Q: What has been your professional artistic journey, and what was the most recent show you were working on?

My professional journey began with teaching. I started teaching when I was about 14 in order to pay for my own training at the dance studio. It was important to me as a young artist to not be a burden on my single mother in order to dance. One of the first lessons I learned was that, since I have been training my entire life as a dancer, I now have this craft to make an income that will offset the cost of my classes. Between 14 and 18, my mother no longer had to pay for my classes and that was really important to me. Teaching served as my bread and butter throughout my twenties. It supported my college education. I studied sustainable development in college and was also dancing professionally during school, leading after school programming, and teaching at different dance studios in the Bay Area. Teaching is how I entered into choreography — I had been creating so many phrases and getting into music and world music, deepening my understanding of the African diasporic movement through falling in love with the music. I was moved to create full-length pieces and setting work on dancers. I started my first company around the year 2000 in the Bay Area. When I came back to NYC, I joined Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. I was still making my own work, and then I started Organic Magnetics. I was inspired by the way Bill T. Jones composes — intellectually, physically, spiritually and in community, and I realized my work was geared towards physical theater. I was more interested in telling stories and all the mediums coming together with storytelling… Then I got an opportunity to work with Bill T. Jones on ‘Fela!’ I had to leave the company in order to choreograph ‘Fela’ on Broadway with Bill T. Jones. I then became the creative director of ‘Fela!’ for the next seven years and produced it internationally. I also created a lot of historical narratives about the history of NYC during this time, as well as building my own repertoire of work. The last chapter of my career has been working as an independent contractor and choreographing or directing shows throughout the U.S. at regional theaters, as well as internationally in Cuba and Italy. I have been primarily in regional theaters, which then brought me to do the original choreography of ‘West Side Story’ at the Guthrie Theater and in 2018, and I moved to become the director of professional training at the end of that year. I moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota to do that job and I now run the BFA acting program with the University of Minnesota, and the Guthrie acting MFA program… I also developed a fellowship program because I am determined to diversify access to design and production. I would like to see more women of color in production. My hope in creating these opportunities at the Guthrie through a fellowship capacity will give people a stepping stool to more opportunities in their career, provide them the mentorship they need, and an educational experience. I am now working with a playwright that I deeply admire to develop a new play called ‘The New Planet’ as part of the Guthrie experience. I had seven actors selected, 7 fellows almost selected, which were MFA and fellowship students, and that has been cancelled. So, I am processing the way I might interact and engage with those new collaborators, these young artists who are brilliant and talented. And I am now asking the question: in lieu of the loss of the budget, what can we do?

Q: Who are the mentors or important people in your life that have shaped the way you dance and or think about the arts?

I would say one of my most influential teachers through my formative college years was Cecilia Marta. She is Panamanian and has a lot more names than that but we will stick with that name. Bill T. Jones has been a great influence and mentor. I have been influenced more abstractly by Anne Bogart, more through her books and seeing her shows. I interviewed her when I was younger when she was at Columbia, and saw her at the Guthrie last month. She has been a ‘mental mentor’ over time, as a theater director. Spike Lee was a major influence in my life. I started making films with Spike Lee in 2015, and I learned a lot about adapting what I know about dance and live theater to the screen and editing film — composing for film, directing movement, and editing films. That was a major learning experience for me and I hope to return to it. There are a lot of people in my field who I see making work that I admire and learn from. I admire Camille Brown and Kyle Abraham for the careers they have launched. Jawole Willa Jo Zollar has really affirmed my interest in connecting social justice work with the work we do in theater and in dance. I have so many direct and indirect mentors…  Right now I’m learning a lot from Joseph Haj, who is the artistic director of the Guthrie Theater. I am learning about running a major institution, the relationships with board members and donors, how to plan a season, and ultimately how to keep a $30 million organization afloat. Our mentors can also be the lessons we learn in working in new ways. 

Q: Do you believe art can be a platform for social justice topics? If so, how?

