,” amara tabor-smith’s “Glory” (2023), Columbae House’s “F–ck the Man” (2022, 2018), Dv8’s “EnCounter Culture” (2022, 2019, 2018), as well as TAPS’ “Carry On We Must,” (2021) and “Groundplan,” (2018).

  • Kristine’s (they/them) love for movement comes from swaying with their mom, titos,& titas to Tagalog & Spanish love songs. Greatest influences in their movement is from club dancing and gigging with their cousins back in the day and in music, through the piano. 


    Born in San Jose, CA, Filipinx, healer, yoga educator teaching at Yoga Marga Temple of One. Interdisciplinary visual/performance artist, research scientist, and inaugural fellow at Dr. S Ama Wray’s MOOVEE Lab at the new Center for the Power of Music and Social Change, at UC Irvine’s School of Social Ecology. 


    They examine hypotheses related to how movement and music further a salutogenic approach to health and healing through collaborative research, education, and community engagement. Specifically, Kristine’s research within healing arts traditions encompasses how resonance and rhythm influence the subtle body into vitality. The work honors, cultivates, and preserves indigenous practices from the Philippines, Mexico, Chile, Peru, India, Costa Rica, Brazil, Tibet, and Ghana.

  • Hailing from Goose Creek, South Carolina, Francis Aquino is a Hayward based street dancer. He is trained in popping, some modern/contemporary, tricking, and Krump. He started off as a stuntman for The Tribe dance crew, and over time learned the foundations of popping. Searching for individuality in his own personal style led him to contemporary movement and Krump. Francis is inspired by the likes of Pina Bausch, Tight Eyez, and Mijo. He’s performed in shows such as the Hip hop Nutcracker, Hip hop Cinderella, and The Hip Hop international Dance Fest. Currently, with his artistry, he seeks to find a deeper connection with his ancestors. Francis see’s his expression as a bridge for folks in his culture who never got the chance to dance and express who they are as a people to do just that.

  • Amikaeyla Gaston is an award-winning singer, activist, and Executive Director/Founder of the International Cultural Arts & Healing Sciences Institute (ICAHSI) and Co-Executive Director of World Trust (Racial Justice Educations). ICAHSI partners with government, NGO, and educational institutions, as well as corporations and individuals to provide innovative programs that unlock expression through music and the arts. She is the winner of eight Washington Area Music Association Awards for Best Jazz, World and Urban Contemporary Vocalist. She sings worldwide with many accomplished musicians, (including Sweet Honey in the Rock and Pete Seeger) and has sung for the Dalai Lama at his request.

    Proclaimed as one of the “purest contemporary voices” by National Public Radio, powerhouse Amikaeyla Gaston embraces the best of many types of music. MTV has described her sultry sound as “like listening to a velvet waterfall,” and her soulful, roots-jazz flavor captures the listener with dynamic passion and enchanting sincerity. She has received national attention and a multitude of music awards, including Best Jazz Vocalist, Best Urban Contemporary Vocalist, Best World Music Vocalist, and Best Debut Artist, and was named Washington, DC’s Best Female Composer in 2006, 2008, and 2011 for excellence in original composition. She has performed, recorded, and traveled the world touring with many award-winning artists such as Take 6, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Babatunde Olatunji, Mickey Hart, Pete Seeger, Esperanza Spalding, and Sheila E.

  • Sean aka “Greystorm” is a local Bay Area dance teacher and performer. Grey has been involved in dance for over 10+ years focusing mostly on Popping and Hip-Hop styles. Currently teaching at multiple studios and competing in battles, expanding his artistry is his overall intention. 


Artistic Collaborators

  • Born and raised in the D.M.V. (D.C., Maryland, Virginia) area, Oluwatoyin Sogunro, better known as Toyin, is a professional dancer and educator. She is a cultural ambassador of Black street dance and club dance forms. Sogunro spends her time traveling extensively to different urban arts communities globally. Through her travels, she broadens her perspective and understanding in all sorts of dance forms, and shares her own talents and teachings in these spaces. Most, if not all, of her work revolves around preserving the authenticity of Black culture through street and club dance.

    As an artistic director of ‘Urban Artistry’ dance company for 10 years, Sogunro gained experience teaching historical techniques and applications. She mentored students to become a preservationist and innovator of urban arts. With the company, she also gained the opportunity to perform for the grand opening dedication ceremony for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

    The other half of her dance life exists in competitive spaces. In 2011, Sogunro and her partner LaTasha Barnes made history by being the first American team and the first female team to take home first place in the world championship for House Dance in the Juste Debout competition. Since then, she has gained respect as one of the best “House dancers” of this generation. She is perhaps most well-known for performing, winning and judging some of the top dance competitions in the world, including Juste Debout, Summer Dance Forever and I Love This Dance to name a few.

