As a guest for Dance Herstory with Professor Richard Move, Tamara Williams will be teaching Dance of the African Diaspora on October 18th.
Open to non-majors with permission by instructor.
Tamara Williams
Tamara Williams is a native of Augusta, GA, where she began her dance training. She earned her BFA in Dance from Florida State University and received her MFA in Dance from Hollins University in collaboration with The American Dance Festival, The Forsythe Company, and Frankfurt University. She is a certified GYROTONIC(R) Trainer, Reiki Practitioner and Capoeirista.
Williams's performing career includes work with Alpha Omega Theatrical Dance Company, David P. France Dance Company, Errol Grimes Dance Group, Millicent and Company, Angela's Pulse, Maverick Dance Experience, and UB2 (Urban Bush Women's apprentice company). Her choreography has been performed nationally and internationally at the Student Kultural Center in Belgrade, Serbia; the Voltahalle in Basel, Switzerland; The National Museum of Trinidad & Tobago; and at Espacio Xisto in Salvador, Brazil.
In 2011, Williams created Tamara LaDonna Moving Spirits, Inc., a contemporary arts organization dedicated to performing, researching, documenting, cultivating, and producing arts of the African Diaspora. Williams continues to serve as Artistic Director. In 2012, the company produced an evening dance performance entitled The Makings of You. In October 2013, Epic Narratives: An evening of dance, visual art, theater and social commentary, was produced.
In 2015, Moving Spirits, Inc. was accepted as Company-in-Residence at the Jamaica Center for Arts & Leadership in Jamaica, Queens. In February 2015, Williams presented Moving Spirits to Enlightenment, part of the RESPOND series at the Smack Mellon Gallery in Brooklyn, in response to police brutality to Black lives. This event featured Moving Spirits, Inc., Sydnie L. Mosley Dances, Andre M. Zachary/Renegade Performance Group, students of El Puente, and students of the Brooklyn Friends School. In May 2015, Williams produced Dancing in the Parks: Bushwick Community Festival, which presented dance in public housing projects in Brooklyn, New York.
For the past six years, Williams has trained intensely in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, in Silvestre Technique and Afro-Brazilian dance. She is a 2012 recipient of the Artist Residency Fellowship at the Dance & Performance Institute in Trinidad, a 2013 recipient of the Harlem Stage/Aaron Davis Hall Fund for New Work grant, and a 2014 & 2015 Community Arts Fund Grantee by the Brooklyn Arts Council. She was the 2014 Lecturer/Emerging Artist-in-Residence at Penn State University- Altoona. Williams was a 2015 Turkey Land Grove Foundation recipient, in which she participated in a seven-day dance writing residency in Martha's Vineyard, and a 2015 Fall Space Grant recipient, awarded by the Brooklyn Arts Exchange.
Williams has taught master classes in New York City, Tallahassee, Charlotte, Altoona, and Trinidad. She is currently offering free master classes to the general public through Moving Spirits, Inc. Williams has worked as a Program Director for the Arts and Literacy Program in Brooklyn and is dedicated to continuous work in underprivileged communities.