Phoenix, AZ (February 4, 2025) Embraced Body, the Disability Justice and inclusive arts organization founded by artist and Disability Justice consultant India Harville in 2016, announces participants for its new How We Move program. Funded by the Mellon Foundation, How We Move is a dance intensive created for and by multiply marginalized Disabled artists from across North America; the program centers agency, multiplicity, interdependence, and creative power. Artists for this pilot program are: Assaleh Bibi (The Cosmos), kumari giles (Tkaronto/Treaty 13/Toronto, Canada), Devin Hill (Washington, DC), Hector Machado (Miami, FL), Jackie Robinson (Dallas, TX), and Zen Spencer (Capital District, NY).

“We are so thrilled to welcome these artists to the very first How We Move program cohort. Each person brings their own unique bodymind practice and understanding, access wisdom, and artistry,”  shared India Harville, Embraced Body Founder & Executive Director. “Disabled dance challenges conventional understandings of movement and form and forges its own narrative, placing disability as a rich and layered aesthetic unto itself. Disabled dance builds its community of practice around the truths inherent in intersectional bodies and identities. We eagerly look forward to the community, partnership, creation that is possible when disabled dance artists come together, in a space created specifically by and for multiply marginalized artists.” 

The How We Move Program centers Disabled, multiply marginalized (BIPOC, LGBTQIA+) dancers. The inaugural program welcomes six artists and will include two virtual weekend gatherings, followed by a 10-day in-person intensive in New York City (June 2025), and culminating in a final virtual weekend. This hybrid gathering format intends to provide multiple access points to Disabled dance artists wishing to build and expand cross-disability community. 

The in-person intensive will include somatic/movement/dance workshops; each participant will have an opportunity to lead a workshop and will receive support to ensure their workshop is accessible for all attendees. The intensive will also include space to build power together towards a transformation of the colonial, eugenicist, and ableist lineages still present in the dance field. This intensive will provide a rigorous access framework, allowing cross-disability artists from across the country the opportunity to come together, create, learn from one another, and cultivate opportunities. Participants receive a $2,000 stipend and the program will cover access, travel, housing, and food costs for the June in-person intensive. Funding is also available for Personal Care Attendants.

How We Move collaborators include India Harville, Kayla Hamilton, and JJ Omelagah; Movement Research is a venue partner. Bios for participant artists and collaborators are below.

ARTIST PARTICIPANT BIOS

Assaleh Bibi (they/them) is a multi-disciplinary artist and healing practitioner.  As a child of mountains and wild waters, they migrated through winds of border bullets to find refuge in exile on the sovereign lands of the Coast Salish Peoples. Their practice is built upon, and ever-growing in, erotic relationship between land and water ecologies and her body.  Zir work spans abundant mediums of mixed media, photography, ceramics, painting, sensory installations, poetry, sculpture, film, dance, and performance art to move through ancient futurisms with revolutionary medicine to transform our shit’cistems towards liberation.  Evolving from a 2016 collaboration, Conjuring Lezzat, Assaleh Bibi continues to deepen their praxis of weaving healing ritual and artistic work—a philosophy of art as medicine and medicine as art.

Currently Assaleh Bibi is exploring embodied ancestral poetry as moving and still metaphors through non-binary drag dance theater performances. Xe indulges in the anonymity within drag characters—via make-up and wardrobe transformation—to evoke the celebration and empowerment offered by freedom of expression. This liberatory work also attracts trans hatred and oppressive forces that want to control bodies and penalize such satiating freedom. This juxtaposition of oppression and liberation, medicine and poison is a theme throughout hir work, art that disrupts rigid concepts of gender, birth, peace, war, genocide, life, death, past, and future, while simultaneously supporting expansive social and environmental justice rooted in mother earth tapestry.

Xir recent collaborations include a multi-year disability arts dance film embodying shapeshifting nonhuman mythical beings and a multi-year dance residency through their dedicated membership in a local Indigenous-led BIPOC performance collective.

kumari giles (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist, connector, administrator and consultant interested in connection, transformation and social change. As a queer, non binary, mixed maker of many things their work spans across performance, production, food, somatics, writing/poetry, mycology, community arts, mixed media, textiles, and dramaturgy. They are interested in creating and shaping processes that center interdependence, access and joy.  Driven by radical hope and collective care, their work aims to build embodied archives of what it feels like to be free, collectively wayfind and radically imagine new worlds together.  They are committed to eradicating colonial systems of oppression by nurturing BIPOC, queer and trans, cross disability solidarity and healing.

kumari has been working in the arts professionally since 2011, locally, nationally and internationally. They work individually, in collectives and with organizations, notably ILL NANA/DiverseCity Dance Company (Right to Dance Programming, 2011-2020, Fire, 2016) , Cyborg Circus Project (Safe Words* I didn’t say broccoli, 2021), Young People’s Theatre, the AMY Project, Possibilities Podcast, and the Lab for Artistic Intelligence. In addition to nurturing a garden of creative and research-based work, they are currently building an artist-led network of disabled movers with the DisDance Collective and are a collective member of the Trans Healing Arts Web—visioning spaces that centre the healing & creativity of two spirit, trans and non binary people.

