Rochelle Jamila

I am a Brooklyn based multidisciplinary performing artist, dancer, herbalist, and fertility doula born and raised in OkaNashoba or Memphis, Tennessee. I tell stories through dance. My creative practice is motivated by the pursuit of liberation through imagination, care, play and Earth as a teacher. I am inspired by Black cultures of the US South, the physical and psychic realms of women, and human and ecological fertility. I weave these themes through dance, song, meditation, and earth-based ritual to envision Black matriarchal freedom.

My work has been presented in Tennessee, New York, the Netherlands, and at venues such as Judson Church, Snug Harbor Botanical Garden, Triskelion Arts, The Buckman Theater, University of Amsterdam, and virtually in Harriet’s Gun Dance Film Festival. Rochelle was a 2020 Gibney Moving Toward Justice Fellow, 2021 Laundromat Project Create Change Resident, a 2023 EarthDance Resident, 2024 Resident at A Studio in the Woods, and a recipient of the Brooklyn Arts Council 2024 Creative Equations Cultural Heritage & Dance Fund to support her upcoming work Once We Were Free.

I have performed for Ebony Noelle Golden, Ogemdi Ude, Adia Whitaker, Jasmine Hearn, Ambika Raina, Beth Gill, Maria Bauman, and Reggie Wilson among others. I am currently a member of Trisha Brown Dance Company and Reggie Wilson Fist & Heel Performance Group.  I graduated from Columbia University with a Bachelor of Arts in Dance and a concentration in Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies.

Image by Ziggy Mack