Afro-Indigenous Empowerment
Join Dancing Earth Afro-Indigenous Performers, Collaborators & Activists for a creative work sharing, perspectives, struggles & life stories of how these artists step into their POWER as Afro-Indigenous culture carriers.
Thursday, September 10th
6-7:30pm PDT . 9-10:30pm EDT
Join Us on Zoom Here!
Meeting ID: 851 8185 8792
Passcode: 003460
Artists Bios
KAYLA BANKS - (professional choreographer, dancer and actress) is from Denver, Colorado where she received her B.A. in Performing Arts and Business Administration from Colorado State University. She is of African indigenous and European descent. She has danced professionally with Impact Dance Company, Dancing Earth Indigenous Dance Creations and Cleo Parker Robinson. She has performed nationally in cities from LA to New York City at The Public Theater under the choreographic direction of Emily Bufferd. She has choreographed for dance festivals in Colorado, The Portland Musical Theatre Co., Anya Pearson: Shaking Tree Theatre, and New Expressive Works. She is also a dance teacher teaching in studios, outreach programs and dance schools such as Colorado Ballet, The Portland Ballet and Cleo Parker Robsinson. She is currently working as a project manager with Jacob’s Pillow online summer programming and project dancer with Dancing Earth. She is currently based in Denver, Colorado.
RAS K'DEE - from Sonoma County, California, is a Native California Pomo/African musician, community educator, and renowned lyricist, producer, & lead vocalist/keyboardist for Bay Area-based live world hip-hop ensemble, Audiopharmacy. For K’dee, his musical inspiration is deeply rooted from his experience as a cultural artist. Translating artistically through world music, hip-hop, rhymes and soulful melodies, K’dee invokes the songs and dances from traditional ceremonies of his native people, and tells stories of resistance, healing, community & empowerment that can be understood and felt universally by all people. He has been compared to the likes of Gil Scott Heron, and Marvin Gaye. Ras K’dee’s musical repertoire includes “Street Prison” (2005), which was awarded by East Bay Express as Best Local Album of The Year in 2006, co-production on Audiopharmacy album, “U Forgot About Us” (2009), and producing his first solo-project, “Cloudwriter” (2011), Audiopharmacy’s State of the Heart (2014) and Black Native (2016). K’dee has also had his hand in releasing, producing, and engineering 18 albums by local and international artists and has shared the stage with Arrested Development, Dead Prez, Michael Franti, Pharcyde, X-Clan, Bruno Mars, Goapale and many more who have influenced his own music.
K’dee has toured locally and internationally with Audiopharmacy for 16 consecutive years, traveling to Germany, Austria, UK, Holland, Switzerland, France, Japan, Indonesia, New Zealand, Fiji, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Ecuador, Morocco, Oman and Cyprus to share his music. In 2003, K’dee co-founded (and is the current director) of a Native youth media organization Seventh Native American Generation (SNAG) whose annual publication features the art, photos, music and writing of Indigenous Youth. K’dee leads summer workshops with Youth and is a producer and occasional co-host of the radio program “Bay Native Circle” on 94.1 FM in Northern California. K’dee has also been featured in Smithsonian Magazine (Summer 2010), and Native California news 2015, and his awards include; Most Earnest and Up And Coming Band (2005), KQED American Indian Local Heroes Award (2009), American Music Abroad Program - Cultural Ambassador (2013-14), American Indian Film Award - Best Animation Short Injunuity (2017). K'dee is currently building the first ever sustainably built, Indigenous led, multi-media center of its kind the NEST Community Arts Center in his Pomo homeland. With the completion of the first permanent structure this fall, the cob visual arts studio, K’dee is currently fundraising to build the main structure, which will house SNAG Magazine’s offices, innovation studios, dance studio, holistic healing space, communal living space, and music studio.
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