Absolutely. I think artists live at the edge. As artists, our job is to imagine worlds and realms beyond what already exists. I think a lot of our work with social justice can benefit from engagement in the arts, because social justice ultimately is less about solving the world's problems by looking at the issues and trying to source the collective trauma and the historical trauma of our communities, specifically in relation to the history of colonization, which continues to show its face through white supremacy and economic injustice. But when we engage social justice in the form of art making, we imagine the world we might create. We create a paradigm by engaging those realms and creating those worlds we want to live in. I firmly believe the practice of gathering creative souls in a room and making a world is an opportunity to truly be inclusive, to be equitable, to live in a democracy where we are collaborative and inclusive. The role of the theater and the practice of art making is in fact the only way we can imagine our way to a socially just world. We can't do it through social theory or just by talking about it. We have to actively create the world we want to live in, and that is what we do as theater artists and dance artists. Even moreso, dance and movement-based theater practices are probably the most radical form of social justice, because whatever we engage or whatever the dance is talking about is fully embodied. Trauma lives in the body, and the only way to release this and cleanse this trauma that we hold in our bodies is to engage in a fully embodied practice, so I think dance is a powerful form of healing collective trauma.

Q: How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected you as a director and creator?

I was scheduled to have one of the busiest seasons of my artistic career over the next four months. I was supposed to choreograph ‘Cabaret’ as the summer musical at the Guthrie, direct “The New Planet” and relaunch the Guthrie fellowship program… Now that all of this is canceled, I am re-calibrating. I wrote a piece on Facebook as an offering to my students. When the news first dropped, I got quiet and I just — it’s almost like my heart beat slowed. I realized that this felt familiar and I wasn't freaked out, and when I asked myself why, I realized that it is because I have been here many times before. As a freelance artist, I have booked gigs that have been canceled, or I throw myself into a project that comes to an end and I don't know how I am going to pay my rent or what to do next. I have been here so many times before — the insecurity and uncertainty and the innovation and improvisation. The will to not only strive but to thrive as an artist in these dark moments of uncertainty has been fortified by experience. In this moment, I am beyond grateful that I work for an institution where I will have a salary for at least the next few weeks. I also recognize that, even though I don’t have the answers, I have the tools within me to find my way through this, and the ability to be a resource to other artists who are struggling and who need guidance. I am really open to the younger generation of artists leading the way on this. There is a joy and awe I am experiencing, seeing you generating a project of this scope and magnitude with gorgeous ambition and appreciation for galvanizing the moment. And I’m watching my students, whose ‘playwriting bake-off’ just went viral online, and I applaud everyone who is being inventive and generous and generative in this moment. I know that I will also get there, but I recognize that I am in a different place in my life and career where whatever I do will affect a lot of people, which means I have the capacity to affect a lot of people with what I do, and that means I need to take some time to process what this new capacity means. I have to really dig my fingers into the soil and plant some new seeds and cultivate with deep intention. So, I am giving myself the time to reflect on what is possible.

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Q: Using the idea of “worldmaking” how do you imagine the performing arts world after the pandemic? (Worldmaking: How you can re-imagine the world in your own terms, the way you want it to be. Using this tool one can construct new worlds and write themselves into narratives that have excluded them and systems that have disabled them.)

I am absolutely, really excited to see what happens when people are allowed to gather again. 

I may be projecting my hope, but I think people will appreciate live performance more than ever. They’ll appreciate going out, dancing, going to see a play, to a musical, to a dance performance. I think people are going to be aching and spiritually begging for this kind of experience, and I hope our artists and producers get the support that they need through this time, not to be so depleted and as to not have any programming when this time comes. When the audience is ready and thirsty, the art needs to be there for people. I would say we all need to first and foremost take care of ourselves and practice radical self-care and the care of people close to us, but we also need to keep feeding our creative pursuits because I think what we will find is there is more need than ever before for what we have to give on the other side of this.