Marlies Yearby is an artist activist, Deep Body Listener, choreographer and director with a global perspective. She creates original works across various platforms including theater, film and diverse multimedia. Ms. Yearby developed her “In Our Bones Creative Process” as an acknowledgement of the legacies, lived experiences, memories, and day to day energies ever present in the moving bodies at work. Her approach to wholeness as a “Deep Body Listener” has engaged her techniques to move the stories and memories, held in the body, released into song, dance, voicing, gesture and script. The process empowers participants to own their life experiences. Ms. Yearby’s work is internationally recognized. She is the Tony award nominated and choreographer of the musical RENT and she received the Drama League Award for the Los Angeles production of RENT. Currently Ms Yearby is using her newest project Seed Awakening On The Eve Of Blue addressing the crisis in real food, environment and health as a commodity in disenfranchised communities globally and right here at home

MK Abadoo (she/they) has been engaged in active Zen Buddhist training since 2009 with the Mountains and Rivers Order, where from 2012 until 2020 she was a formal student of Shugen Roshi, and is currently a retreat teacher. Throughout this time they've complemented their Zen training by practicing with People of Color (POC) communities within the Insight Meditation Society, attending annual POC retreats lead by teachers such as Dara Williams, Gina Sharpe, Bonnie Duran, Bhante Buddharakkhita, Devin Berry, Kamala Masters and Jaya Rudgard among others. She is currently an active member of the Still Breathing Zen Sangha, an all Black women Zen community led by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel Osho.

Abadoo's creative work exist at the crux of dance theater, anti-racist cultural organizing, and critical education studies. Considered a “rising star” by Dance Magazine, they craft dance events that combine Africanist, funky/family kitchen dances, and post-modern movement vocabularies with site activating audience and community engagement. MK’s creative practice is rooted in the justice work of Angela’s Pulse, Urban Bush Women, Gesel Mason Performance Projects and the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, where she is a trainer in Undoing Racism® and Community Organizing. Abadoo is also an assistant professor in the Department of Dance + Choreography at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), and in the Racial Equity, Arts, and Culture Core of VCU’s ICubed, the Institute for Inclusion, Inquiry & Innovation.

Francine E. Ott, a native of New Orleans, received her B.F.A in Dance from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and has had the pleasure of studying with many artists that she admires. She has worked and danced with Camille A. Brown and Dancers, Ronald K. Brown/Evidence, A Dance Company, among others. She has had the privilege of teaching many workshops, classes, and residencies---as well as being able to showcase her choreography. Francine has received her Masters degree in Mental Health Counseling at Nyack College, and is currently a Dance Lecturer and Director of Panoramic Dance Project at North Carolina State University. Ms. Ott has her own company, Francine E. Ott/The Walk, where she integrates mental health with dance and other art forms, allowing one to further their creativity through a unique therapeutic process---providing a space for growth, healing, change, and transformation in one's life.

Maria Bauman is a “Bessie” award winning multidisciplinary artist and community organizer from Jacksonville, FL. She is also a sought-after facilitator and speaker on the topics of social justice practices within performing arts, embodied and arts-based leadership development, and racial equity in the arts. Bauman creates bold and honest artworks for her company, MBDance, based on physical and emotional power, insistence on equity, and intimacy. In particular, Bauman’s site-responsive dance work centers the non-linear and linear stories and bodies of Black queer people in multiple immersive ritual settings. She draws on her study of English literature, capoeira, improvisation, dancing in living rooms and nightclubs, as well as concert dance classes to embody interconnectedness, joy, and tenacity. Bauman-Morales brings the same tenets to organizing to undo racism in the arts and beyond with ACRE (Artists Co-creating Real Equity), the grassroots group she co-founded with Sarita Covington and Nathan Trice.

Bauman is a 2021 Redtail Artist in Residence and BRIClab residency winner. Recently she was a 2020 Columbia College Dance Center Practitioner-in-Residence, 2019 Dance in Process residency award winner, 2018-20 UBW Choreographic Center Fellow, 2017-19 Brooklyn Arts Exchange Artist in Residence and the 2017 Community Action Artist in Residence at Gibney. MBDance is currently touring Desire: A Sankofa Dream online, a performance experience in choice-making and Black Queer survival technologies.

She's an active member of our community outside of choreography and performance. Bauman mentors younger artists through Queer Art Mentorship. She is a Core Trainer with The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, collaborating towards racial equity. In 2014, she co-founded Artists Co-creating Real Equity, which won the 2018 BAX Arts and Artists in Progress Award for "working to undo racism in our daily lives.” Bauman has facilitated community engagement workshops for numerous groups and has helped create cultural campaigns with various locals of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

www.mbdance.net www.desire.mbdance.net