Kemi Adeyemi is Associate Professor of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. She is the author of Feels Right: Black Queer Women & the Politics of Partying in Chicago (Duke University Press, 2022) and co-editor of the volume Queer Nightlife (University of Michigan Press, 2021). Her recent writing has appeared in GLQ, Women & Performance, Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies, Routledge Companion to African American Art History, and elsewhere. Kemi founded and directs The Black Embodiments Studio, an arts writing incubator, public programming initiative, and publishing platform dedicated to building discourse around contemporary black art. MEDIA Adeyemi, Kemi. Feels Right : Black Queer Women and the Politics of Partying in Chicago. Durham: Duke University Press, 2022. Momus: The Podcast. A conversation between writer, art critic, and co-founder of ARTS.BLACK, Jessica Lynne, and Dr. Kemi Adeyemi. Kemi Adeyemi | Interviews from Yale University Radio WYBCX. Kemi Adeyemi and Kareem Khubchandani in conversation with Margot Weiss about Queer Nightlife (University of Michigan Press, 2021)

Wife, mother, DJ and co-owner of a music label, Celeste manages to balance these responsibilities while delivering and creating some of the deepest, soulful mixes in today’s house music landscape.  Celeste was introduced to DJing by the legendary Steve “Silk” Hurley in 1982. Celeste has played in various clubs in various cities nationwide and has shared the decks with names like Ron Carroll, The Chosen Few, Jihad Muhammad, Ian Friday, Boo Williams, Lou Gorbea, DJ Spinna and Grammy winning DJ Louie Vega, among many others. Today, she is the Musical Director/Talent Liaison for The Summer Oasis Festival in historic Idlewild, Michigan, and has partnered with Tastemaker Duane Powell as Co-Resident for Art N Soul at the beautiful Epiphany Center in Chicago. She has played various festivals including being the first female to play The Chosen Few Picnic, The Chicago House Music Festival, Divas of House, Herstory@ Chicago’s Daley Plaza, several of The Silver Room Block club parties, The Attic Picnic, and at Coney Island in NY. She recently had a feature article in the re-launch of Defected Records “Faith Fanzine” and closed out The Ron Hardy Tribute and fundraiser in grand fashion. Recently featured at Clubhouse Jamboree in NY, along with being in the book “Lady of The House” just released in publication November of 2021. She has also been featured several times with the Honeycomb Music Radio show featuring Josh Milan, all while maintaining her internet radio show every Saturday now exclusively on Twitch.tv called The Celestial Odyssey.

MEDIA

• The Celestial Odyssey- Celestethedj Alexander
• Celeste Alexander | Off The Couch [Chicago, IL].

Junious L. Brickhouse is an internationally recognized scholar practitioner dedicated to the sustainability of Street Dance cultures and communities. As a researcher, folklorist, cultural ambassador, mentor, and logistician, Junious currently serving as Director of Next Level, an initiative sponsored by the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in association with the Department of Music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Meridian International Center for Cultural Diplomacy. In 2005, Junious founded Urban Artistry Inc. (www.urbanartistry.org), inspiring and creating a movement of artists dedicated to the preservation of street dance culture producing  projects such as The International Soul Society Festival, The Preservatory and the UA Digital Archives. Junious continues to present and teach at colleges and serves as Co-Chair of the Cultural Diversity Committee at the American Folklore Society, as well as an Executive Board Member at the National Council for the Traditional Arts. MEDIA The National Council for the Traditional Arts with Junious Brickhouse American Vernacular Dance Week at the Augusta Heritage Center. Library’s American Folklife Center discuss the Urban Artistry organization with its founder, Junious Brickhouse

Kyle “JustSole” Clark is an award-winning dancer, choreographer and street dance competitor who has dedicated 20+ years to the cultivation, transmission, and preservation of Hip Hop/Street and club dance forms/cultural traditions. Kyle has toured both nationally and internationally with Rennie Harris Puremovement as a Principal dancer/ Rehearsal Director. He has represented the U.S.A. as a Cultural Ambassador through the State Dept. in a half dozen countries. He also won and judged national and international street dance competitions. He has choreographed for Ailey II among many others. Over the past 10+ years, he co-created Just Sole! Street Dance Theater Company (Performance), Funky Sole Fundamentals (Education) which has done work across the country. Kyle earned his MFA from The University of the Arts. Kyle is a full time professor at Swarthmore College.

Thomas F. DeFrantz directs SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology; the group explores emerging technology in live performance applications. Books: Routledge Companion to African American Theater and Performance, Choreography and Corporeality: Relay in Motion ( 2016), Black Performance Theory: An Anthology of Critical Readings ( 2014), Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance (2002), and Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey’s Embodiment of African American Culture (2004). Convenes the Black Performance Theory working group as well as the Collegium for African Diaspora Dance. Recent teaching: University of the Arts Mobile MFA in Dance; ImPulsTanz; New Waves Institute; faculty at Hampshire College, Stanford, Yale, MIT, NYU, University of Nice. Has chaired Program in Women’s and Gender Studies at MIT; the concentration in Physical Imagination at MIT; the Department of African and African American Studies at Duke; and served as President of the Society of Dance History Scholars. DeFrantz acted as a consultant for the Smithsonian Museum of African American Life and Culture, contributing concept and a voice-over for a permanent installation on Black Social Dance that opened with the museum in 2016.

