Black Collectivity
To Gather | October 5 - 7, 19 - 21
In the spirit of “gathering (n. / v.), To Gather supports and elevates the work of artists who use movement to excavate the rich stories that exist within the Black and Brown dancing body.
To Gather is a celebration of dance artists residing and creating along the West Coast. Over two weekends, guest curators Nia-Amina Minor and David Rue invite choreographers and performers to convene and present new work to the Seattle community. To Gather supports and elevates the work of artists who use movement to excavate the rich stories that exist within the Black and Brown dancing body. In the spirit of “gathering (n. / v.),” this program encourages audiences and artists alike to witness, engage, and commune while supporting new works.
Week 1 features the work of guest choreographer Maurya Kerr (tinypistol) & local Seattle artists, including Akoiya Harris, Symone Sanz, and Cipher Goings + Benjamin Hunter.
Week 2 features the work of guest choreographer Bernard Brown (bbmoves) & local Seattle artists, including Jade Solomon Curtis, Emma Wambui, and Umalalengua Okan + Milvia Berenice Pacheco Salvatierra in collaboration with Naomi Macalalad Bragin.
Community Workshop Series co-presented by Velocity Dance Center and CD Forum
Free movement class for the community. Join Velocity Dance Center and CD Forum for a vibrant exchange with To Gather guest artists Maurya Kerr and Bernard Brown! Open to ages 16 & up. We welcome participants of all levels. Workshops will take place at 12th Ave Arts and Langston Hughes.
Maurya Kerr is a bay area-based choreographer, writer, filmmaker, performer, and the artistic director of tinypistol. Much of her work, across disciplines, is focused on black and brown people reclaiming their birthright to both wonderment and the quotidian. Maurya was a member of Alonzo King LINES Ballet for twelve years, an ODC artist-in-residence from 2015 to 2018, and holds an MFA in dance from Hollins University. Maurya’s sophomore film, Saint Leroi, was recently described in the Village Voice as “a surreal meditation on Black history, violence, and American decay and a powerful indictment of racism.” Maurya co-curated, with artist Leyya Mona Tawil, ODC Theater’s 2023/24 season, and was recently appointed as ODC Theater’s Resident Curator for their 2024/25 season. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart prize, appears in multiple journals, including Magma Poetry and Southern Humanities Review, and is anthologized in “The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry.” Maurya was a 2021/22 UC Berkeley ARC (Arts Research Center) Poetry & the Senses Fellow, and her first chapbook, MUTTOLOGY, is forthcoming with Harbor Editions in 2023.
Bernard Brown is a Los Angeles-based performer, choreographer, and educator who situates their work at the intersection of Blackness, belonging, and memory. With an extensive performing career, Brown now serves as Director of Bernard Brown/bbmoves – a social justice dance company, choreographing for stage, specific sites, film, and opera presented globally. Brown has received invitations, residencies and commissions from the Centre de Développement Chorégraphique la Termitière (Burkina Faso), Dance Italia (Italy), The Music Center (Los Angeles), The Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (Los Angeles), Dance Mission Theater (San Francisco), among others. Brown facilitates residencies, workshops, and master classes internationally, namely in Israel, Burkina Faso, and Brazil, and across the US. A first-generation college graduate, Brown earned his MFA from University of California, Los Angeles and BFA from Purchase College. He is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Loyola Marymount University and a Certified Katherine Dunham Technique Instructor candidate. The Los Angeles Times has called him “…the incomparable Bernard Brown…”
Cipher Goings, artistically known as Cipher Divine, is a 2019 YoungArts Finalist trained primarily in rhythm tap along with many African diasporic styles. He was a dancer in the movie Spirited, starring Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell, and a soloist on the Late Late Show with James Cordan, featuring Cedric the Entertainer. He also was a part of the 2018 and 2020 cast of Black Bois by Dani Tirrell. Cipher has showcased work for; the Kennedy Center’s, Arts Across America, Seattle Public Library’s Reflections: What the Water Holds, and Vote art Vote season 17 directed by Raja Feather-Kelly. Cipher is now a graduated young adult from the University of Washington with a Bachelors in Arts for Dance.
Benjamin Hunter, a Seattle-based polymath, is an award winning multi-instrumentalist, composer, creative & culture advocate, social entrepreneur, producer, and educator. For over a decade, Ben played in the internationally acclaimed roots duo, Ben Hunter & Joe Seamons. He plays as a soloist performing global roots music and original works, as well as with his band, The Intraterrestrials, playing original works. In 2017, Benjamin composed music for the critically acclaimed dance piece, Black Bois, which presented at On the Boards in 2017, and The Moore Theater in 2020. In Spring 2023, Benjamin collaborated with Seattle and New York based artists to create Untitled, composing the music for a multi-disciplinary production with dance, visual, architectural, and storyteller artists. Summer of 2023, Benjamin collaborated with local artists to produce, Umamalengua Okan (Little Brown Language), to weave stories about land, language, memory and becoming.
