BIOGRAPHY:
Chosen as Elastic Arts, “Chicago Takes 10” recipient, alumni of Columbia College Chicago Dance program, and recipient of the 3arts Make a Wave Grant, at a glance, Keisha’s artistic specialty in dance is an inward outpour of heart and soul. Inspired by her humble beginnings and observations of nature in her movement vocabulary, Keisha intermingles the language of her life with a vast technical training in West African, House, Modern, ballet, and martial arts.
A well-established and passionate improvisational performer, she has accompanied as a soloist for “ The Black Monument Jazz Ensemble,” “Sebau,” Katherine Davis, Angel Bat Dawid, and Ben LaMar Gay. She choreographed and performed alongside Jazz musicians in the “Instigation Festival,” and Mars Williams,”Devil’s Whistle,” based in New Orleans. She also participated in the “Freedom From Freedom Too” series in Chicago. Enriched participant of Onye Ozuzu’s Project Tool, she has been honored to have received a scholarship for the participation in Dance Gathering 2022 in Marseille, France.
In her Choreographic pursuits, Keisha has been mentored by BeBe Miller's Solo/Duo Dancing Project awarded residency to choreograph works at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago and Links Hall. Identifying herself as a faith based creative she has created dance for Church Communities at the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, Living Testimony Ministry, and Chicago Life Center. Inviting others into her movement experiences, She has created collaborative and structured improvisational works joining together the perspectives of her community in her performance work.
Cherishing the bonds built from co-laboring and moving purposefully with the community, she’s dedicated the past 10 years to developing workshops and classes at creative venues, youth centers, church communities, and outdoor festivals/events. In her Creative Care Community Facilitation, Keisha crafts community, care, and praise circles that incorporate a diversity of self-expressions, promote spiritual release, and community upliftment. She’s taught and facilitated for Crown Community Acd, Blue door Neighborhood Center, Imagine Englewood if, Austin Town Hall, Mindful Practices, and Comfort Station. Awarded Dance Studio Residency at the Chicago Cultural Center, where with other artists and care professionals she is directing Praise House Language Workshops that bring families together in a creative circle of expression and praise.
“Movement is a reminder that you have life, and everywhere there is life there is movement”
I was, for the most part; outside during childhood exploring the ground below me, digging through the dirt for essences of the past. I create dance in remembrance of the moment when my dad showed me my first Native American arrowhead or when he showed me a slave burial ground each body marked by tiny little pink flags. I have always wanted to discover my undocumented, lost, manipulated, and destroyed ancestral history. Dance made me realize that my body carried its own vernacular memory that came from more than my own generational experiences. My artistic and teaching practice started to show itself during the first work I choreographed. It was for a pageant and to Nina Simone’s song called, “4 Negroe women.”
A song where Nina Simone sings real-life perspectives of four African American women. In this song, Simone describes age, skin tone, and the physicality of each woman in relation to their experiences as black women in America. Each woman in some way vulnerable to the judgments of her environment. I discovered an urgency for my subconscious to develop an understanding of the layers of my psyche that have been manipulated by my hardships of being black and a woman in a white patriarchal social class system.
The movement process in my practice has become about using improvisation as a tool for re-tracing my ancestral history, re-interpreting my life’s experiences through a lens of self-actualization, and finding ways to move in psychological, spiritual, and physical states of freedom.”