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| CHELSEA MICHEL GREGORY
Chelsea Michel Gregory is an Atlanta-born, Brooklyn-based performing artist, activist, and educator. She works throughout the United States as a free-lance performing and teaching artist through the media of dance, spoken word poetry, and theater. A cast member and organizer for the multi-arts performance group We Got Issues!, she is part of their national tour, facilitating the WGI! young women’s empowerment curriculum around the country, and adapting the stories of diverse women to the stage. She has also had the opportunity to work as a guest choreographer for the project, and her writing is featured in the upcoming book “We Got Issues! A Young Woman’s Guide to a Bold, Courageous, and Empowered Life” due out in November 2006 (please see www.wegotissues.org). In the spring of 2006, Ms. Gregory founded the artist collective MoveTrue Productions with other artists interested in addressing issues of race, identity, history, and cultural experience. Their first performance piece “lo que se hace…” was featured at The Point and at Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance through Pepatian’s Artist Spotlight Series (please see www.pepatian.org). Before transitioning into the performing arts as a profession, Ms. Gregory worked full-time as a youth educator and organizer through ReflectRespect Project, the cultural arts empowerment program she continues to develop and facilitate through residencies in schools and community-based organizations. Of mixed Eastern European Jewish and Anglo-American descent, she recently had the opportunity to return to the Southern Caucasus region through the organization UMCOR. She was able to facilitate ReflectRespect workshops with children of displaced families in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, and learn traditional folkloric dance forms.
Ms. Gregory trained extensively in classical ballet during her adolescent years, performing with the Atlanta Ballet, Boston Ballet’s Summer Youth Ensemble, and Beacon Dance Company in Decatur, Georgia. Upon graduating from high school, she re-located to New York City, and went on to complete her B.A. at New York University’s Gallatin School through a course of study entitled “Community Empowerment and Creative Culture.” Much of her curriculum was patterned after Katherine Dunham’s work as an artist, anthropologist, and cultural activist, and she studied the Dunham Technique intensively for two years. She performed professionally with Ned Williams Dunham Dance Theater, and for a series of Afro-Caribbean Folkloric Lecture Demonstrations with NYU Professor Joanne Burroughs. She then studied Modern Technique at the Jose Limon Institute, and performed work by company members and choreographers such as Carlos Orta and Geraldine Cardiel. Ms. Gregory has also worked with choreographers Marlies Yearby, Baraka de Soleil, and Shalewa Mackall/Movement for the Urban Village. In the summer of 2006 she had the honor of performing as a dancer and spoken word artist with Urban Bush Women for their summer arts and organizing institute.
As a spoken word artist, Ms. Gregory’s first performance was at the Nuyorican Poets Café in 2001 for a showcase hosted by Blackout Collective’s Bryonn Bain. Since then, she has performed at various New York City venues including the Schomberg Center Youth Summit, V-Day’s End Violence Against Women and Girls Series at TACT Theater, The Adam Clayton Powell State Building, Jimmy’s Uptown Café, The Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center, The African Street Festival, and Chashama Arts Space. She has performed across the U.S. at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Minnesota, and was a host and featured performer for the Unity Bridges “Sisters of the Earth” Conference in Malibu, California. She has also been featured at events for organizations such as The League of Independent Voters, The Arts for Peace Festival, The League for the Enhancement of All Africans’ Futures, and Make the Road By Walking. Ms. Gregory often writes and performs under the alias Chaia Brown because Chaia, meaning “life,” is the Hebrew name given to her in the Jewish tradition, and Brown represents the other side of her ancestry as a tribute to the militant abolitionist John Brown. She completed her first recorded piece under this alias- a tribute to Amadou Diallo for “Know Your Rights and the Police,” an outreach initiative produced by Rephstar that educates young people about the issue of police brutality (please see www.myspace.com/yourrightsnpolice.) In addition to the We Got Issues book, Ms. Gregory will be putting out a collection of poems this fall entitled “Bleeding Free.” Please feel free to contact her for more information at (718)907-0356, or visit her page at www.myspace.com/chaiabrown .
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