Today

Bernard Brown is a performing artist, choreographer, educator, scholar and arts activist who situates his work at the intersection of blackness, gender, and sexuality. As artistic director of Bernard Brown/bbmoves, a social justice dance theater company, his choreography has been presented across the US including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, Minneapolis, Phoenix and New York City, to great acclaim. The work is often described as thoughtful, captivating, and powerfully exquisite. Through athletic, evocative movement and socially relevant themes, Brown creates work that coheres the visceral and the cerebral which aims to catalyze change and liberation for all people. 

A Lester Horton Award and Westfield Emerging Artist Award recipient, Bernard has performed with distinguished artists and companies including Lula Washington Dance Theatre, David Rousseve/REALITY, TU Dance, Shapiro & Smith Dance, Doug Elkins Dance Company, Donald McKayle, Rennie Harris, Kamasi Washington, Vincent Patterson, Rudy Perez, and was invited to perform with Mikhail Baryshnikov in Robert Wilson’s “Letter to a Man” with choreography by Lucinda Childs. Other career highlights include performing on the Daytime Emmy’s, in Penumbra Theater’s “Black Nativity,” Donald Byrd’s “Harlem Nutcracker,” and being principal dancer in Nike’s “12 Miles North: The Nick Gabaldon Story,” the first documented Afro-Mexican American surfer. Bernard earned his MFA from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance and BFA from SUNY Purchase. He is published in the peer-reviewed dance journal, Dancer-Citizen, with a recent publication in The Activist History Review in 2020. He has presented his scholarship on blackness, queerness and post-modern dance at conferences across the US. Bernard hasbeen featured in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times for his arts activism. 

Previously, Bernard has been faculty at UCLA in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance and the School of Theater, Film and Television, New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, and University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He has taught residencies and master classes in Israel and across the US including University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, Texas State University, American College Dance Association, the International Association of Blacks in Dance conference and at a multitude of public schools throughout Los Angeles Unified School District. He is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Sacramento State University and a Certified Dunham Technique Instructor candidate. The Los Angeles Times has called him "...the incomparable Bernard Brown..."

Nia-Amina Minor is a movement artist and dance educator based in Seattle. Her work has many disciplinary points of interest focusing on the body and what it carries. Through performance and teaching, Nia-Amina converses with black realities and investigates the intersections of movement, memory, and rhythm.  Whether on stage, in the studio, or in the streets, Nia-Amina approaches movement as a site for collective gathering.

Originally from South Central Los Angeles, Nia-Amina studied at the Debbie Allen Dance Academy, holds a BA from Stanford University, and a MFA from the University of California, Irvine. She is a co-founder of No)one Art House, a multi-disciplinary collective based in Los Angeles.  From 2014-2017, Nia-Amina performed as well as curated programming and workshops for the collective under the guiding philosophy: “Not the Efforts of One.” In 2016, she joined Spectrum Dance Theater under the direction of Donald Byrd where she currently holds the position of Company Dancer and Community Engagement Artist Liaison. Nia-Amina has performed in acclaimed works such as A Rap on Race, Shot, and Strange Fruit receiving a Seattle Dance Crush Award for her performance in Shot. Nia-Amina is grateful to work in solidarity and share in the collective power of the Street Dance Activism team for the 28 Day of Global Dance Meditation.