MEDIA

• Podcast: Thomas DeFrantz, “Queer Social Dance, Political Leadership, and Black Popular Culture”.
• Exploring the lived Black experience through dance by Trevor Hook with Thomas DeFrantz
• Bone-Breaking, Black Social Dance, and Queer Corporeal Orature.

MONCELL DURDEN A dance educator, choreographer, documentarian, embodied historian, author, and Associate Professor of practice at University of Southern California Glorya Kaufman International School of Dance. He spent 10 years performing with Philadelphia Hip Hop company Rennie Harris Puremovement. Moncell specializes in pedagogical practices that prove cultural and historical context in what he calls the morphology of Afro-kinetic memory. Moncell teaches practical and theoretical classes in the U.S. and abroad; an expert in American and some European social dances. His published works include “Beginning Hip Hop Dance,” “Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches,” “The Encyclopedia of African Cultural Heritage in North America,” “Rooted Jazz Dance,” and “The Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Dance.” He appears in a number of documentaries and has consulted on the Baz Luhrmann film “Elvis”, Disney+ “The World According to Jeff Goldblum,” TV show “The Porter” and several of Camille Brown’s projects. MEDIA Everything Remains Raw: A Historical Perspective of Hip Hop Dance The Talkin’ and Testifyin’ Podcast- Histories and heritage of American social dance. “What Do You Dance?”

 

Mother, Choreographer, Cultural Ambassador, Professor, and Performing Artist Michelle N. Gibson received her BFA in Dance from Tulane University and MFA from Hollins University in collaboration with the American Dance Festival at Duke University. Grounded in New Orleans’ rich tapestry, Michelle harmoniously blends the resonances of the Black church, jazz, traditional funeral processions, Congo Square gatherings, and Second Line parades. She embodies these communal celebrations, ensuring they form the core of her teachings, particularly in her Afro-Modern and signature New Orleans Second Line Aesthetic.   13-year faculty member with the American Dance Festival, currently serving as a Professor of Practice in Dance at Southern Methodist University in Dallas Texas.

 

MEDIA

• “Takin’ It To The Roots” Trailer
• How to do a Second Line by Michelle Gibson.  Act V The Second Line Voices of Congo Square.
• The BuckShop Second Line Dance w Michelle Gibson & MJs Brass Boppers. 

Hope is a Discipline: An Interview with Dr. Xavier Livermon

Xavier Livermon is Associate Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Director of Black Studies, and faculty affiliate with Feminist Studies and Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has published widely in the fields of African Popular Culture and African Queer Studies. His 2020 book,  Kwaito Bodies: Remastering Space and Subjectivity in Postapartheid South Africa discusses the rise of post-apartheid South African popular culture and its articulation with contemporary politics of race, gender, and sexuality and was a finalist for the African Studies Association Melville Herskovits Award. He is currently working on two projects, one examining intimacy and love among Black queer men in film and another that explores Black Queer Belonging in South Africa. MEDIA Xavier Livermon on his book Kwaito Bodies for Popular Music Books in Process Series Hope is a Discipline: An Interview with Dr. Xavier Livermon

xavierlivermon.com

 

 

Raquel Monroe, Ph.D. is an interdisciplinary performance scholar/artist/administrator and mother whose research interests include black social dance, queer black feminisms, popular culture, and the efficacy of collaboration to create social change. Monroe’s scholarship appears in journals and anthologies on race, sexuality, dance and popular culture. Her in process monograph Black Girl Werk: Choreographies of Liberation by Black Femme Cultural Producers employs Black queer feminist choreographic praxis to theorize performances and acts of protest by Black femmes in the public sphere. Monroe realizes her passion for collaboration as a member of the interdisciplinary arts collective the Propelled Animals.

 

MEDIA

 “The White Girl in the Middle”: The Performativity of Race, Class, and Gender in Step Up 2: the Streets

 

 

 

 

Rosemarie A. Roberts is a dance studies scholar, dancer and educator. Her artistic and scholarly work blend history, dance and theater in order to conduct social psychological and anthropological investigations of Afro-diasporic dance as embodiments of difference, knowledge and resistive power. Professor Roberts has taught workshops for people of all ages, directed programs and performed to diverse audiences at a variety of venues in the Caribbean and the United States including Yale University, Mount Holyoke College and Howard University.  Professor Roberts has also published in peer-reviewed journals, edited volumes and co-authored a book/DVD project on conceptions of social justice in education and dance, Katherine Dunham’s Research to Performance Methodology. Professor Roberts is presently writing a book-length manuscript about the relationship among racialized bodies, knowledge and power discontents.

MEDIA

• Baring Unbearable Sensualities: Hip Hop Dance, Bodies, Race, and Power By Rosemarie Roberts. 182 pp. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2021
• Thinking thru Hip-Hop Dance: Imani Kai Johnson, grace shinae jun, Rosemarie Roberts, PMBiP, 19/06/23.