KST Blog

19 Mins with Joseph Hall: featuring Maria Bauman-Morales

Every Tuesday at 12:30pm, KST Executive Director Joseph Hall takes to Instagram Live for conversations with arts leaders in Pittsburgh, across the USA, and internationally. Tune in, get to know Joseph, and find out how he and fellow arts leaders around the world are adapting to the challenges brought on by COVID-19.

For this Tuesday, April 14th stream, Joseph was joined by “Bessie” award winning multi-disciplinary artist and Brooklyn, NY based community organizer, Maria Bauman-Morales. Check out Maria Bauman-Morales and MBDance here: http://www.mbdance.net

 Maria Bauman-Morales is a “Bessie” award winning multi-disciplinary artist and community organizer based in Brooklyn, NY. She is 2020 Columbia College Dance Center Practitioner-in-Residence, 2019 Gibney Dance in Process residency award winner, 2018-20 UBW Choreographic Center Fellow, 2017-19 Artist in Residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange and was the 2017 Community Action Artist in Residence at Gibney. In 2009 she founded MBDance which recently premiered (re)Source to sold-out audiences, co-commissioned by the Chocolate Factory Theater and BAAD!. She creates bold and intimate artworks for MBDance, via dream-mapping and nuanced, powerful physicality. Centering non-linear stories, bodies and musings of queer people of color, she draws on her studies of English literature, capoeira, improvisation, dancing in nightclubs and concert dance classes to emphasize ancestors, imagination, and Spirit while embodying inter- dependence. Bauman-Morales is also a performance collaborator with Jumatatu Poe’s and Donte Beecham’s Let ‘im Move You: This is a Formation. Previously, she danced with Urban Bush Women (UBW) and was UBW’s Director of Education and Community Engagement before becoming Associate Artistic Director. She still works with Urban Bush Women as part of the UBW Summer Leadership Institute advisory council and faculty member for the Summer Leadership Institute. She is an active member of our dance community outside of choreography and performance. Bauman-Morales is a Core Trainer with The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, helping arts organizations and university dance programs understand and undo racism. In 2014, she co-founded a grassroots organization, Artists Co-creating Real Equity, which won the 2018 BAX Arts and Artists in Progress Award for working to undo racism in our daily lives. Organizing to undo racism informs her artistic work and the two areas are each ropes in a Double-dutch that is her holistic practice. She is also a mentor to early career artists through Queer Art Mentorship.

19 Mins with Joseph Hall, is a part of KST Global Stream, KST’s COVID-19 responsive online programming initiative.

Below is video of the conversation between Joseph Hall and Maria Bauman-Morales. Check out the full schedule of upcoming guests here.