Devin Hill (they/them) is a graduate from the University of Central Oklahoma with a B.F.A. in Dance Performance. Their love of dance began at the age of three and has lasted a span of twenty years. Devin set sights on dance as a career during their time at Collin College in Plano, Texas.  While at Collin College, they were exposed to: Jazz, Ballet, Modern, Hip Hop, Tap, African, Improvisation, and Latin Ballroom. Devin has had the opportunity of working with multiple artists such: as Christopher K. Morgan, William “Bill” Evans, Clarence Brooks, Hannah Baumgarden, Jeremy Duvall, Gregg Russell, Lachlan McCarthy, Kristin McQuaid, and Cat Cogliandro. They were also a member of the 2015-2016 award winning Kaleidoscope Dance Company. Since graduating from UCO, They have continued to further their knowledge of dance by performing, choreographing, teaching, and participating in intensives and workshops across the United States. In 2018, Devin had the honor of performing with Liz Lerman’s Dance Exchange at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. They were also a cast member on the hit Facebook Watch series “Dance with Nia.” Mx. Hill currently resides in the Washington D.C. metro area, where they perform, educate, and advocate as a freelance dancer. Devin also serves as a board member for Feel The Beat, an educational specialist for Bodywize Dance, and a dance development team member/instructor for Second Skin Society. Mx. Hill strives to use their artistry to create a more safe, equitable, and accessible dance industry for everyone.

Hector Machado (they/she) as a multidisciplinary artist Machado represents the marginalized dance communities they belong to on stage, while educating and inspiring others. As a member of Pioneer Winter Collective, Machado has been leaving their mark on the Miami dance scene since 2018.  A collaborating performer in evening length works:  “Reprise (2018/2019) ,” “Birds of Paradise (2023/2024),” and “Ten Years From Now, Duets Reimagined.”  Machado has also been a cohort member in the site specific choreography residency:  “Grass Stains” (2020, 2022, 2024),  and Cohort 3 of “Creative Connections” where they ran a research incubator for their Accessible Majorette Dance initiative, designed to develop a language and practice for bringing the majorette dance form to individuals with disabilities.

Jackie Robinson (she/her) I’m a wheelchair pole dancer based in Dallas, TX, specializing in sensual floor work flow and pole flow styles. My identical twin sister and I were both born with cerebral palsy, and we underwent numerous procedures and therapies to learn how to walk. In my mid-twenties, I decided to reject the idea that disabled people couldn’t dance. I also wanted to connect with my sensual side and embrace my adult identity, so I started pole dancing.

As time passed, my symptoms progressed, and I gradually lost the ability to walk. Instead of quitting, I decided to explore incorporating mobility aids into my dance style, which allows me to feel freer, more comfortable, confident, and safe. I also have a feeding tube that provides 100% of my nutrition since I can no longer eat or drink. I enjoy decorating and showcasing my medical devices because they give me the freedom to do the things I love.

Outside of dance, I work as a software engineer specializing in Android apps and have a passion for fun fashion. My favorite moment in my dance journey was when my favorite singer, Demi Lovato, and her fiancé, Jutes, complimented me dancing to his song!

Zen Spencer (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist originally from Brooklyn, NY and currently studying at Bennington College in Vermont, where she focuses on visual art and dance. Her work explores the intersections of movement, identity, and disability, using performance and visual mediums to tell stories that center Black female disability. Born with hemiplegic cerebral palsy, she has embraced her lived experience as an essential part of her creative voice.

Dancing since the age of three, Zen has cultivated a deep relationship with the body as both an expressive instrument and a site of complex meaning. Her choreography incorporates improvisation, emotional depth, and embodied storytelling. She draws inspiration from artists such as Mickalene Thomas, Wangechi Mutu, and Jerron Herman, finding resonance in their approaches to representation, abstraction, and disability aesthetics.

Her work is expansive and evolving. She’s currently working on Breakthrough, a multimedia dance piece incorporating stop-motion animation and digital art, which builds on her earlier works, Maiden Voyage and Trapped. These creations reflect her growth as an artist, each layering new skills while centering themes of self-realization and liberation. With kindness and openness as her guiding ethos, Zen seeks to foster community within her art practice. She envisions creating work that challenges narratives about disability and expands possibilities for artistic expression, both onstage and in visual form. Zen’s commitment to storytelling through movement and image positions her as an emerging artist with a unique, powerful voice.