  • “K’niin Abbrey, is a performance artist with a concentration in digital art-forms, as well as Street/Club Dance Improvisational Movements and Techniques.

    Specializing in movement innovation and total body integration methodologies, Abbrey emphasizes in musical aural skills and meditative approaches to movement, in order to heighten ones creativity and self-awareness. He finds joy traveling extensively to theatre spaces and Hip Hop communities internationally -both to compete and to teach his unique approach.

    Additionally, Abbrey has collaborated with various award winning productions and companies as a principal dancer sharing his artistry and expertise; Companies such as, the Emmy nominated production “Hip Hop Nutcracker”, “Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre” and “the Groovaloos” to name a few. All with the intention to bring powerful, performative, creative and thought-provoking street dance and digital art to the dance theatre world.”

  • George Chi Cheng a.k.a Txana Wukong (he/they) is a first-generation Asian American of Taiwanese, Manchurian, and Mongolian descent. George’s multidisciplinary arts journey began in Taipei, Taiwan, and has taken him around the world since. He is a member of world renowned Hip Hop collective, Circle of Fire, and has worked with Hip Hop Theater company, Embodiment Project, as a principal member. In addition to his work as an artist, he has spent the last decade studying and learning from different Indigenous spiritual traditions and practices. Their work has also involved holding space in ceremonial containers specifically for BIPOC community healing from intergenerational trauma, unwinding from systems of oppression, and Ancestral reclamation work. Wukong also serves as an acting foreign liaison, advocate, and organizer with the Huni Kui Peoples Federation of the State of Acre in Brazil (FEPHAC). As an organizer, activist, and multi-disciplinary artist, George is the founder of Nawabu Culture, a newly established non-profit organization with the mission to facilitate transformative social change through indigeneity, community, arts & culture, and spirituality. George holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies with a focus in Art & Social Change from University of California, Berkeley.

  • d. Sabela Grimes, a 2014 United States Artists Rockefeller Fellow, is a choreographer, writer, composer and educator whose interdisciplinary performance work and pedagogical approach reveal a vested interest in the physical and meta-physical efficacies of Afro-Diasporic cultural practices. Described by the Los Angeles Times as “the Los Angeles dance world’s best-kept secret” and as “one of a mere handful of artists who make up the vanguard of hip-hop fusion,” Grimes is considered one of the most imaginative and innovative artists in his field. His AfroFuturistic dance theater projects like World War WhatEver, 40 Acres & A Microchip, BulletProof Deli, and ELECTROGYNOUS, consider invisibilized histories and grapple with constructed notions of masculinity and manhood while conceiving a womynist consciousness. He created and continues to cultivate a movement system called Funkamentals that focuses on the methodical dance training and community building elements evident in Black vernacular and Street dance forms. Previously, Grimes co-authored and performed as a principal dancer in Rennie Harris Puremovement’s award-winning Rome & Jewels. He received a BA in English and MFA in dance and choreography from the University of California, Los Angeles.

  • (in memoriam)

    Tigre Mashaal-Lively creates work across a wide range of mediums and disciplines, ranging from large-scale installations, sculptures, and murals, to intimate illustrations, paintings, music, and movement-based performance. Their work has been exhibited around the globe, from North America to Southeast Asia, and from Europe to Australia.

    Raised in Philadelphia and lived in New Mexico, Tigre holds a BA from Bennington College and is a Burning Man Honorarium Grant recipient for the interactive sculpture The Solacii

    Tigre Mashaal-Lively is a founding member of Earthseed Black Arts Alliance and Braided Branches Collective, an inaugural cohort member of the Design Science Studio, and a long-time collaborator with esteemed performance companies Bad Unkl Sista and Embodiment Project.

  • Meena Murugesan (they/them) is a video and movement artist living on Tongva-Kizh land. Meena creates experimental non-linear narratives at the intersection of live performance, video art installation, and social issues. Grappling with the practises of collage, projection mapping, contemplative documentary, improvisation, somatic bodywork and bharatanatyam, Meena centers an anti-racist, anti-caste, feminist, queer, melanin-rich creative liberatory practice. They are directing a multimedia series entitled Dravidian Futurities about African-Dravidian connections, casteism, colorism, and trance/possession movement rituals. Meena is a current founding member of two collectives: SAEDA (South Asian Experimental Dance Artists, Mellon awardee 2021-2022) and SiriusShapeShifters (with d. Sabela grimes). Recently, Meena has presented their films or video projection design work at The Getty Museum, The Getty Villa, Underground Museum, The Broad Museum, MOCA LA, Jacob's Pillow, SOPHIENSALE, 651 Arts, EMPAC, BLACKSTAR, etc.

