Makini

I am a choreographer, performer, and video artist, based between traditional lands of the Tutelo-Saponi speaking peoples and lands of the Lenape peoples, who grew up dancing around the living room and at parties with my siblings and cousins. My early exposure to concert dance was through African dance and capoeira performances on California college campuses where my Pan- Africanist parents studied and worked, but I did not start “formal” dance training until college with Umfundalai, Kariamu Welsh’s contemporary African dance technique. My work continues to be influenced by various sources, including my foundations in those living rooms and parties, my early technical training in contemporary African dance, my continued study of contemporary dance and performance, my movement trainings with dancer and anatomist Irene Dowd around anatomy and proprioception, my sociological research of and technical training in J-sette performance with Jermone Donte Beacham. Through my artistic work, I strive to engage in and further dialogues with Black queer folks, create lovingly agitating performance work that recognizes History as only one option for the contextualization of the present, and continue to encourage artists to understand themselves as part of a larger community of workers who are imagining pathways toward economic ecosystems that prioritize care, interdependence, and delight.

I work collaboratively in a variety of constellations. In 2008, I co-founded idiosynCrazy productions and co-directed it with Shannon Murphy. The company produced performance work and served as a resource for public conversations around the integrations of art into society, and the social responsibility of the artist. Since 2011, I have worked collaboratively with J-Sette artist Jermone Donte Beacham on a series of visual and performance works called Let ‘im Move You. Previously, I have performed with Marianela Boán, Silvana Cardell, devynn emory, Emmanuelle Hunyh, Tania Isaac, Kun-Yang Lin, C. Kemal Nance, Ligia Lewis, Marissa Perel, Leah Stein, Keith Thompson, Kate Watson-Wallace, Merián Soto, Reggie Wilson, Jesse Zaritt, and Kariamu Welsh (as a member of Kariamu & Company). From 2009-2018, I was an Assistant Professor of Dance at Swarthmore College.

I have performed my work in various cities nationally and internationally, and I have received various awards including: a 2010-2011 Live Arts Brewery Fellowship (Philadelphia), a 2012 Pew Center for Arts & Heritage Fellowship (Philadelphia), a 2013 NRW Tanzrecherche Fellowship (Germany), a 2013 New York Live Arts Studio Series (then, Dance Theater Workshop) residency with Jesse Zaritt (NYC), a 2016 Independence Fellowship (Philadelphia), a 2017 Sacatar Residency Fellowship (Bahia, Brazil), a 2017 MAP Fund award with Jermone Donte Beacham, a 2017 NEFA National Dance Project Production Grant with Jermone Donte Beacham, a 2018 MANCC residency, a 2019 EMPAC residency, a 2020 Creative Capital Award, a 2020 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant-to-Artists award, a 2023 Herb Alpert Award, a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, and three Swarthmore College Cooper Foundation grants for presenting other artists (Swarthmore, PA).

Incidentally, my birth middle name is Mtafuta-Ukweli, which means “one who searches for the truth” in Kiswahili.