TEAM MEMBERS
COLLABORATORS
MAIJ ALADESUYI
Maij (b. 1990 in Atlanta, GA), is a cellist, DJ, tarot reader, and sommelier. He began playing classical cello at age ten and studied music at Indiana University Bloomington under the tutelage of the famed Sharon Robinson. As a DJ, he performs house music in various clubs, bars, hotels, fundraisers, and parties throughout New York City under the moniker 'Black Maij.' Maij is also an astrologer and tarot reader, offering personalized readings that combine his deep understanding of cosmic forces with his intuitive insights.
In 2021, alongside Caitlyn Guarano, he founded Mindful Creatives to bring the artistic community together to discuss how different disciplines, such as art, music, wine, photography, and tarot, all speak a universal language. He currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.
EBONY NOELLE GOLDEN
Ebony Noelle Golden is a theatrical ceremonialist, culture strategist, entrepreneur, and public scholar. In 2009, Ebony founded Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative, a culture consultancy that devises systems, strategies, and social justice solutions nationally. In 2020, she founded Jupiter Performance Studio, a space to study and practice Black diasporic performance traditions. Winner of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s Transformational Practice Award, Golden works to incite and ignite the creative capacity of everyday folks in service of liberation and collective wellbeing. Her practice is rooted in community design, ritual performance, and leadership development through a womanist and Black feminist praxis. Invoking messy, magical, and medicinal processes, Ebony and her collaborators, work to conjure a better world.
IMA IDUOZEE
Of Nigerian and Finnish descent, Ima Iduozee is a choreographer, dancer, performance artist and filmmaker based in Helsinki. His debut work, This is the Title, premiered in 2012 and went on to garner international acclaim, touring in 15 countries across Europe, North America and Asia. The solo was selected for Aerowaves Twenty in 2016.
Iduozee´s works are often characterised by poetic and physically rigorous renderings, that meet with notions of fantasy, identity and afrofuturity. In 2015 the annual honorary prize of the Finnish Critics Association, Critics Spurs´, was given to Iduozee, as an acknowledgement for the best artistic breakthrough of the year. His on going series of digital portraits, Adventures In The Sonic Future, celebrates the diversity of black cultural identity in the contemporary African Diaspora.
Photo by Ilkka Saastamoinen
EVERETT-ASIS SAUNDERS
Everett-Asis Saunders, New Music USA grant winner, is the founder and creative director of Flux Innovations, a sound and audio services company. His recent clients include PBS, Sony Music and Columbia Records. Saunders is a producer, composer, songwriter and performer. He has specific knowledge and practice in arranging, editing and mixing for theater, film and music entertainment.
His work spans across genres with original compositions for numerous independent films in the New York/LA Dance community, with his latest commissions including Marjani Forte & Works Bessie award winning Memoirs of a…Unicorn and Urban Bush Women’s recent Hair and Other Stories. Film works include PBS March of Washington (2013), Print Shop (2016) and Project Imagination winner, Transporter.
Photo courtesy of Everett-Asis Saunders
SONG AZIZA TUCKER
Song Aziza Tucker is a project-based movement and writing artist whose works have spiraled out of her love for black women, music, and poetry. Her latest work “After the Flood”, honors the inspirations of many black femme creators she holds close. Placing herself alongside these artists reminds her that dance is not only an expansive and visceral experience, but an intimate and integral way of communication for historically and systemically hushed bodies. Alongside her own art making, Song has had the pleasure of being involved as a performer and collaborator with Katie Swords Thurman, Jesse Zaritt, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Tommie-Waheed Evans, Jamal Abrams, Jordan Lloyd, Niall Jones, Abby Zbikowski, Doug Varone, and Mark Caserta, among others. Song is deeply moved by folks who bring their voluminous selves to the forefront, allowing creative collaborators to be seen with open and soft eyes. She is looking forward to continuing her collegiate studies as a Master of Fine Arts candidate under the direction of Donna Faye Burchfield at the University of the Arts.
KPS ADVISORY BOARD
LINGLING YANG
Lingling Yang is a strategy and development consultant in the arts with over 10 years of experience helping individual artists and performing arts companies secure funding, develop their vision, and create new presenter, donor, and audience connections.
She is Kosoko Performance Studio's former Grants Manager and is currently the Interim Managing Director at Brownbody.
ALEXANDER THOMPSON
Alexander Thompson is an artist, cultural organizer, and Executive Director of Shadowcliff Mountain Lodge and Retreat Center. He served as the Program Director at the Foundation for Contemporary Arts for six and a half years, where he stewarded the nomination, application, and selection processes for the organization’s grant programs.
