Hometown:  Born
in Lake Forest, Illinois; raised in Windsor & London, Ontario Canada and
Nassau, Bahamas

Current city: 
Oakland, CA

Age:  47

College and degree: 
Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from University of Windsor, Ontario
Canada

Website: 
http://www.destinyarts.org

How you pay the bills:  I work full time as the Artistic
Director at Destiny Arts Center 

All of the dance hats you wear:  In my job as an Artistic Director I do everything from
running rehearsals for the Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company, our
pre-professional teen dance/theater troupe, to writing curriculum, planning and
running staff trainings for our 25 teaching artists, who teach in our main site
and school-based programs, to working with other Destiny administrative staff
on strategic planning so we continue to run quality, accessible, sustainable
programs.

 —————————

Describe your dance
life in your….

20s:  I trained
vigorously in ballet and modern dance. 
I performed and toured with various dance companies in Boston and the
Bay Area – the Performing Arts Ensemble,
Impulse Jazz Dance Company (http://www.impulsedance.com/) and the Dance Brigade (http://www.dancebrigade.org/).  I started running the performing arts
programs at Destiny Arts Center.  I
also danced in hip hop performances at various San Francisco gay clubs.

30s:  I
continued to train vigorously in modern dance and to perform and tour with the Dance Brigade.  I ran my own dance/theater company with Erica Smith called i am! Productions and toured our
two-woman show about growing up biracial in America called “Portrait of a Girl from Nowhere: an urban
fairy tale.”  The show toured
nationally and internationally.  I
ran the dance program at Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco for 3
years and ran the hip hop dance program at the East Bay Center for the
Performing Arts in Richmond for 5 years.

40s:  I started
working with Destiny Arts Center full time, first as the Executive Director (5
years) and now as the Artistic Director. 
I stopped dancing professionally. 
Now I take classes in salsa with Yismari Ramos and soul motion (http://www.soulmotion.com/) with Valerie
Chafograck.

How did you first get
involved with Destiny?

I first got involved with Destiny Arts Center when I was 25
years old.  At the time, I was
performing and touring with the San Francisco based dance/theater company Dance Brigade as well as bussing tables at a restaurant to make ends meet.  Dance Brigade was connected to a small
nonprofit in Oakland called Hand to Hand
Self Defense Center (http://handtohandkajukenbo.com/)
that taught martial arts and self-defense primarily to women.  They had just started a youth martial
arts program and Dance Brigade was working with some of Hand to Hand’s young
students to create a segment of their annual holiday performance, The Revolutionary Nutcracker Sweetie.  I was one of the choreographers for the
youth dance number.  When I started
working with the Hand to Hand kids, the director of the youth program, Kate
Hobbs, asked me to start a performing arts program at the center as a way to
bring youth into the center who may not be attracted to the martial arts, but
who needed the self defense and conflict resolution skills that were being
taught there.  One thing led to
another.  I wrote a California Arts
Council artist in residency grant in order to get paid to teach free classes to
youth at Hand to Hand.  I started
with 4 modern dance and 8 hip hop dance students.  Since then (22 years ago!) the Hand to Hand youth program
became its own nonprofit called Destiny Arts Center that serves up to 4,000
youth every year in dance, theater, martial arts and performance programs at
our center and in up to 45 public schools in the East Bay.

What keeps you going
year after year?

What keeps me going year after year is knowing that the work
I’m doing, that we’re doing at Destiny, is making a difference in the lives of
the young people we serve.  Here
are some examples of what folks say about the programs:

A student:  “I’ve had the best time of my life with
Destiny. I never felt so confident until I worked with Destiny. I feel more
brave, artistic, stronger (mentally and physically), grateful and happier about
life. Thank you so much for my first and last year with you guys. I’ll never
forget you.”

A
parent:  “Destiny has broadened her (Destiny
student) understanding of politics and social justice. She is discovering the
world in which she lives and developing a strong commitment to making a
difference. Your guidance and your energy contribute so much to her growth, as an
artist and a person. We are so glad she has you to turn to!”

The dance
director at Berkeley High School:  “I
can spot a Destiny Arts dancer from a mile away. Each year at the auditions for
the Berkeley High School Dance Production, a few Destiny dancers show up and in
the sea of high school dancers these girls ALWAYS stand out: they are
remarkably poised, self-possessed and well-trained. More importantly, as young
women they have clearly developed a sense of their own power on stage as
separate from the over-sexualized “power” of the dancers we see in hip hop
videos. These girls see their bodies as their creative tools and view
performance as a forum for expressing the best parts of themselves.”

Destiny’s productions
are incredible works of art. Can you write a little about making art with
teenagers – and how these productions are your place to be artistic and
creative? What is inspiring you these days?

I have always known that I wanted to be a dancer – as soon as I could articulate what I wanted to be when I grew up.  And I was raised by activist parents who were constantly teaching me that I was responsible for creating a better world.  My work at Destiny is the combination of my artist self and my activist self.  My work with the teens through the Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company reflects that blend of creating art that has personal and political meaning.

Can you talk about
the book Youth on the Move? How long did it take to write it? What was the inspiration/impetus
to take on the project?

The book Youth on the
Move chronicles the process of creating original movement/theater
performances with teens in the style that I created with the Destiny Arts Youth
Performance Company over the years. 
The project was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and took
me about a year to write from start to finish.  I had an incredible curriculum consultant, Maura Wolf, who
helped me create a format for the book and then I just wrote about the process of
the work, with the hopes that other performing arts teachers would get inspired
to create collaborative dance/theater work with their teenage students that reflected
their hopes and dreams for themselves and their planet.  I have watched over and over again how
this type of work empowers and inspires my students and the audiences that see
their work and I wanted the program to be replicable in different settings
besides Destiny. 

On training and care
of the body…..

I believe that eating well, getting enough rest and moving
your body in the way that brings you joy are the most important ways to
maintain glowing health.  I used to
get so much joy from training in ballet and modern dance and so I did that.  Now I use that training in my more
improvisational dancing (soul motion) and in my salsa dance.  And it makes me sooo happy. 

Non-dance movement
practices important to you include…..

I love to ride my bike!

Finances and
financial stability. Advice to young dancers –

Start saving retirement money early!  I regret that I didn’t put away even
$25 a month when I was younger, because now I am scrambling to save as much as
I can in a short amount of time so I can actually retire one day.

General advice to
young dancers

Never sacrifice your peace of mind and your love of your
body to get technique or a gig. 
It’s not worth it!  Your
well being and your self love should come first!

Future career goals

I want to grow old at Destiny Arts Center and watch the
children and grandchildren of my students experience the same ecstatic
community building, empowerment through the arts as their parents and
grandparents did.  I want to teach
other teachers what I know about working with youth in after school performing
arts/violence prevention settings so that the gem of the work gets passed on.

Books, websites, blogs, and shows that serve as inspiration

Books:

• Assata: an
  autobiography by Assata Shakur
• This Life
  by Sidney Poitier
• A Thousand
  Names for Joy by Byron Katie
• When
  Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron
• The Way of
  Love by Nigel Watts
• Of Water
  and the Spirit by Malidoma Patrice Somé

Shows:

• O by Cirque du Soleil
• Fela! (the musical)
• Fiddler on the Roof (the musical)
• The Medea Project by Rhodessa Jones
• The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler
• All work by the Dance Brigade
• All work by Lines Ballet