letty bassart is a performance maker, choreographer, improviser, and teacher. Her artistic projects aspire to pour love, rigor and compassion into every crevice of cultural production. Since beginning to infuse energy into devising performance works in 2003, she has co-produced more than 40 short and long form performances. Highlights include Unnameable, One, Two, Three in collaboration with Sha Harrell, Gema Corredera, Daniel Bernard Roumain, and Sevim Abaza; as well as Surplus Reiterations, a collaborative exhibition with Tom Scicluna and Rod Faulds for the Ritter Art Galleries at Florida Atlantic University. As well as a number of early-co-creations with Berlin-based artist, Ilana Reynods. Recent works include Here. Now, a duet with Daniel Bernard Roumain and an arranged excerpt from Rite of Spring with the Stamps Brass Quintet and University of Miami student, Taylor Shirk.

Current projects include Pelican Studies, a project interrogating the idea of resurrection and Evidence of Things Unseen, still in its fledgling stages.

letty’s pedagogy emphasizes care, depolarization, belonging, anti-racist/anti-ism/non-othering praxis. In her teaching she strives to honor the embodied wisdom/s of every person in the room, AND to nourish active personal questioning as a means to expand individual approaches to performance thinking. letty imagines “an ecosystems approach to course design. One that formally invites and acknowledges co-authorship, collective making, and ongoing feedback loops. A design that celebrates the temporary community that forms during each deliberate gathering, known as a ‘university class or course.’” She has taught at New World School of the Arts, Smith College, and the University of California, Los Angeles. letty is a Lecturer in Dance at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music, serves as an early childhood residency artist for Arts for Learning/Miami, and also teaches at Miami-Dade College.

letty’s efforts have received generous support from individual fellowships including a National Endowment for the Arts dance writing fellowship, residencies, including an exchange with Movement Research and Tigertail Productions, and  commissions from esteemed culture producers like Miami Light Project. letty received an MFA in choreography from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance.

Photo: Courtesy of Miami Light Project/the Artist

Photo Description: A woman on a stage in Miami, FL strives to perform a score ignited by the pretense and precarity of engaging with the industrial medical complex.

Justin Gamboa is an alumnus of UCLA’s department of World Arts & Cultures/Dance (WACD) where he received his Bachelor of Arts in Dance and a minor in Entrepreneurship from the Anderson School of Management. After graduating, Justin was employed by WACD as the Administrative Coordinator assisting in a variety of areas including department finances, student affairs, and communications amongst other things. Since then, he has now moved on to work for UCLA’s department of Architecture & Urban Design. 

Outside of work, Justin is a member of Culture Shock Los Angeles (CSLA), a nonprofit dance company that utilizes Hip Hop dance and culture to cultivate meaningful education, empowerment and entertainment programs that inspire positive change in the communities they serve.

Jingqiu Guan Originally from Chengdu, China, Jingqiu Guan is a filmmaker, choreographer, scholar and dancer. She currently teaches at Duke University as an Assistant Professor of the Practice of Dance. Jingqiu makes interdisciplinary performance works and dance films that engage with social issues and cultural memories. Jingqiu has presented her dance films and documentaries in a number of film festivals in the US, the UK, India, Norway, Spain, Austria, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Mexico, mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan. Centering voices and expressions of women, immigrants, people of color, as well as people of disabilities, her works explore cultural identities, motherhood, and address issues of racial and disability justice.

Jingqiu’s most recent dance film First Dance 2.0 (2023) was selected as a winner at the Dance in Focus Film Festival: Reflections and was presented at the Music Center in downtown LA. Her dance film The Weight of Sugar (2021) won the “Outstanding Direction Award” from Manifest Dance-Film Festival in India and “Best Dance Film Award” from Black Lives Rising Dance Film Festival. Her dance documentary Family Portrait (2019) received the “Chinese Screendance Maker Award” from Hong Kong’s Jumping Frames International Video Dance Festival, a major award from San Francisco Dance Film Festival and the “Grand Jury Award” from Chicago’s In Motion Dance Film Festival. She is currently in post-production of a feature documentary that explores the intersection of dance and motherhood. 

Besides creating dance for the screen and the stage, Jingqiu has also been collaborating with leading dance and theater artists to design and create visual projections for live performances presented in venues such as the Apollo Theater, Brooklyn Museum, with the LA Philharmonic, at the Skirball Cultural Center and at various universities. Recently, she completed the post-production of a feature concert film on the award-winning hip hop theater production Lyrics from Lockdown, directed and performed by Tony nominated and Emmy award winning artist Bryonn Bain.

As a scholar, Jingqiu has published her research in the International Journal of Screendance Studies, Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies, The Journal of Media Practice, Arts, and Education and Dialogs com a arte. Jingqiu has earned a PhD in Culture and Performance from UCLA, an MFA in Dance Performance from the University of Iowa, an Ed.M from Harvard, and a B.A in Economics and French from Saint Mary’s College (IN).

