Portals: Traversing Black Continuums

Kendra J. Bostock is a proud Detroit native working as a dancer, choreographer, teaching artist, facilitator and community organizer in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. As a dancer in New York City, Kendra has worked with Urban Bush Women (UBW), Andrea E. Woods/Souloworks, Ase Dance Theater Collective, Monstah Black/ Motion Sickness, MBDance, Moving Spirits Dance Company, RAKIA!, Melanie Green, Movement of the People Dance Company and as a guest artist with Oyu Oro. Kendra completed a European tour dancing with Adira Amram and DJ Kid Koala in Vinyl Vaudeville 2.0 and performed with Gyptian at the MTV Iggy awards. Kendra’s choreographic work has been presented at the Florida A&M University, the off Broadway show 7 Sins, Museu de Arte in Salvador, Brazil, Dixon Place, Ailey Citigroup Theater, Actors Fund Theater, and Mark Morris. She has been an Artist in Residence at Brooklyn Studios for Dance, Bates College, Marymount Manhattan, and The Neighborhood Project Through 651Arts, a BAX Space Grantee, and a Visiting Artist at Atlantic Center for the Arts. She was recently the 2022 Inaugural BedStuy Artist in Residence at The Laundromat Project. She is currently a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow. Along with sharing her art world-wide, Kendra serves as a Facilitator with UBW’s BOLD (Builders, Organizers, and Leaders Through Dance) network and the Founder/Director of STooPS that uses art as a catalyst to strengthen ties between different entities in Bed-Stuy. STooPS has been featured as the New York Times Best of Dance/Best of the Street, New12, Pix 11, NY1, and Bare Feet with Mickela Mallozzi.

Ziedah Diata is a Brooklyn, New York-based artist, facilitator, and attorney. Since 2011, Ziedah has created participatory art experiences independently and in collaboration with cultural organizers, teachers, poets, healers and playwrights. Her work is inspired, in part, by the recurring themes that emerged in testimony during her 15 year career as an administrative law judge: harm, repair, empathy, healing and transformation. In 2023, Ziedah left her role as Chief Administrative Law Judge for the New York State Department of State. She now explores these same themes through facilitated art-making and storytelling experiences

Pia Monique Murray is a choreographer, performer, installation artist, teacher, and creative producer. She leads Pia Monique Murray Dance Collective (PMMDC), producing movement-based multidisciplinary performance works that include community engagement and audience interaction as an artistic practice. Pia was a 2023 CCI 2.0 Producing Fellow with Urban Bush Women and currently is Associate Producer of Haint Blu by Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Speis, co-producer of When Black Women+ Speak, and Associate Producer of the 40th Anniversary season. As Bailey’s Cafe’s Producing Artistic Director she produces and curates As Quiet as It’s Kept, a multidisciplinary ethnography project about longtime residents in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Additionally, Pia is Creative Producer of Kendra J. Bostock’s KJB Works company and the STooPS Summer Festival in Bedford Stuyvesant. She is also the creator of Black Daisies, an interdisciplinary project that centers joy as political activism.