2024 Conference 10/17 - 10/19 in Los Angeles, CA

Conference Program

2024 WID Full Program_web Download

Conference Keynote Speakers

Dr. Imani Kai Johnson is an interdisciplinary scholar specializing in the Africanist aesthetics, Hip Hop streetdance cultures and practices, oral history and ethnography, and structures of power. She is currently Vice Chair of Critical Dance Studies and an Associate Professor in the Department of Black Study at UC Riverside.

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She is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Dance Studies (2023) (with Mary Fogarty), and the author of Dark Matter in Breaking Cyphers: the Life of Africanist Aesthetics in Global Hip Hop (OUP 2023), which explores the unseen or invisiblized Africanist aesthetics embedded in the ritual dance circle (called the cypher) that is essential to global Hip Hop. Dr. Johnson founded and chairs the Show & Prove Hip Hop Studies Conference Series, a conference dedicated to nurturing a platform for an intellectual community that shapes the direction of Hip Hop studies to come.

Dr. grace shinhae jun is a mother, wife, artist, scholar, educator, and mover. A child of a South Korean immigrant, a North Korean refugee, and Hip Hop culture, she values a movement practice that is infused with historical and contextual education to enrich the corporeal experience in her classes.

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She directs bkSOUL, a performance collective of educators, artists, storytellers, and organizers who challenge the systems of violence and oppression steeped in anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity. She is also a founding member of Asian Solidarity Collective, a grassroots organization committed to expanding Asian American social justice consciousness and building solidarity for collective liberation. grace received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and her PhD in Drama and Theatre from UCSD/UCI. Her scholarship includes publications in the Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Dance Studies, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music Journal, and she is the co-editor (with MiRi Park) for Dance Studies Association’s 2022 Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies “Cyber-Rock: A Virtual Hip Hop Listening Cypher.” She teaches at San Diego City College, with transcenDANCE Youth Arts, and at UCSD where she was the recipient of the 2022/2023 Barbara and Paul Saltman Distinguished Teaching Award.

Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie is a NYC-based director, choreographer, performer and b-girl and a 2016 Bessie Award Winner for Innovative Achievement in Dance. Asherie has received numerous awards to support her work including Dance Magazine’s Inaugural Harkness Promise Award and two National Dance Project Awards.

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In 2019 she was the recipient of a NYFA Fellowship and is currently a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow. As Artistic Director of Ephrat Asherie Dance (EAD), Asherie’s work has been presented on stages nationally and internationally with commissions from companies including Malpaso and Parsons Contemporary Dance and additional commissions from Vail Dance Festival, Fall for Dance, River to River, Firatatrrega, Works & Process at the Guggenheim and the Kennedy Center. Additional directorial work includes UNDERSCORED: On Screen at Lincoln Center, FLOORISH, Solo Chini: Un Dia en Nueva York and In the MOment: A Drawing Dance. Her most recent work for the stage UNDERSCORED — awarded a 2019 Creation and Development Award from the National Performance Network and a 2022 National Dance Project–premiered in November 2022 at Works & Process at the Guggenheim and is currently touring the country. Asherie is honored to have been mentored by Richard Santiago (aka Break Easy) and to have worked and collaborated with Michelle Dorrance, Doug Elkins, Rennie Harris, Bill Irwin, Gus Solomons jr, and Buddha Stretch, among others. Asherie earned her BA from Barnard College, Columbia University in Italian and her MFA from the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee where she researched the vernacular jazz dance roots of contemporary street and club dances. She is a co-founding member of the all-female house dance collective MAWU and is forever grateful to NYC’s underground dance community for inspiring her to pursue a life as an artist.

Conference Special Guest (Pre-recorded Interview)

Susan Jaffe, Artistic Director of American Ballet Theatre. Declared by The New York Times as “America’s Quintessential American Ballerina,” Susan Jaffe enjoyed a career as a Principal Dancer at American Ballet Theatre for 22 years.

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She performed on the international stage with the Royal Ballet, the Kirov Ballet, the Stuttgart Ballet, La Scala Ballet, Vienna State Opera Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, Royal Swedish Ballet, and the English National Ballet. Her versatility as a dancer brought acclaimed interpretations to ballet classics, such as Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty, and dramatic works by Agnes de Mille, Antony Tudor, John Cranko, Ronald Hynd, and Kenneth MacMillan. She also worked with many prominent contemporary choreographers of her time, such as Twyla Tharp, Jerome Robbins, Merce Cunningham, Nacho Duato, Mark Morris, Ulysses Dove, and Jiří Kylián.

