Legacies in Action: 2026 DWB Fellowship Show
Description
You don’t want to miss witnessing the new works in development by our 2026 Dancing While Black (DWB) Fellows. These six artists have been gathering monthly since March to build community with one another and master teachers in the field. This showing of new works is intended to support the ongoing innovation of their creative practice and process. Each show will be followed by a Q & A with the artists.
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In celebration of the 10th Anniversary of the DWB Fellowship, we will have an evening of Story Circles and a day of masterclasses in September. Join us as we amplify Dancing While Black's Legacies in Action all season!
Thursday, September 3, 2026 6:00pm
Dancing While Black Story Circles at 651Arts
featuring Co-Facilitators Wendi Moore-O'Neal and Paloma McGregor and Storytellers Aimee Cox, Dyane Harvey-Salaam, Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Jason Samuels Smith, Jonathan Gonzalez, and Nigel Campbell.
Saturday, September 19, 2026
11:00am, 1:00pm & 3:00pm
Dancing While Black Master Classes for the Masses at BAAD!
featuring Adia Whitaker, Rashida Bumbray, Tyrone Bevans and J.Bouey. Book tickets here
Lineup
Friday, October 2, 2026 featuring Elinor Kleber Diggs, Mai'yah Kau and Quaba Ernest
Elinor Kleber Diggs (they/them) "Coast" 9 tasks, one start, and one end Mai'yah Kau aka Maima the Water Spirit (they/she) "I Wore a Lappa to the Club" channels my return to my ancestral land of Liberia, where I mourned alongside my father's community and its masquerades at the homegoing of the masquerade chief. The performance draws equally from the everyday, mundane acts of life in the interior and hustling that sustain people day after day. Through lappas, mortar and pestle, sound, and breath, it moves through shame, liberation, and joy, asking how a diasporic body transforms what it has never been taught but has always carried, and enacting a rite of passage of my own. Quaba Ernest (he/him) "Radio Renmen (Actuator)" Through movement, text, technology and sound the work explores communication & connection across distance. Using the radio as both a physical object and metaphor for how messages become distorted, interrupted, or never fully received, like voices filtered through static or a muffled transmission. As technology promises greater connection, it often deepens disconnection from the present, encouraging us to observe one another through screens, measure ourselves against curated lives, and believe fulfillment exists somewhere beyond our immediate reality.
Saturday, October 3, 2026 featuring Aryanna Allen, Imogene Williams, and Indigo Sparks
Aryanna Allen (she/they) “Crush to Black” is a dance-theater work exploring secrecy, obscuration, and the complexities of self-disclosure. Inspired by the photographic editing term "crush the blacks," which deepens shadows until details disappear, the piece examines what is protectively hidden or rendered invisible within Black and queer experience. Imogene Williams (she/her) "The Tender Return " Indigo Sparks (she/her) "Linen Hz"
Tickets for good, not greed Humanitix dedicates 100% of profits from booking fees to charity
