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“Presenting Black Dance Then & Now”

2nd Panel of the BCM-BCF 2025 Spirit of Sankofa Project

Celebrating Black Choreographers Festival Here & Now 20th Anniversary

 

Panelists and Performers’ Bios

 

Halifu Osumare, Ph.D. (Moderator)

Dr. Halifu Osumare is Professor Emerita in the Department of African American and African Studies (AAS) at University of California, Davis, and was the Director of AAS 2011-2014. She has been a dancer, choreographer, arts administrator, and scholar of black popular culture for over fifty years. She is also a protégé of the late renowned dancer-anthropologist Katherine Dunham and a Certified Instructor of Dunham Dance Technique. Between 1989-1995 she was the Founder and Executive Producer of her national dance initiative Black Choreographers Moving Toward the 21st Century, and help establish California’s multicultural arts legacy.  She has published two memoirs that examine this long career: Dancing In Blackness (2018) and Dancing the Afrofuture: Hula, Hip-Hop, and the Dunham Legacy (2024). Like her mentor Katherine Dunham, Dr. Osumare has dedicated her life to the intersections of the arts and humanities for a better world. 

 

Kendra Kimbrough Barnes (Panelist)

Kendra Kimbrough Barnes is Producer, Choreographer, Dance Instructor, and is Co-Founder of Black Choreographers Festival: Here & Now. She holds an MAA from Golden Gate University and a BFA from San Francisco State University. She is the director of K*STAR Productions founded in 1996, and serves as the umbrella organization for the Kendra Kimbrough Dance Ensemble (KKDE). Her dance

company’s repertoire addresses urgent, socially conscious issues such as incarceration and sexual assault. Additionally, she is Dance Instructor at University of California, Berkeley. As an artist she has studied Dunham and Horton Techniques and worked with such notables as Dr. Albirda Rose-Eberhardt, Robert Moses' Kin, Donald Byrd, Bill T. Jones, and bay area legends Chitresh Das, Malonga Casquelourd, and Carlos Aceituno.
 

Dean Beck-Stewart (Panelist)

He is a graduate of the University of Southern California with degrees in chemistry and dance history and choreography. When Dr. Halifu Osumare invited Theater Artaud to co-produce the state-wide Black Choreographers Moving Toward the 21st Century (BCM) in the San Francisco Bay Area, Executive Director Kim Fowler led the organization for the inaugural festival in 1989 with Dean Beck-Stewart as the Company Manager. He was appointed General Director the following year leading the organization as it co-produced the next four festivals in the SF Bay Area with the blessing of Dr. Osumare. He has an extensive background as a performing arts producer, commissioner, presenter, and performer. He was the General Director of Theater Artaud, an internationally acclaimed premiere large-scale multi-discipline and multi-cultural contemporary performing arts venue in San Francisco. He successfully facilitated nationally recognized collaborative community-based programs to provide opportunities for Bay Area artists and organizations to build the quality of their work, audiences, and resources. Dean Beck-Stewart is currently board advisor and performance coach for Sing Napa Valley, an intergenerational community choir in Napa, CA.

 

laura elaine ellis (Panelist)

laura elaine ellis is Co-Founder/Co-Director of Black Choreographers Festival: Here & Now, recognized in 2019 and 2025 by the State of California for preserving Black dance, art and culture. laura is also the Co-founder and the Executive Director of The African & African American Performing Arts Coalition (AAAPAC), a San Francisco-based non-profit organization, founded in 1995.  AAAPAC is dedicated to the development and support of work by and for the African American community.  Ellis has maintained a non-stop career of performing and choreographing for many Bay Area projects. She is a long-time member of Dimensions Dance Theater, she has earned an Isadora Duncan award for individual performance, and most recently she performed in Jo Kreiter/Flyaway Production’s Ode to Jane and co/choreographed, with Joanna Haigood, SF BATCO’s original musical, Sign My Name To Freedom. Both projects named as best productions in 2024 by KQED Arts.  laura has earned critical praise for her choreography for theater projects produced by Theater Rhinoceros and Shotgun Players.  laura is also a dance educator with 31 years of teaching and designing programs for CSU Eastbay and the Athenian School.  This summer laura will be choreographing pre-professional productions with A.C.T. and SFartsED. She is thrilled to be celebrating and bringing to community the 20th Anniversary season of BCF: Here & Now!

