amara tabor-smith

amara tabor-smith is an Oakland, CA based choreographer, performance maker, cultural worker, and the artistic director of Deep Waters Dance Theater. She describes her work as Conjure Art. Her interdisciplinary site-responsive and community specific performance making practice utilizes Yoruba Lukumí spiritual technologies to address issues of social and environmental justice, race, gender identity, and belonging. amara’s work is rooted in Black, queer, feminist principles that insist on liberation, joy, home fullness and well-being. Her most recently completed project, “House/Full of Blackwomen,” was a multi-year, multi site-specific ritual dance theater work that addressed the displacement, well being and sex-trafficking of Black women and girls in Oakland. She is a 2021 Rainin Arts Fellow, a 2019 Dance/USA Fellow, 2018 United States Artists Fellow, and a 2017 Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center Fellow. She has received support from Creative Capital, MAP Fund, The Kenneth Rainin Foundation, The Creative Work Fund and A Blade of Grass. amara received her MFA in Dance from Hollins University and is a teaching artist in residence at Stanford University.