performance & video art
As a dancer and performer, I'm interested in producing site-specific movement and ritual works that draw on Black and Queer artistic and organizing legacies, especially through detailed movement studies of the somatic languages of joy and resistance. In the past, I've produced work through the ROT Festival, Yale Dance Lab, Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media, and DIY/co-op spaces at Stanford, Berkeley, and Yale. In Oakland, I dance regularly with Gatherings in the Bay, Dance Mission Theater, CounterPulse, and BANDALOOP.
Besides my dance work, I've also participated in immersive theater and musical productions, as well as produced video art accompanying installation and performance work. I'm always interested in brainstorming or collaborating with musicians, dancers, or visual artists about future work, so please reach out on the contact tab if that's of interest!
Owuo Atwedeɛ
This piece is a work-in-progress movement study and sound collage reflecting on my time with family in Ghana in March celebrating the life of my uncle Mensah. It travels through the four days of his funeral ceremony, including the wake keeping, funeral, burial, and celebration of life, and incorporates movements from the sacrificial pouring of libations, the ritual covering in white paint done by Akan fetish priests, the dancerly carrying of the casket through the streets during the funeral procession, the typical washing ceremony before and after eating, and the motifs of clapping, backwards circles, and handkerchief waving I saw frequently there.
The sound collage includes field recordings from his funeral, the streets of Accra, archival Ghanaian political speeches, and music. It premiered at the ROT Festival performance showcase in June 2026. More details about the project, along with photo documentation and the full audio collage, are available here.
Destination Unknown - A Sun Ra Musical
Destination Unknown was a musical performance in November 2024 celebrating the legacy of legendary experimental jazz musician Sun Ra and his connection to Oakland and Berkeley. It was an immersive musical play and concert taking place in Sun Ra's spaceship, the Ark, incorporating his music, poetry, and speeches. It was a collaboration with musicians Orr Paradise, Gianna Caudillo, Lena, Hank, Ian, and others from the Berkeley Music Department. Very sadly, there is no video of the performance, but the audio recording is above & here is a potato quality pic of the stage.
Black Parades, Queer Magics
This was a group piece meditating on the magics of migrations, parades, processionals, marches, and bodily interventions, performed virtually in May 2021. It was directed by Ni’Ja Whitson as part of Tavia Nyong’o’s Black Queer Performance Studies seminar and co-created with Rhea Sakinah, Emma Pernudi-Moon, Gundula Kreuzer, and Alex Fialho. My part of the piece involves an examination of the Black Atlantic through a mile-long procession through Sandy Point Bird Sanctuary Beach in West Haven and a poetic reading from a 1788 Petition for the Abolition of Slavery in Connecticut by the Enslaved People of New Haven, which was originally drafted near the beach.
All the Spaces that had Green
This was a video work recorded by me and edited by Başak Özsaraç that debuted at Yale's Center for Collaborative Arts and Media in May 2022 as part of the class "Performance and the Moving Image." The video investigates slippages between “natural” and “artificial” spaces in New Haven and incorporates a recording of traditional Korean music by Soomin Kim. The recording of the larger ensemble performance has sadly been lost, but the performance dealt with themes of grief and rest in the wake of the climate crisis generally and the passing of my friend and housemate John Davern. As part of the performance, I also shared this text about John and built a collective shrine honoring rest.
Embodying Abolition - Black Feminism's Liberatory Gestures
This was a durational performance and artistic research project that investigated how Black feminists in the 1970s disrupted embodied carceral responses through their performances of safety and made way for abolitionist communities of care.
In my performance, I cycled through five ritual movements evoking Black feminist principles 3,000 times each. Somatic practitioners assert that this level of repetition is necessary to create new embodied responses. I performed the movements for more than 15 hours, inviting others along the way to share what made them feel safe in their bodies. The ritual repetitions were performed publicly across ten historical sites of Black feminist resistance in New Haven, many of which continue to be contested spaces of struggle.
The above video, which I am re-editing now, incorporates videos from each of the performances along with my writing and historical notes. Writing, historical research, and performance notes related to the project are available here, here, and here. The piece was conceived in December 2021 as part of the class "American Abolition: From Slavery to Mass Incarceration" with the support of Professor Micah Khater.
r&j
This was a devised immersive theater production of Romeo and Juliet performed at the 576 Alvarado Co-op at Stanford by The Freeks in Spring 2017. I played Mercutio and had a fully improvised queer ghost romance with Tybalt after our swordfight :) Here are a few photos from the performances.
Re: Coming Home to Roost
(in progress!) Video project about chimney swifts and queer placemaking. Adapted from an email sent to the "Performance and the Moving Image" class after our final performance in May 2022. Performed live at Hillegass Parker House in 2025. Text here.