 

Joanna Haigood (Panelist)

Since 1980 Joanna has been creating work that uses natural, architectural and cultural environments as points of departure for movement exploration and narrative. Her stages have included grain terminals, a clock tower, the pope’s palace, military forts, and a mile of urban neighborhood streets in the South Bronx. Her work has been commissioned by many arts institutions including Dancing in the Streets, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Walker Arts Center, the Exploratorium Museum, the National Black Arts Festival, and Festival d'Avignon.  She has also been honored with the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, the United States Artist Fellowship, and a New York Bessie Award. Haigood is also a recipient of the esteemed Doris Duke Artist Award and she is a Dance Magazine Awardee ’24.

 

 

L. Martina Young, Ph.D. (Panelist)

Dance artist, writer, somatics educator, and humanities lecturer, Dr. Young is a multi-year Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts. She began her career as a member of the Inner City Repertory Dance Company under artistic director and choreographer Donald McKayle. As a soloist, she has collaborated with The Watts Prophets, as well as Los Angeles’s Inglewood Symphony Orchestra and the Reno Philharmonic Orchestra. As a dance educator Dr. Young has served on the faculties of The College of William and Mary, California State University of Dominguez Hills, and California Institute of the Arts, and was Director of Dance at the University of Nevada, Reno from 1987-1994. As an essayist, Ms. Young’s literary work is published in both professional and scholarly journals.

 

 

Byb Chanel Bibene (Performer) is a dance educator, choreographer and performer working in theater, ethnic, Afro urban, and contemporary dance forms. His own technical and aesthetic sensibility is rooted in the culture and dances of his country of origin, the Republic of Congo. He has toured the world and performed internationally with companies and choreographers originating from Africa, Europe, and the USA. Artistic Director of Kiandanda Dance Theater, Bibene founded Mbongui Square festival, a multidisciplinary arts festival that gathers dance, music, spoken word and visual artists from the Bay Area and across the world. Outside of his professional careers of Theater and Dance, Bibene has a passion for writing. He is an author of numerous poetry and shorts. Bibene owns a bachelor’s in science, Economics/Finances from Marien Ngouabi University/Brazzaville, an MFA in Dance Creative Practice from Saint Mary's College of California

 

 

dominique lesleyann (Performer) is a powerhouse. A divine vibrant being. She is a storyteller; revisiting and reimagining all aspects of herself and allowing her experiences to shape her reality. Diving intorealms of love and collaboration, she is exploring empathetic and compassionate ways of listening and learning from herancestors, family, and friends on how to cultivate and sustain a thriving community. As a teacher, she invites her students in the process of self-reflection. Co-creating a space where her students feel called to swim in the pools of their inner truth and create/perform movement from the space of authenticity.  dominique has had the pleasure of training with Deeply rooted dance theater, Hubbard street, Homer hans Bryant, LINES Ballet BFA program, Guy Shoromi and Sidra Bell. She has had the opportunity of choreographing and performing internationally in Portugal and Vancouever and domestically throughout the Bay Area. dominique is currently an arts education teaching artist in the SF and Oakland area and dancing with Dance Brigade. She is excited to be returning to her origins as a dancer and choreographer; diving into the ritual form that is movement medicine.  asé. amen. and so it is.

 

 

natalya janay shoaf, (Performer) based in the Bay Area, is a renowned dance educator, choreographer, and performer with a dynamic career spanning both education and performance. She is currently dance educator at Oakland School for the Arts, a company member with the foundry — directed by Alex Ketley, and in residency at The Athenian School, Cal State University East Bay, and ODC. She is currently working towards and evening length solo entitled “from seed to bloom” set to premiere August 3rd, 5PM, at ODC. For more information, : www.natalyashoaf.com | @natalyashoaf — Instagram

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