About me
A multiethnic Harlemite, Joya Powell (she/her) is a Bessie Award winning choreographer and educator passionate about community, activism, and dances of the African Diaspora. Throughout her career she has danced with choreographers such as Paloma McGregor, Nicole Stanton, and Katiti King. In 2005 Joya founded Movement of the People Dance Company, dedicated to addressing sociocultural injustices through multidisciplinary immersive contemporary dance. Her work has appeared in venues such as: BAM, Lincoln Center, SummerStage, Harlem Stage, The Folger Theater (DC), La Mama, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Dance Complex (Cambridge), Mudlark Theater (New Orleans), Movement Research @ Judson Church, The School of Contemporary Dance & Thought (Northampton), BAAD! among others. Joya has taught and studied in Brazil, Puerto Rico, Cuba, France and Canada. Recent awards and recognition include: Angela's Pulse's North Star Arts Incubator, CUNY Dance Initiative AIR, The Unsettling Dramaturgy Award, LMCC Grant. Her chapter "How do you hold when you need to be held?: Dance and the embodied practice of grieving," is featured in Pandemic Performance: Resilience, Liveness, and Protest in Quarantine Times (Routledge). She is a co-leader of Angela's Pulse's Dancing While Black. She received her BA in Latin American Studies and Creative Writing from Columbia University, MA in Dance Education from NYU, and MFA in Dance from The University of the Arts. Joya is an Assistant Professor of the Practice in Dance and African American Studies at Wesleyan University.
