Episode 28 - Amara Tabor-Smith
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Amara speaks of having family members who were Seers/that didn't talk about it - and how she learned to navigate her own Seeing. She names that we are living in present day traumatic stress syndrome/as she talks about her walk with depression, learning to hold both grief and sorrow, and valuing what she has come to view as an opportunity to be bought into a space of darkness - darkness that holds possibility. Orisha traditions gave Amara a feeling of coming home, and helped her move towards becoming more herself. Amara says that all her work is about healing. She says, "I am a death doula for patriarchy. Every piece is I make is really in service of helping patriarchy die."
Born and raised in San Francisco - during a time when it was still affordable, and arts, cultural and social justice movements were alive and vibrant. Originally focused on acting, Amara started doing professional theatre as a teen. She came to be a dancer after taking a class with the legendary modern dancer Ed Mock. She says, "he walked in the room, and I thought that I saw God." His high vibration, spoke to her empathic core. She kept going to class and by age 17 she joined his company. Ed Mock died in 1986 from AIDS, after which (for awhile) Amara couldn't bring herself to dance anymore. By the mid 90's, feeling like she couldn't continue to bare losing so many people she knew to AIDS, Amara moved to New York and studied capoeira. After seeing Urban Bush Women perform, "Womb Wars" she decided to audition for the company, and in 1996 she joined. There she learned to integrate her training in theatre, dance, capoeira, social justice and spiritual practices in her work.
Amara Tabor-Smith is a dancer, choreographer, and the artistic director of Deep Waters Dance Theater. Tabor-Smith’s work, as described by the artist, is Afro Futurist Conjure Art. Her dance making practice utilizes Yoruba spiritual ritual to address issues of social and environmental justice, race, gender identity, and belonging. Tabor-Smith is a recipient of the 2018 USA Artists Award, the 2016 Creative Work Fund grant, the 2017 MAP Fund grant, and the 2017 Kenneth Rainin Foundation grant, and a co-recipient of the 2016 Creative Capital Grant with longtime collaborator, Ellen Sebastian Chang. In 2017, she received the UBW Choreographic Center Fellowship. Her work has been performed in Brazil, the Republic of the Congo, New York, and throughout the San Francisco Bay Area where her company is based. Tabor-Smith is an Artist in Residence at Stanford University and faculty at UC Berkeley.
Ed Mock Tribute: He Moved Swiftly but Gently Down the Not Too Crowded Street | Ed Mock and Other True Tales in a City that Once Was
Amara Tabor-Smith’s REVIVAL: Millennial Remembering in the Afro NOW
(I had the privilege of being a part of this)
Amara on being from San Francisco "born (here)"
Amara's website