Andrea E. Woods Valdés

Dancer/Musician/Video Artist Dr. Andrea E. Woods Valdés is the Artistic Director of Souloworks /Andrea E. Woods & Dancers and chair of the Duke University Dance Program. She founded wimmim@work and the Calabasa Calabasa: Dancing and Making the Music of Life summer intensive to develop Black audiences and performing and teaching opportunities for wimmin of color. She is a former dancer/rehearsal director with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Dance Co. She holds an MFA in Dance from The Ohio State University and a MAH in Caribbean Cultural Studies from SUNY Buffalo and a PhD in dance from Texas Woman’s University with a focus on embodied Black aesthetics, spirit and sweat, and Black women choreographers. Woods Valdés has received grants from The Jerome Foundation, (NEFA) The National Dance Project, National Performance Network, Arts International, and the North Carolina Arts Council. She has been part of the American Dance Festival Faculty. She calls her work contemporary African American folklore. She teaches Afro-contemporary, modern dance, and dance/vocal/shekere work. Her creative process draws from storytelling, African diaspora cultural history, blues, jazz, folk music, family folklore, and movement reflective of the African Diaspora social and cultural experience. Her creative collaborators include musicians Randy Weston, David Pleasant, Tiyé Giraud, Madeleine Yayodele Nelson, Philip Hamilton, Shana Tucker, and Atiba Rorie and poet/writers hattie gossett and Joan Francisco Valdés Santos. She calls her projects SOULOWORKS because they are works from the heart, works from the soul. www.souloworks.com

Source: Choreographer