Tag: women

Illuminating stories about Black Women’s Health

I have a vision. It has been with me for decades and grew from my experience with traditional West African dance in a community setting, a failed semester in college, dancers becoming family and the Urban Bush Women summer dance institute. I want a life that brings me joy and allows me to be in circles with Black women, listening to stories, dancing, cooking, playing, holding babies, creating, sharing solutions, and being medicine for each other. Music to me was the sound of my mother and her 4 sisters or the power of my aunt performing gospel music with four other women and feeling like a full mass choir. The little girl who first dreamed of being a doctor and a ballerina, figured out a way to make it happen.

Here in 2025, I find myself managing a women’s health research center at an HBCU and researching methods for using qualitative data (interviews and personal stories) to create theater that can heal and educate. I am working with graduate students in public health, adolescents and artists. I bring Black women’s stories to life on stage with the intention to illuminate our brilliance and power.

This year has been busy with art making.
January to April I co-facilitated autobiographical writing circles with justice impacted women at Deborah Johnson Rehabilitation Center. I watched 8 women come to voice in the most beautiful way. The smiles at their final performance will feed my should until we meet again next Spring.

I trained two graduate research assistants in my choreopoem creating methods. In turn, they transformed interview transcripts from research on Black women clergy and their experiences with sexual health education in churches. The monologues were performed as s surprise to the key researcher at the Bold Women, Bold Ideas: Innovation in HIV prevention.

We also presented a choreopoem based on the autobiographical writing of public health students.