“Let the beauty we love, be what we do.”

Artist Statement: I am a dance artist, educator, and scholar based in the San Francisco Bay Area who is committed to dance as a vehicle for social change. My creative process organizes community engagement, story-telling, and critical discourse into grassroots dance initiatives, performances, and scholarly articles. My choreographic work blends aesthetic principles of contemporary ballet, dance theatre, and camp, with an aim to make dances that are accessible and relevant today. I make work that matters to me, on topics that directly affect my life and my community, and that represent the life and times I live in.

Philosophy: I consider the study of dance to be a life practice that can enrich a human being far beyond technical prowess. Dance teaches us to think critically and sense deeply. Dance offers a way in, and a way out. Dancing, in its many forms, provides a medium through which to consider impossible truths. To riff off of the words of author Cheryl Strayed, to dance is to hold the empty bowls eternally in our hands, and to fill them over and over again.

Dance also teaches us about world cultures and histories. Dance enables us to experience the self viscerally, and to form and re-form identity. Dance brings people together, and connects us in ways that shatter boundaries and force us to reevaluate differences. As my mentor, Dr. Kimerer LaMothe, says, “To dance is a radical act.” Dancing offers a corporal experience of liberation and control, an investigation of truth and terror, and an opportunity for invention and renewal.

This is why I believe dance is a gateway for social change. What is change, if not movement? Social movements are transformative. Dance offers a way forward and through. It gives us hope. It affirms our bodies and makes us feel alive.

When we feel alive, the world becomes our stage, and we begin…