Prior to his work at FCA, he served as the Associate Artist Program Manager and Interim Director of Education and Engagement at New York Live Arts while maintaining an active dance practice. He has provided administrative support to many individual artists; co-facilitated workshops at the 2015 SDHS/CORD Conference in Athens and at Ezzat Ezzat Contemporary Dance Studio with support from the American Embassy in Cairo; served as a panelist for the Brooklyn Arts Council, Bronx Council on the Arts, Gibney, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; has been a guest speaker at Augusta University, Bard College, Colby College, the Juilliard School, the New School, the University of Texas at Austin, and Virginia Commonwealth University; and was a guest teaching artist at NYU Tisch School the Arts, where he taught a semester-long professional practice workshop to dance students from 2014-2019.
TANESHA BARNES
T. Barnes defies being put into any one box by creating a life that incorporates her full humanity. Although she runs several businesses in beauty, fashion and travel, she has a solid academic grounding with a Bachelor’s from NYU in Sociology, a Master’s in History from Western CT State University and a second Master’s in Teaching for Social Justice from Marlboro College. This fusion of creative, academic and business has afforded Barnes a life spent studying, traveling and building global enterprise, while serving as a bridge between the African Diaspora and the world; actively providing global experiences that help Black people imagine themselves beyond the periphery and limitations of race and geography.
She is currently the owner and founding creative director of Mwasi Global Community, a healing and restoration center based in Marrakech Morocco.
GESEL R. MASON
Gesel R. Mason is a choreographer, performer, and artist-scholar whose practice weaves performance, scholarship, and archiving to question assumptions, confront inequities, and build possibilities for care and connection. She is Artistic Director of Gesel Mason Performance Projects and Professor of Dance at the University of Texas at Austin.
For over two decades, she curated and performed No Boundaries: Dancing the Visions of Contemporary Black Choreographers, now a growing digital archive co-directed with Rebecca Salzer (Dancing Digital Project / University of Alabama), examining archives as sites of care, embodiment, and cultural memory. https://noboundariesarchive.com/
JENN KIDWELL
Jenn Kidwell is a performing artist with a penchant for getting people to do things they never thought they’d do. Original projects: we come to collect: a flirtation, with capitalism (The Flea Theater/UTR Under Construction, Woolly Mammoth Weissberg Commission), Those With 2 Clocks (The Wilma Theater), Underground Railroad Game (2017 Obie Award for Best New American Theatre Work; 2018 Edinburgh Fringe First Award). Jenn’s been down with OPP, most recently: Atlantic Theater Co., Nichole Canuso, Rosie Herrera, jaamil olawale kosoko, Geoff Sobelle. Published in “Black Body Amnesia” and movement research Performance Journal #45 and at hyperallergic.com.
Thanks to these orgs at these times for keeping the lights on & supporting the work: 2015, 2021 Leeway Foundation Art & Change Grant, 2016 Pew Fellow, 2017 Independence Fellowship, 2020 Ruthie Award & Hodder Fund Grant, 2023 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grantee, 2025 Helen Merrill Award.
RASHEED HAMID
Rasheed Hamid is a founder and operations strategist with extensive experience supporting nonprofits, creatives, and small businesses. As CEO of Extra Hands Virtual Assistants, he specializes in building systems that increase capacity and long-term sustainability.
He is committed to mission-aligned leadership and collaborative growth.
JENNI BOWMAN
Jenni is an independent creative producer and facilitator of live performance and experiences. Previously a producer at the Park Avenue Armory, International Contemporary Ensemble, Discovery Green, a public park in downtown Houston, Texas, and for Philip Glass’s Days and Nights Festival in Big Sur, California, she now runs ShowShow, a performance producing company. She serves on the board at JACK.
Jenni's first job in NYC was as the producer of the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island. She resides in Brooklyn with her partner and child.
Shannan Elaine Clarke
Shannan Clarke is a social entrepreneur, development executive, and cultural strategist whose work centers equity, care, and purpose-driven systems change. She currently serves as Director of Development at NYU School of Law, where she leads major and principal gift strategy in support of faculty, students, and institutional priorities. Her career spans higher education advancement, social enterprise, international affairs, and the arts. Shannan is also the founder of Queen & Baby, a community-driven company supporting Black mothers through breastfeeding, postpartum transitions, and the return to work. A trained modern and contemporary dancer, Shannan brings an embodied understanding of creativity, discipline, and collaboration to her work.
She trained as a fellowship student at The Ailey School and has performed with companies including the Limón Dance Company, Forces of Nature Dance Company, nathantrice/RITUALS, and STEPS on Broadway. Shannan holds a BA in Theater and Dance from Spelman College and an MA in International Affairs from The New School. She serves on Jaamil’s Advisory Board to offer strategic guidance at the intersection of culture, community, and institutional growth—bridging creative vision with sustainable, values-aligned infrastructure.