After retiring from the stage in 2002, Jaffe taught in the ABT Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School and served as an advisor to the chairman of the board of ABT until 2007. In 2010 she became a Director of Repertoire at ABT. Two years later, she was appointed Dean of Dance at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) in Winston-Salem, NC, a position she held for eight years. During her tenure at UNCSA, Jaffe and her faculty implemented a syllabus based on the ABT National Training Curriculum and established the Choreographic Institute of UNCSA. Additionally, she raised $3.5 million in endowed scholarships and other scholarships.

In 2020 Jaffe was appointed the Artistic Director of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre. She helped to lead the company through the pandemic with digital programs, outdoor performances, and performances in museums. As audiences began returning to theaters, Jaffe curated programs that included classic ballets and diverse, innovative voices of today.

Conference Featured Presenters

Ana María Álvarez, a 2020 Doris Duke Artist and an inaugural Dance/USA Artist Fellow, is a choreographer, dancer, teaching artist, and movement activist. Her thesis work explored the abstraction of Latine dance, specifically Salsa, to express social resistance as related to the U.S. immigration battle.

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This work became the impetus for founding CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater in 2005 in Los Angeles. Alvarez and CONTRA-TIEMPO have continued to tour “joyUS justUS” (2017). Her work has been presented in theaters across the country and the world, including in Germany, Bulgaria, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile and El Salvador. She was selected as the 2018 BiNational Artist in Residence, connecting communities in the Sonoran Desert, Phoenix (U.S.), Douglas (U.S.), Tucson (U.S.), and Agua Prieta (M.X.), through leading artistic workshops, collaborative performances, and public talks, and concluding with a performance at the U.S.-Mexico border. Alvarez and CONTRA-TIEMPO were also invited to represent the best of American Contemporary Dance Abroad through The Obama Administration’s U.S. Department of State cultural exchange program, produced by BAM, DanceMotionUSA. In the Fall of 2022, Alvarez was invited to join the UC San Diego Theatre and Dance Department as a tenured faculty member. In this exciting new chapter of her career, Alvarez, in collaboration with her colleagues and students, is imagining and designing a new future for embodied performance and practice at UCSD.

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Jannet Galdamez is a dance artist born, raised, and based in Los Angeles, CA. Her love for dance and music began at a very young age through social, street, family settings. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Dance and minor in Education from the University of California Irvine June of 2012 training intensively in jazz, improvisation, modern and ballet.

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Jannet has been studying salsa for the last 17 years, Afro-Cuban dance, music, and culture for the last 10 years and she continues to dive deep in her studies of various dance forms inside the Latin and African Diaspora. Jannet is currently rehearsal director, teaching and dance artist with CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater while simultaneously dancing with Kimbambula Cuban Dance Ensemble directed by Cuban Master Kati Hernadez and touring with Spanish Guitarist, Roni Benise’s Emmy Award Winning World Music and Dance Spectacular.

Marisa Hamamoto is the first professional dancer named People Magazine “Women Changing the World.” A leading authority on disability inclusion and building a culture of belonging, Marisa was recently named LinkedIn Top Voice, and has been featured on Good Morning America, NBC Today, Forbes, Fast Company, amongst other media outlets.

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As a sought-after international speaker and performing artist, Marisa has shared the stage with Tim Cook at Apple HQ’s Steve Jobs Theater, and her clients and partners include Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Red Bull, Deloitte, adidas, PayPal, among other forward-thinking brands. Marisa is a stroke survivor, a late-diagnosed Autistic, and a proud fourth-generation Japanese American. She is the founder of Infinite Flow, an award-winning dance company and nonprofit that uses dance as a catalyst to advocate for disability inclusion.

Mims is an artist, abolitionist, and facilitator based in Los Angeles, CA. Her work spans across the disciplines of dance, advocacy, facilitation, curation, and direction. She experiences the body as a site of liberation and uses that information as a guide.

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In her ever evolving exploration of what it means to be in “right relationship” with ourselves, each other, the land, and other species; her body is her first place of inquiry and practice. She is fascinated by questioning as a space of collective grappling and nuance, the work of interpersonal relationships as the foundation for healthy communities, the richness and sacredness of cultures around the world, and all the lessons and beauty of the non- human world.

Vidya Patel is a UK based dance artist, choreographer, performer and educator. Her work merges influence of Kathak, one of the major classical Indian dance forms with contemporary dance, whilst working collaboratively with music, poetry and visual arts to draw on social/ political and autobiographical themes relating to identity, belonging, nature and empowerment.

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Vidya has performed nationally and internationally with several companies, artists and organisations, including Sir Richard Alston, Gary Clarke, Thick & Tight, Hetain Patel, Sujata Banerjee. She also performed in the late Pandit Ravi Shankar’s opera “Sukanya” and has collaborated with artists including Shammi Pithia, Connor Scott, Zia Ahmed, Sarathy Korwar, Shankho Chaudhari, Ryan Stafford, and many others. Her performances have received recognition, leading to three National Dance Critics Circle Awards nominations. Last year she received The Michele Fox Choreographic Award and the Vic Wells Award which will contribute towards developing future works.

