d. Sabela grimes

 d. Sabela grimes, a 2017 County of Los Angeles Performing Arts Fellow and a 2014 United States Artists Rockefeller Fellow, is a trans-media storyteller whose creative practice draws directly from Black movement systems. His dance theater works are a mix of socio-historical observation, self-examination and speculative exploration through layers of interconnected sonic, visual and kinesthetic arrangements. Sabela affirms that his primary intention is to experience ritual as a means to play in the corrugated spaces of what he calls ‘cosmic blackness’. His most recent endeavor, ELECTROGYNOUS declares that Black gender qualities are infinite, multidimensional and distinct manifestations of wombniversal consciousness. His current project, Dark Matter Messages, dreams Octavia E. Butler’s body of work into a modular multi-disciplinary performance/installation experience. On faculty at USC’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, he continues to cultivate, Funkamental MediKinetics, a movement system that draws on the layered dance training, community building, and spiritual practices evident in Black vernacular and Street dance forms.