IDA congratulates Artist-in-Residence amara tabor smith, who was recently named a Creative Power Award Winner by theWalter & Elise Haas Fund. Founded on the belief that art and culture is essential to a connected Bay Area, Creative Power Awards recognize the leadership and contributions of individual artists working in the arts ecosystem for both the preservation of culture and positive community transformation. Congratulations amara!
amara tabor-smith (she/they) Born in San Francisco, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land, and based in Oakland, amara is a choreographer/performance maker and the artistic director of Deep Waters Dance Theater.
She describes her dance and performance making practice as Conjure Art. Her interdisciplinary site-specific and community responsive performance experiences utilize Yoruba Lukumí spiritual technologies to address issues of social and environmental justice, race, gender identity, and belonging. Her work is rooted in Black, queer, Afro futurist/surrealist, womanist principles, that insist on liberation, joy, home fullness and well-being.
In addition to her own work amara has also performed in the works of artists such as Ed Mock, Joanna Haigood, Ana Deveare Smith, Ronald K. Brown, Julie Tolentino, Adia Tamar Whitaker, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and Faustin Linyekula. She is the former associate artistic director and company member with Urban Bush Women, and was the co artistic director of Headmistress, a performance collaboration with Sherwood Chen.
amara is a 2024 recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship award; a 2023 recipient of the American Academy of Religion’s Religion in the Arts Award; a 2021 inaugural recipient of the Rainin Fellowship; a 2020 recipient of the Hewlett 50 grant with East Side Arts Alliance; a 2019 Dance/USA Fellow; a 2018 United States Artist Fellow and a 2018 recipient of KQED’s “Bay Brilliant” award.
Rooted in her Oakland community, amara is a member of the Black Cultural Zone (BCZ) Arts and Culture working group in East Oakland. She is a co-founder of the Oakland Anti-Racist Organizing Committee (OAROC), a collaboration of BIPOC artists, activists and educators that holds space for individuals and organizations to address internalized structural racism. And she is the co-founder of Conjure and Mend, a creative sanctuary for survivors of Sex Trafficking in Oakland in partnership with sex trafficking abolitionist Regina Evans.
amara received her MFA in Dance from Hollins University and is an artist in residence at Stanford University’s Institute for Diversity in the Arts and the Department of Theater and Performance Studies.