Symone Sanz is a dance artist versed in performance, improvisation, and choreography from Los Angeles. She holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During her time in Seattle, she has enjoyed creating work with artists Heather Kravas, Cherdonna Shinatra, and zoe | juniper, among many others. Symone also enjoys filming, editing, and producing dance in her spare time.
Akoiya Harris is a movement artist based in Seattle Washington. Her work uses a queer Black gaze to look at the ways art holds personal and communal histories. As a choreographer, she has shown work at the Seattle Art Museum, Wa Na Wari, Mad Art Gallery, Base Art Space, Friends of the Waterfront, Northwest Film Forum, The Moore Theater, and 12th Ave Arts. Akoiyas practice is rooted in finding the ways oral history, archival research, and poetry can be interwoven into dance works. She has also performed with Spectrum Dance Theater, Will Rawls, Zoe|Juniper, Third Rail Projects, and Black Collectivity. Akoiya has collected oral histories on the behalf of Wa Na Wari and Black Collectivity and participated in Black Embodiments Studio. She also has the pleasure of teaching at Pacific Northwest Ballet and Ailey Camp.
Milvia Berenice Pacheco Salvatierra is a dancer, painter, poet and Executive Director of Movimiento Afrolatino Seattle (MÁS). Naomi Macalalad Bragin is a dancer, artist, scholar, and educator at the School of Interdisciplinary Arts, University of Washington Bothell. Since 2019, Bragin and Pacheco have collaborated on “Little Brown Language,” which involves researching submerged histories of resistance to colonial encounters in Venezuela and the Philippines, reinterpreted as dance-incantations. Together they blend cultural syncretism and portal, and share and play with each other’s languages. Little Brown Language uses collective performance to weave stories about land, language, memory and becoming.
Umalalengua Okan is an extension of “Little Brown Language.” Performances and workshops at the intersection of healing, ritual and art. Umalalengua Okan is a ritual in performance, where collaboration grew out of a longing for ritual, because ritual, when it roots from a place of genuine connection, can be healing. They came to us through wireless transmissions, electric circuits and the charges of our dreams. We braided them into the breath and rhythm of our bodies.
Jade Solomon Curtis, originally from Texas, is a Seattle-based award-winning choreographer, dance artist, and curator. Through the lens of a Black woman, her works integrate Black vernacular movements, contemporary dance, and technology to explore the body as an artifact of memory, space, and time. Curtis is the founder of Solo Magic, a non-profit arts initiative collaborating with innovative artists to create socially relevant experiences, and the founder and curator of the globally focused residency program Radical Black Femme Project (RBFP). Curtis received her BFA from Southern Methodist University and is the recipient of residencies and commissions from Base Experimental Arts + Space, Duke University (SLIPPAGE LAB), University of Washington’s Meany Hall, WACO Theater Center, and the Seattle Art Museum. Her works have received support from the New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project, the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, 4Culture, and the Bossak-Heilbron Charitable Foundation. She is an Artist Trust Fellow and Inaugural Visiting Fellow at the University of South Carolina.
Emma Wambui is a Kenyan-born Seattle-based performer, choreographer, teacher, and creative. She specializes in various Afro-dance styles including but not limited to Azonto, Amapiano, Ndombolo, and Coupé Décalé. She is deeply passionate about the intersectionality of African music, dance, and culture; The richness of history in these three areas are her guiding force as a dance artist.
Nia-Amina Minor is a movement artist, choreographer, curator, and educator originally from Los Angeles. Her work focuses on the body and what it carries, using physical and archival research to explore memory and history. Nia-Amina is a co-founder of Black Collectivity, a collaborative project developed through the Velocity Made in Seattle Artist Residency Program. She has received regional and national commissions for her choreographic and film work and has a working background as a performer and dramaturg. As a curator, Nia-Amina has developed community programs and performances at Wa Na Wari, Velocity Dance Center, Heidi Duckler Dance Theater as an Outreach Associate, No)one Art House as a co-founder and curator, and Spectrum Dance Theater as a Community Engagement Artist Liaison. Nia-Amina holds an MFA from UC Irvine and a BA from Stanford University and is currently based in Seattle.
David Rue is a dance artist and creative professional born in Liberia and raised in Minnesota. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota with a Bachelor of Individualized Studies that combined Journalism, English, and Dance, holds an MFA in Arts Leadership from Seattle University, and currently works as an Events Specialist for The J. Paul Getty Trust. His work centers on conceptualizing and implementing large-scale public programs that celebrate the voices of black and brown visual and performing artists using the lens of equity, excellence, and joy.
marco farroni leonardo is a movement & performance artist, born in Bonao, DR & currently based in Seattle and New York. They hold a BFA in dance from The University of the Arts. Their work engages with themes and ideas around home, the body as archive, the Diaspora and memory. Artistic collaborations include dani tirrell, David Rue, Aisha Noir, Nia-Amina Minor, Amanda Morgan and Donald Byrd amongst others. They have presented work at Velocity Dance Center, Wa Na Wari, Base Arts Space, 10 Degrees Arts, The School of Spectrum Dance Theater, and The Aids Memorial Pathway. He is the Social Media Coordinator for Black Collectivity.