India Harville (she/her), MA, is the founder of Embraced Body. She is a Disability Justice activist/DEI consultant, politicized healer and performance artist. She identifies as African-American, femme, queer, and disabled; these identities deeply inform her work. The unifying theme in India’s work is centering body-based healing as a vehicle for personal/collective growth and transformation. Her work prioritizes reclaiming the body as an often underestimated pathway to decolonizing ourselves in order to deepen our embodiment of social justice, equity, and inclusion principles. India earned her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology at the New College of Florida and her Master of Arts in Integrative Health Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies. You can learn more about her work at www.embracedbody.com.

Image description: A Black woman in a wheelchair smiles while embracing a white service dog in front of a green background of foliage.

Guggenheim fellow, and Alpert Award-winning choreographer, filmmaker, scholar, and activist Victoria Marks (she/her) joined the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures / Dance in 1995; served as the Associate Dean, Academic Affairs for the School of the Arts and Architecture, 2017-2021; and currently serves as the chair of UCLA’s newly formulated Disability Studies major. Victoria teaches improvisation, choreography and dance studies for Dance majors and mentors graduate students in “Choreographic Inquiry.  Her dances are made for the stage, film, and in community settings. Victoria’s choreography has long considered the politics of citizenship, as well as the representation of both virtuosity and disability. These themes are part of her ongoing commitment to locating dance-making within the sphere of political meaning.

Image description: A white woman with short gray hair, sitting against a wall within a window sill. Wearing earrings, a pink long sleeve shirt and dark pants, her hands are in her lap, she is barefoot, and she is half-smiling looking, not at the camera, but softly to her left.

Artistically known as “KHILA,” Aquilah Ohemeng is a multidisciplinary choreographer whose work is layered in movement, filmmaking, and writing.Her various choreographic works have been selected, featured, and/or commissioned within exhibitions ranging from Colby College’s Museum of Art in conjunction with the Zanele Muholi: Sonymama Namayama, Hail the Dark Lioness exhibition to Spelman College’s Forty Years of Black Feminist Fire celebration to the Philadelphia Film Society to UCLA’s 2022 International New Wight Biennial, and UCLA’s inaugural Black Women & Femmes Research Summit. Selected to collaborate with artists such as Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and SZA, Ohemeng’s latest projects, The Flowers that Grew from Our Tears and PASS US NOT: Holy Ghosted, have received acclaim. Ohemeng received her formal dance education from Spelman College, where she earned a B.A. degree in Dance Performance & Choreography, while minoring in Spanish. This past June, she earned an MFA degree in Choreographic Inquiry from UCLA.

Image Description: Aquilah (she/her) softly looks to the right wearing a white bow-collared dress, white pearl earrings, and a slick back ponytail in front of a light grey wall.

JJ Omelagah (they/them) is a seasoned Access Doula with over a decade of experience. JJ started as a care provider for individual loved ones in 2011. As they interfaced with disabled communities more frequently, they started to provide access support for many different community members. Eventually, people recognized their capacity to support collective access for small and large group gatherings.  They have been an Access Doula for various community organizations, including Sins Invalid, Dancing Freedom, East Bay Church, Movement Liberation, DJCC, Dancing While Black, Movement Research, 3rd Wave Fund, and Dancing Disability Lab.

In addition to their work as an Access Doula, JJ currently serves as the Executive Manager at Embraced Body, a Disability Justice organization where they support building collective access for the staff and for community events. They are also experienced in customer service, case management, conflict resolution, and volunteer management. JJ is also a transgender vocal artist, trained Reiki practitioner, Ifa initiate, Disability Justice, and LGBTQIA+  activist.

When they aren’t working or singing, JJ enjoys spending quality time with their family, traveling, swimming, and spending time in nature.

Image description: A circular frame pic of JJ Omelagah(they/them), a light-skinned black transgender person smiling with short faded black hair and small hoop earrings. They are wearing a multicolored sweater vest over a pink collar shirt.

Pia Palomo (She/They), a member of the Undergraduate Education Initiatives (UEI) team, collaborates with faculty to design, implement, and sustain innovative undergraduate programs such as the Fiat Lux Seminar Program, the Disability Studies Interdepartmental Degree Program, and the free-standing interdisciplinary minors in Food Studies and Social Thought. She works as a thought partner with UCLA Disability Studies faculty to develop and launch all DS Labs. Since the 2019 Dancing Disability Lab, she has supported Vic Marks and worked as a liaison with university colleagues and resources to assist with planning and executing administrative aspects of the DEPE, Dancing Disability Labs, and the Sports and Society Lab.

Image description: Photo of Pia Palomo in front of UCLA Royce Hall. She is a Filipina woman with short black hair smiling to the camera.

Dr. Akhila Vimal C. is a visually impaired dancer and performance theorist whose research explores the intersection of performance studies, ritual studies, ethnochoreology, dance pedagogy, reception studies, and disability aesthetics. Her work focuses on intercultural performance traditions from India, examining their history, training, principles, contemporary practices, and textual narratives.Currently, Akhila is a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of World Arts Cultures/Dance, UCLA. Her research sits at the intersection of performance and disability, with a particular focus on disabled dance pedagogy. Methodologically, she is committed to Practice as Research, and her current project investigates blind dance pedagogies and practices.