Photo Credit: Camilla Greenwell

Elizabeth “Liza” Yntema is the President & Founder of the Dance Data Project®. DDP is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting gender equity in all aspects of classical dance through data analysis, advocacy, and programming. Founded in 2015 as a simple database, DDP today stands as a central resource worldwide for women in dance.

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The existence of gender-based inequity in classical dance is indisputable thanks to DDP’s data, which has been recognized in numerous wide-reaching publications. DDP has released seventeen studies, several guides and checklists (addressing student and dancer safety, financial literacy and budgeting, and choreographer resources), a global listing of female leaders, choreographers, and designers in the industry, and a virtual interview series, Global Conversations.

Liza has underwritten and sponsored ballets and programs with Pacific Northwest Ballet, the Joffrey Ballet, Hubbard Street Dance Company, BalletX, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, and Boston Ballet. She is a Lead Individual Sponsor of Boston Ballet’s ChoreograpHER and American Ballet Theatre’s Women’s Movement. She is a member of the Board of Trustees for WTTW/WFMT and the Board of Directors of the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. Liza graduated from the University of Virginia and the University of Michigan Law School and spent a year training with The Philanthropy Workshop, a global network of over 450 selected philanthropists, from 26 countries.

2024 Conference Selected Presenters

Choreography
- Na An (Lanzhou, Gansu Province, China)
- Katrina Binks (Manhattan Beach, CA, USA)
- Melissa Bobick (Salt Lake City, UT, USA)
- Brandi Coleman (Dallas, TX, USA)
- Ruth Mair TB Howard-jones (London, UK)
- Lyrric Jackson (Atlanta, GA, USA)
- Seung-Yeon Mah (Seoul, South Korea)
- Rukhmani Mehta (Los Angeles, CA, USA)
- Alyssa Mitchel (San Francisco, CA, USA)
- Preeti Vasudevan (New York, NY, USA)
- Sarah Zehnder (Springfield, MA, USA)

Dance on Film
- Gianti Giadi (Jakarta, Indonesia) *will not be presenting in 2024 conference
- Lindsey Hanson (Holland, MI, USA)
- Dr. Maria Salgado Llopis and Aleth Berenice (London, UK)
- Marta Renzi (Nyack, NY USA) *will not be presenting in 2024 conference
- Ankita Sharma (Brooklyn, NY, USA)
- Tomo Sone (Kyoto, Japan)
Additional presenters from 2023 International Film Festival:
- Natalja Aicardi (Chicago, IL, USA)
- Ana Baer and Heike Salzer (San Marcos, TX, USA)
- Merli Guerra (College Station, TX, USA)
- Kavitha Krishnan (Singapore)
- Lisa Naugle (Irvine, CA, USA)
- Kellie St. Pierre and Irishia Hubbard (Salt Lake City, UT, USA)

Scholars:
- Dr. Chia-Li Chien (Charlotte, NC, USA)* Dr. Daralee Barbera and Darren Larsen Patnoe will present
- Dr. Emilia Cholewicka (Warsaw, Poland)
- Yessica Herrera Guzman (Chicago, IL, USA)
- Christa St. John and Jamie A. Johnson (Draper, UT, USA)

Selected Workshops:

Teaching Dance History in the 21st century: Challenges, Directions, and Directives in Changing Paradigms

Lisa Fusillo (Athens, GA, USA)
Joselli Deans (Philadelphia, PA, USA)
Denise Celestin (Wichita, KS, USA)
Caroline Sutton Clark (Atlanta, GA, USA)
Catherine Turocy (Dallas, TX, USA)

LET’S PLAY BALLET

Ramona Maria Schmid (Vienna, Austria)
Richard van Dijk (Vienna, Austria)

Foundations in Umfundalai

Tabatha Robinson (San Francisco, CA, USA)
Monique Walker (Clark County, MD, USA)

Dances of Resistance: African American Ring Shout & African-Brazilian Orixa Traditions

Tamara Williams (Charlotte, NC, USA)
Suzi Alila (Charlotte, NC, USA)

Selected Discussions:

The Aging and Agelessness of our Dancing Bodies

Danah Bella (Baltimore, MD, USA)
Tracey Bonner (Lexington, KY, USA)
Holly Johnston (Long Beach, CA, USA)
Ava Maria Alvarez (Greensboro, NC, USA)
Ruby Morales (Chicago, IL, USA)
Karina Sainz (San Diego, CA)

Austral/Asian inclusive connections

Liz Lea (Watson, ACT, Australia)
Kavitha Krishnan (Singapore)
Imran Manaff (Singapore)

Documentary Screening and Discussion

Kathryn Roszak (Sausalito, CA, USA)

2024 Conference Sponsors

The Creary De La O Family Foundation (CDF) is committed to promoting and preserving the arts and advancing scientific endeavors of critical interest to Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino communities. We believe that the arts are an essential part of our culture and have the power to inspire, educate, and bring people together around issues of social justice, racial equity, and cultural heritage.