  • Valerie Troutt is a Black Indigenous Womyn vocalist and composer from Oakland, CA whose art and activism are deeply intertwined. Trained in jazz and brought up singing gospel, she is an internationally respected musical collagist, borrowing from ancestral centuries of sound, channeling spirits, and delivering the stories of our love, loss, and belonging. Valerie has performed at Jazz at Lincoln Center NY, Yoshi’s Jazz Club Oakland, Theater Haus Germany, the National Queer Arts Festival SF, and at Joe Henderson Lab SFJazz. Valerie is the founder and leader of Mooncandy Live House Music Ensemble, and Find Your Light community, where she provides workshops and platforms for Black Womyn fostering healing through the arts, within the Black Womyn community. Valerie is a music educator in the San Francisco Eastbay and a dancer at heart, some of her finest creations have been as the music director of Embodiment Project, founded by Coreopoet Nicole Klaymoon. Valerie strives to listen, stay connected to her roots, and be open to the future of love's possibilities.

  • Vocalist, composer, lyricist and social activist Tiffany Austin combines classic jazz tradition with a deep love for blues, spirituals and contemporary soul and a storyteller's knack for narrative. She's performed on bandstands internationally including at both Birdland and Dizzy's Den in NYC, Walt Disney Concert Hall in her native Los Angeles and the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco.

    Nothing But Soul, Austin's debut album from 2015, earned raves for its bold recasting of Hoagy Carmichael standards. Her sophomore album, Unbroken (2018), was hailed by All About Jazz as a "fully formed masterpiece."

    A graduate of UC Berkeley’s Boalt School of Law, Austin decided to forgo a career as a lawyer to focus on music, her true passion, and she’s been raising the bar ever since.

  • She just recently left her position as the Artistic Director at Destiny Arts Center in Oakland, CA where she served in different capacities from 1990-2020, including Executive Director from 2002-2007. She founded and directed the Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company from 1993-2020, which has been the subject of two documentary films, and won the National Arts & Humanities Youth Program Award. Sarah has facilitated arts integration, violence prevention, cultural humility and team building professional development sessions with artists and educators since 2000, both locally and nationally. She is the recipient of the KPFA Peace award, the KQED Women’s History Local Hero award, the Bay Area Dance Week award, the Alameda County Arts Leadership award, and the National Guild for Community Arts Education Milestone award. She is also a four-time finalist for a Tony Award for Excellence in Theater Education.

    Sarah is a retired professional dancer, having performed and toured with numerous dance and dance/theater companies including Impulse Jazz Dance Company in Boston and the Dance Brigade in San Francisco. She also co-created the dance/theater company i am Productions! She believes that the arts are an essential component of the journey to social justice, especially art forms that involve moving the body. She believes that movement must be part of all movements for social change.

  • SAMMAY (she/they/siya) is the daughter of Yolanda Peñaflor Dizon; granddaughter of Salvacion Orencillo Peñaflor and Carolina Agdeppa Dizon. Raised up in a migrant multigenerational environment in Carson, CA - SAMMAY is a Filipinx American choreographer, interdisciplinary artist, and cultural producer of Bikol, Kapampangan, and Ilokano descent. Through ritual performance, they explore the diasporic body as a site of re-membering, resisting, and reclaiming for collective healing and liberation. Their practice is rooted in the fundamental knowing that dance bridges the earth and ancestral realm. The sacred cipher becomes a passageway to transmute intergenerational trauma across cultural lines and geographical borders. Rooted in their inherent responsibility to the Divine, SAMMAY creates opportunities for intercultural and intergenerational exchange - igniting possibilities for decolonizing from a diasporic lens and embodying radical futures. By centering ancestral reverence in her work, she highlights the ongoing conversation between the material and the spiritual. Their work lives at the intersection of intergenerational healing, re-indigenization, and social justice - and is a direct call and response with their ancestors.

  • Terrence is an originally self taught dancer from Stockton California. His first influences were street dance forms that originated in Oakland, Turfing and Popping. He was also inspired by Brooklyn street dance forms such as Bruk up and Flexn. It was through exposure to these forms and fascination with Micheal Jackson that led him to explore Ballet and modern dance forms. Later on he worked with Embodiment Project where he was exposed to house dance and new methods of narrative based storytelling; through movement and spoken word. Today he utilizes various different street dance modalities to find freedom in expression and through teaching he aims to help others find their own unique voice as well.

  • Xoa is a synaesthetic sound artist, guitarist and medicinal garden steward based in the Bay Area. They believe in the ability of sound to deeply heal, awaken the imagination and connect diverse stories. Drawing inspiration from a wide range of styles and complex sensory experiences, they create sonically vibrant rhythms and soundscapes for healing and dreaming. Their track “888” was featured in WOW Vol 2, a global compilation of independent women and non-binary producers curated by Australian music artist SADIVA. In collaboration, they have worked as a composer and sound designer with local dance companies Fly Away Productions and The Embodiment Project.