Our Team

Organizational Structure

Embodiment Project seeks to bring depth, narrative, beauty, and fierce dedication to movement building work. We draw a bridge between three thriving communities in the Bay Area: 1) social activism; 2) street dance; and 3) concert dance. We are committed to our longstanding coalitions and utilize the revitalizing power of resilience and unity inherent to Black social dance towards social transformation.

We have undertaken a deeply immersive restructuring process to embody an organizational culture and governance that reflect the social transformation we seek, through transition to a governance system called sociocracy. Our aim is to nurture regenerative culture that stimulates an industry-wide shift in the concert dance landscape and non-profit industrial complex.

Core Team

  • Nicole Klaymoon  

    As a choreographer, poet, and founder/co-director of Embodiment Project, Klaymoon’s dance seeks to gives voice to underrepresented narratives. As a white/jewish queer woman, Klaymoon is committed to anti-racist embodiment, shifting power dynamics, and accountability. Rooted in Kingian Nonviolence, intersectionality, and eco-feminism/womanism, Klaymoon’s work centers street dance and hip-hop's cultural significance as expression, resistance, and empowerment. Through autobiographical storytelling and multidisciplinary performance, she contextualizes complex topics while amplifying survivors and movement leaders. Her creative process adopts a documentary theater approach, fostering trust and collaboration with interview subjects. Through in-depth conversations, Klaymoon gathers first-hand accounts woven with live music, spoken word, and choreography integrating choreopoetry - an interplay of language and movement, intellectual and visceral.


  • P. Leonie Smith is a first-generation Canadian of Jamaican heritage and is founder of The Thoughtful Workplace, a consultancy that uses a relational and skill-building approach to coaching, training, and mediation. Her work and life are centered around sharing people-centered modalities such as Nonviolent Communication, Restorative and Transformative Justice practices, and Sociocracy to support people who are traditionally marginalised to show up in their full humanity. She is also founder and Executive Director of People of Colour for Nonviolent Communication (POC4NVC), an international network for Black, Indigenous People of Colour (BIPOC) who are connected to principles of nonviolence. She is also a trainer and core team member for East Point Peace Academy, a nonviolence training and consulting organization based in Oakland, California.

    Through the use of these and other tools, she supports groups and teams to find ways of working that reduce harm by understanding and sharing practical skills to address the impact of systemic racism and oppression. She has over 20 years of experience in senior management positions in nonprofit organizations in communications, fundraising and human resources. She is based in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

  • 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.

  • Odette Semien Bradbury is a multi-disciplinary artist from the Bay Area. Trained in House dance, Odette was a member of ODC’s youth Hip-Hop company SEEDS between 2016 and 2020 under Nicole Klaymoon, Amber Julian, Poko Devis, George Chi Cheng a.k.a Txana Wukong, and Rama Mahesh Hall. Since then she has performed in two of Nicole Klaymoon’s choreographic works titled “Weight Lifting the Sun” (2023) and “Shoulders of Eternity” (2023) alongside pre-professional and professional dance artists. She is currently a core member of Lauren Benjamin’s dance company Be Movement Collective. Beyond dance, Odette is a music maker, visual artist and poet. She plans to attend The Cooper Union School of Art this coming fall in New York City.

  • Rama Hall is a professional dancer based out of the Bay Area, California. He’s been studying street dance styles for the last 13 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, and Capoeira.

    Rama was a full time student at a street dance school in Sweden, Åsa Folkhogskola, for two different years, 2012/13, and 2017/18, also being able to explore Europe during that time getting inspiration and experience from the leaders of street dance there.

    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 program that offers the students there Transcendental Meditation as an outlet to their stress, and for the student’s self development.

  • Nakachi Clark-Kasimu (she/they/fam) is a poet, singer, auntie, lover of ice cream and willing servant to 2 cats and all our children. Nakachi is a healer, abolitionist, aspiring bodhisattva as well as a death and rebirth doula who has worked in education since 2005 having taught kindergarteners through adults. Nakachi practices art as mischief to achieve racial justice and a life in right relationship with the earth. Nakachi is a Black Teacher Project Fellow (2019-2022) as well as founder and steward of the weekly writer’s collective Black Teachers Write. When not trying to hurry up and finish a library book before it’s due, Nakachi can be found laughing real loud, working on a jazz progression and doing her best to make sure all beings know they are loved and the source of all love.

  • A Southern California native, Matthew comes to EP with a diverse portfolio of experience, including accounting, treasury management, finance, HR management , and budget planning. While Matthew has spent much of his professional career in various business and financial capacities at both public and private institutions of higher education, Matthew also has experience aiding nonprofits and private firms with both strategic and operational objectives.

  • 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.

  • 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.

Core Dancers


  • Hello world👋🏽

    My name is Francis Anthony Cailles and I am a San Francisco Bay Area native that has grown into dance artistry as a movement across life. Dance is the lens and landscape through which I navigate what it means to be human on this Earth. I first stepped into a philosophy of dance that was driven by scientific inquiry developing a movement informed by kinesthesia, logical reasoning and axioms from understanding my own physical structure setting the form and function of my own biomechanics. I knew I always loved to dance, but I first approached my movement practice as a scientist/athlete before embarking on this more holistic journey in understanding the body as artistic medium and created a deeper spiritual practice meditating on the social implications of dance. This practice became a healing modality in my life leading with the mantra, “life is a dance.”

    My dance practice revealed a life that encompassed all the experience and wisdom that my body held and would hold. My ethics, morals, virtues, and values all inform the practice. All the pieces of my self in past, present and future… a 1st generation born Filipino-American kuya who played in Milpitas Pinewood Park, the aspiring Olympic athlete who trained relentlessly in swimming, the martial artist who learned the discipline of self-defense as peaceful warrior balancing the elements, the biomedical engineer who was inspired to develop technical solutions for improving quality of health/life, the systems-thinking urbanist who works to create a more sustainable planet, the policy wonk who loves nerding out on our studies of governance, the street dancer, the adventurer, the lover of love… all the parts that are me build my movement.

    I hope to inspire a reimagining of the world we live in with art as the medium/intersection for transformation of human behavior, decision-making and hopefully political action. Building more capacity to feel, understand, and better know the world we live in. The social, political, economic, and environmental changes we aspire for are built upon all of our individual decisions and actions are resourced from the integration systemic integration of love/compassion. By alchemizing change from within each person by communicating through liberatory storytelling, I believe each person can lean in and find paths for learning the complexities across humanity and bridge understanding across conflicts. Through a shared global dance I see we can collectively decide and move towards a more just and peaceful world.

    With my role as an artist with the Embodiment Project and a (Bachelor of Arts in International Policy and Master of Public Administration) BA/MPA candidate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies with a specialization in Evaluation and Analytics I hope to provide my contribution in accelerating this social movement.

  • 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.

  • 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).

  • 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.

Artistic Collaborators

  • 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.

  • 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.