COLLABORATOR BIOS

About Embraced Body

Centered in the belief that our bodies should feel radically welcomed in all spaces, Embraced Body advances Disability Justice through inclusive performing arts, accessibility consulting, and anti-ableist education for all. Our work is for and by people like us: Black Disabled people, queer and genderqueer Disabled folks, Disabled survivors, folks who don’t neatly fit into one identity category or one canonized way of making dance—those who need to re-make the world in their image in order to find a place where they can be in their entirety. Embraced Body is driven by a profound commitment to fostering accessibility and inclusivity for multiply marginalized Disabled individuals. By highlighting the interconnectedness of ableism with other forms of oppression and addressing these systemic inequalities head-on, we endeavor to dismantle oppressive structures and create a more equitable society for all.

India Harville 

As a Disability Justice activist, performance artist, public speaker, and somatics practitioner, India Harville (she/her) has made it her mission over the past 20 years to open people's minds to the wonder of their own bodies as a vehicle for growth and transformation, both personal and collective. 

India has danced with Sins Invalid, Dance Exchange, California State East Bay, The Queer Arts Festival, the Black Spirit Dance Collective, Mouthwater Festival, and Movement Liberation. She’s a two-time recipient of the Access Movement Play Residency funded by Mellon and is currently working on a one-woman show, Liminal. She’s certified as a dance instructor in: NIA, Zumba, Dancing Freedom, and DanceAbility, where she is both a Master Teacher and Master Trainer.

In 2016, she founded what is now known as Embraced Body, a Disability Justice and inclusive arts organization that began by providing accessible movement classes to Disabled communities. Since then, they’ve made disability-affirming dance funded by major philanthropic organizations, while also consulting on accessibility and Disability Justice.

The intersection of India’s own identities as an African American, queer, Disabled/chronically ill, femme, cis woman informs all her work. No matter what she is doing, she sets forth the example that however our bodies show up in the world, they are perfect, worthy of existence, and capable of magic. 

Kayla Hamilton 

Kayla Hamilton (she/they) is a Texas-born, Bronx-based dancer, performance maker, educator, consultant, and artistic director of Circle O—a cultural organization uplifting Black Disabled and other multiply marginalized creatives.

She has developed & designed access-centered programming for the Mellon Foundation, Movement Research, DanceNYC, and UCLA, and is a co-director of Angela’s Pulse/Dancing While Black. 

Kayla is a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, Pina Bausch Foundation Fellow, United States Artist Disability Futures Fellow, NEFA National Dance Project Production Grant recipient, and Bronx Cultural Visions Fund recipient. Her work has been presented at the Whitney Museum, Gibney, Performance Space NY, New York Live Arts and Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance. Kayla was also part of the Bessie award winning ensemble Skeleton Architecture.

As an educator, Kayla co-developed ‘Crip Movement Lab’ with fellow Disabled artist Elisabeth Motley—a pedagogical framework centering cross-disability movement practices. She also worked as a K-12 public school special education teacher in NYC for 12 years. 

JJ Omelagah

JJ Omelagah (they/them) is the Program Director, Access Doula, and Healing Artist for Embraced Body and the founder of Sounds of Kayode.

With two decades of experience in human services and healthcare, JJ brings a unique perspective on care. They provide crucial access support and education while contributing to the organization's overall operations.

As a transgender sound artist, JJ’s mission is to create vibrant frequencies resonating with collective care, healing, and transformation. Each note contributes to the co-creation of a sonic environment where energies converge, intertwine, and uplift. They’ve performed at events such as SF Pride and the National Queer Arts Festival. 

JJ is also a trained Circle Sing Facilitator, Reiki practitioner, Orisha priest, and a committed advocate for Disability Justice and LGBTQIA+ rights. They hold expertise in mutual aid, nonprofits, conflict resolution, and volunteer management. JJ studied at Howard University and City College of San Francisco.

Movement Research

Movement Research, founded in 1978, is one of the world’s leading laboratories for the investigation of dance and movement-based forms. As a creative incubator for artists and emerging ideas, Movement Research provides space and resources for adventurous dance. Valuing the individual artist, their creative process and their vital role within society, Movement Research is dedicated to the creation and implementation of free and low-cost programs that nurture and instigate discourse and experimentation. Movement Research strives to reflect the cultural, political and economic diversity of its moving community, including artists and audiences alike.

In January 2019, Movement Research moved into its first permanent home at 122 Cultural Center. In 2024, Movement Research broke ground on the build-out of its two studio spaces located in 122CC to create: two dance studios to house MR programs and to serve artists and the community with subsidized rates for rehearsals, practice and convenings; a vestibule outside of the studios that offers a space to gather, stretch and converse; a resource room to provide meeting and lounge space for artists, and access to MR’s library and publications.

Funding Credits

The How We Move program is funded by the Mellon Foundation. Embraced Body is fiscally sponsored by Dancers' Group and is grateful for funding support from Mellon Foundation, Solidaire Network and Borealis Philanthropy.