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We also believe that science has the power to improve lives and to create a more sustainable, equitable, and prosperous future for people from historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups. Our mission is to support and nurture individuals and organizations that seek to promote greater understanding, empathy, and appreciation of Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino cultures and accelerate the pace of scientific discoveries that aim to improve the health and well-being of Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino people.

Brockus Project Dance was created at a time when there was not much concert dance in Los Angeles. Over the years since 1994, BPD has worked to enact change, bring more inclusion to the table and be a space for the LA arts community. BPD assists in the development and access for artists, from our culturally and racially diverse community, by being a space of encouragement for artistic development.

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Over the years, our organization has: produced over 200 showcases for local emerging and advanced choreographers, included 500 choreographers, thousands of dancers and audience members, provided video and photos to each company for their publicity use, hosted over 20 international master classes, 10 workshops, hundreds of open adult classes for artistic professional development, attended numerous town hall lectures, worked with over 15,000 of LA’s at risk youth both in school and after school through classes and performances, connected dance to community with our annual Dance/BACK charity events, raised the visibility and viability of LA Dance by creating emerging showcases, produced 10 years of Los Angeles Dance Festival a professional show for LA companies, created a hub and home for concert dance in our rehearsal studio BPS, empowered artists through mentorship of arts administration for the next generation to ensure growth in the future and created international exchanges with France, India, Korea and Finland. While also serving the arts community as a whole, we have developed our dance company BrockusRED.

DIAVOLO | Architecture In Motion® is a creative movement production company that explores innovation by creating unique live, cinematic, digital, and media experiences.

Our mission is to create socially relevant work that celebrates the diversity and complexities of humankind. Using custom-made architectural structures, DIAVOLO combines storytelling and movement with the goal of restoring one’s mental, physical and emotional strengths.

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DIAVOLO | Architecture in Motion®, the renowned Los Angeles-based dance company, was founded in 1992 by Artistic Director Jacques Heim, an inquisitive guy who combined his academic background in theater, film, and dance with a passion for architecture. Thanks to Heim and his talented crew of dancers, designers and engineers, the Company, for more than 25 years, has been applauded internationally for its ability to display surprising movement against a backdrop of elaborately designed space, all while entertaining audiences with what is, in fact, a new art form.

His skill in creating work that entertains is central to Heim’s artistic vision, one that combines elements of contemporary dance with martial arts, acrobatics, gymnastics, and hip-hop. Throughout the years, the Company has captivated audiences in 250 cities and 14 countries and has performed to sold out audiences throughout the U.S. International touring has included stops in Germany, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Holland, Austria, Italy, Spain, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Columbia and Chile. DIAVOLO has also appeared at select corporate events and for special advertising and promotional engagements.

In 2017, DIAVOLO enjoyed an especially extraordinary season, highlighted by Heim’s creation of five new pieces for Season 12 of NBC’s hit series “America’s Got Talent.” One of the Top 10 contestants to reach the show’s finale at Hollywood’s Dolby Theater, the Company was seen by over 90 million television viewers.

Through The DIAVOLO Institute, the Company also provides educational and outreach programs for people of all ages and abilities as it seeks to share the power of dance as a means of social impact. Two such programs are T.R.U.S.T., an initiative tailored for schools that explores the necessity of teamwork; and The Veteran’s Project, a four-month workshop using movement as medicine, that DIAVOLO has replicated in cities across the U.S.

Anticipating an exciting future of continuing to impact audiences throughout the globe, DIAVOLO looks forward to touring new work; expanding its Board; undertaking more corporate and customized commercial assignments; and reaching out to even more adventurous souls who want to join DIAVOLO on this marvelous journey.

2024 Conference Collaborators

CONTRA-TIEMPO is a bold, multilingual Los Angeles-based activist dance theater company that creates communities where all people are awakened to a sense of themselves as artists and social change agents who move through the world with compassion, confidence, and joy.

Diversified Professional Coaching, LLC (DPC) is a collective of over 45 business coaches with diverse business and leadership expertise that runs deep and wide. DPC is located in the US, Canada, and Asia, offering a concierge coaching experience to clients.

MashUp Contemporary Dance Company is dedicated to the movement of female bodies and feminist ideas. Prioritizing innovation, collaboration, and inclusion, MashUp uplifts female-identifying artists and builds community through contemporary dance.