Tim received his training at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City and has appeared on stage throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. For ten years, Tim served as a founding member of the Maryland-based clown theatre troupe Theatricks. He has appeared as a silent comic character for the Washington National Opera and the Maryland Lyric Opera.
SOLE Defined is the Washington Metro area’s leading arts organization specializing in percussive dance – using the body as an instrument to create musical expression. Advancing styles such as Tap, Stepping, Body Percussion, Sand Dance, and Gumboot; this BIPOC led company infuses powerful skill to delight and inspire audiences. SOLE Defined was founded under the joint leadership of Ryan Johnson and Quynn Johnson.
Founded in 1980, Black Cherry Puppet Theater has performed and presented puppetry-based activities to thousands across Maryland and the Mid Atlantic. The company is committed to the advancement of puppetry through collaborations with artists of other disciplines, presenting educational, as well as community-focused arts programming, and by sustaining a performance space that brings a very special theatrical experience to a growing and very diverse audience in “Baltimore’s coziest little theater.”
OUR MISSION AND MANDATE
Lesole Dance Project (LDP) seeks to empower youth and community members to engage in healthy, creative self-expression by providing educational arts programming and opportunities for cultural exchange.
Working in the United States and South Africa, LDP promotes the unique movement vocabulary and choreographic style inspired by the Southern African heritage, and faciltates learning spaces that honour Black artistic excellence.
Kwame Shaka Opare is a classically trained West African dancer with an MFA in Dance from the University of Maryland. At 14, he became a principal dancer with Kankouran West African Dance Company (Washington DC). As a young adult, Kwame Shaka moved to New York where he established himself as a dynamic instructor and choreographer. In the late 90s, he began touring with the Broadway show STOMP, in the lead role and as rehearsal director where he remained for 8 years.
SSUUNA: Is a dancer, percussionist, singer, songwriter, storyteller, and recording artist from Uganda with a wide range of performing experience. Raised in a small village by grandparents, He found comfort in the Ugandan traditional music that was played at school. As a result, his musical influence was born, thus encouraged, natured, and reinforced by his elders through proverbs, stories, songs, dances, and instrumentation. This bestowed priceless cultural entertainment, which proved to be educational as well as alleviating of the poverty, hunger, hopelessness, and suffering that SSUUNA
Valerie Branch graduated magna cum laude from the University of Maryland College Park with a Bachelor’s Degree in Dance. She has experience touring as a performing and teaching artist both nationally and internationally. Valerie has brought dance into schools throughout South Africa, India, and St. George’s, Grenada, and has received an invitation from the Danish Embassy to participate in a Cultural Arts Program Exchange Visit to Denmark.
Debra Mims has been a Performing Artist for over thirty years. She has a B.F. A in Theatre Performance from Marygrove College, in Detroit , Michigan. With training in Dance, She has performed at the Georgetown Theatre Company, the Children’s Theatre in Madison, Wisconsin, and the Detroit-Windsor Dance Company. Debra is the 2010 Individual Artist Award winner for solo performance She worked as an Arts producer for PBS in Detroit and Madison, Wisconsin and has produced arts programs nationally.
Mark Lohr New Vaudevillian Extraordinaire has trained in art of the Traditional American Circus Clown. He performs without makeup and the large shoes of his trade but with all the zany antics of the roots of his profession. His trade of silliness consists of some serious disciplines! Acting, slapstick comedy, pratfalls, comedic movement, and acrobatics, juggling, hat manipulation, spinning plates, fire juggling and manipulation, stilt walking... a veritable smorgasbord of theatre and circus skills!
WombWork Productions, Inc. was founded in 1997 by three Black women – Kay Lawal-Muhammad, Rashida Forman-Bey, and Nataska “Walks on Water” Hummingbird – who as artists and mothers established a space to address the dearth of creative outlets for their children and Baltimore youth. To this day, WombWork’s primary constituency remains youth ages 5-18, and secondarily young adults ages 19 and older. WombWork Productions primarily operates in Central Maryland, specifically Baltimore City.