For Nina
Music Director and Vocalist
Desiré Graham is a submerging Artist In-Practice from Harlem, NY and holds a BFA in Theatre Arts from Boston University and Minor in Black studies where she earned the Kahn Career Entry Award in 2018. Graham has appeared in productions with Speakeasy Stage, New Repertory Theatre, FreshInk Theatre, Hibernian Hall in Boston, MA and was a company member at the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, in Italy, from 2019-2022. Graham currently works with Double Edge Theatre, VLA Dance, and Wender Collective as a recurring collaborator. Additionally, Graham curates The Black Residency and hosts the workshop series entitled Somewhere in Between, for BIPOC and ALAANA peoples to discover the use of communal singing, give weight to their vibrational soul, activate, and call on others to join in. Graham is a 2024 Princess Grace Foundation Award winner, having previously received other various honoraria from MASS MoCA, American Repertory Theater, Connecticut Office of the Arts, and other cultural organizations.
Choreographer and Dancer
Victoria Lynn Awkward is a multi-hyphenate creator, administrator, educator and the Director of VLA DANCE. She pursued her multiple interests at Goucher College and graduated with high honors in Dance, Visual Art and Secondary Education. As the Director of VLA DANCE she is researching how to lead with joy, pleasure, and breath in and outside of art making practices. This work is guided through the lineage of Black and queer liberation practitioners. Alongside directing VLA DANCE, Victoria is a freelance artist, who most recently choreographed for Huntington Theater, Company One Theatre, Boston Lyric Opera, and Commonwealth Shakespeare. As a performer she has worked for Jasmine Hearn, Shura Baryshnikov, Jenna Pollack, and others. Victoria is also an educator having worked at Salem State University, Brown University, West End House, Middlesex School, and Urbanity Dance. She continues to deepen her teaching practices as a mentee with Midday Movement Series. Victoria is currently a Brother Thomas Fellow, and recipient of the Next Steps for Boston Grant Dance Program as well as a recipient of the Queer (Re)public Theater Offensive Residency. Through her work she aims to inspire people to pause and reflect on their actions towards themselves, their community and their environment.
Pianist
Camila Cortina Bello is a pianist, educator, musicologist and composer. Born in Havana, Cuba, she has taken the stage in her home country and has performed for audiences around the world. Her music intends to re-imagine the sounds and rhythms of her original Cuban roots through the lens of jazz, classical and world music.
Camila studied classical piano and ethnomusicology in Havana. In 2010, after finishing her studies, she moved to Singapore, where she performed as a pianist and music director for different international bands across South Asia, including Indonesia and Malaysia. She relocated to Boston in 2018 as a recipient of the Berklee World Tour Full Tuition Scholarship to further her studies in Jazz Composition and Global Jazz Performance.
In 2023, Camila was an awardee of New Music USA's "Next Jazz Legacy Program," which supports emerging women in jazz. Since then, she has shared the stage with Paquito D'Rivera, Miguel Zenon, Terri Lyne Carrington, and Dianne Reeves, among many others, and performed at the Cape May Jazz Festival, DC Jazz Festival, Ecuador Jazz Festival, and Festival Internacional de Jazz de Punta del Este (Uruguay, 2024). She also released her first EP, "Sonera," which is available on all streaming platforms.
in rehearsal
We exhale to remember, we perform to call in. Going back to Nina Simone’s journey helps us to flourish forward in ours. Through a multidisciplinary production of vocals, dance and piano VLA DANCE’s For Nina is an intrinsic story exploring sisterhood, hope, love, and liberative Black Femme experience. The performers honor Nina Simone by engaging in her practice of self-honesty as a tool to inspire audiences to confront truths about themselves. Motifs of line dancing, hand percussion, and syncopated melody propel the performers into Black diasporic practice as they play on the exchange of spontaneity and structure. Nina Simone songs like “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” are performed with dynamic musicality and virtuosic dancing with lead artists, Victoria Lynn Awkward, Camila Cortina Bello, and Desiré Graham.
Timeline
2025, Tour - more info soon
December 4, 2024, Excerpt, CCF and The Barr Foundation’s Creative Commonwealth Initiative
September 23 - 27, 2024, Show, Weeksville Heritage Center
August 21 - August 31, 2024, Research and Development Period, Arrow St. Arts
July 10 - July 18, 2024, Research and Development Period, Arrow St. Arts
December 16, 2023, Show, Multicultural Arts Center
November 30, 2023, Premier, Hibernian Hall
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Click to download the For Nina informational touring packet.
Contact for touring: victoria@vladance.com
Composer/Arranger Devon Gates is a bassist, vocalist, and composer from Atlanta, Georgia, now based in Brooklyn, NY. After studying anthropology and jazz performance at Harvard University, Berklee College of Music, and the Royal Academy of Music (London, UK) she has emerged in the contemporary jazz scene, working with esteemed artists including Terri Lyne Carrington, Vijay Iyer, Jen Shyu, and Nicole Mitchell, and performing at venues such as The Kennedy Center, SFJazz, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, and the London Jazz Festival. Recently named one of 2024’s Up and Comers of the Year (The New York City Jazz Record), she also leads her own projects as a bandleader, collaborator, and composer, bringing her unique blend of jazz, chamber, and soul influences to New York, Japan, Italy, Mongolia, India, the UK, and more in recent years.
Director Pascale Florestal is a first generation Haitian American Queer Woman. She is an Elliot Norton Nominated Director, Educator, Dramaturg, Writer and Collaborator based in Boston, MA. Recent Directing Credits: MidSummer; Kinda? Written and Directed by Pascale Florestal at Suffolk University, World Premiere of Phaedra Michelle Scott’s DIASPORA! with New Repertory Theater, Magic Flute with MassOpera, Fairview with SpeakEasy Stage, Spring Awakening at Brandeis University, The Colored Museum with The Umbrella Performing Arts Center, Once On This Island with SpeakEasy Stage, This Girl Laughs, This Girl Cries, This Girl Does Nothing with Emerson Stage, Everybody with Boston Conservatory and others. As an Assistant to the Director she has worked with Timothy Douglas, Liesl Tommy, Billy Porter, Paul Daigneault and M. Bevin O'Gara. Pascale served as the Associate Director to Gil Rose on X:The Life and Times of Malcolm X with Odyssey Opera and Kimberly Senior on Our Daughters, Like Pillars at The Huntington Theater. Pascale also serves as the Associate Director for The Broadway National Tour of Jagged Little Pill. in 2021 Pascale was named one of the WBUR ARTery 25 Artists of Color Transforming the Cultural Landscape in Boston. In 2020 she won the Inaugural Greg Ferrell Award for her excellence in teaching and supporting young people. She serves as the Director of Education for The Front Porch Arts Collective in residence at The Huntington Theater. She is an Assistant Professor of Theater at Boston Conservatory at Berklee College of Music and Visiting Guest Artist Professor in Practice in the Theater at Suffolk University.
photos by Najee Brown
Audience Feedback
"I felt that it was not so much of a 'retelling' of Nina Simone's life, but rather an intrinsic and deeply vulnerable story being shared that mirrors many marginalized people's own experiences. The story is hopeful, it's liberating and loving, and experiencing it I felt like it wasn't over.”
"I loved the emotive nature of the show. I do believe Nina Simone would have approved! I am also struck at how the young people are connecting with the past and the important work of Nina Simone. Especially in how she was a complex person."
"I loved the collaboration between the dancer and musicians. I found this performance incredibly freeing!"
"Delicious phrasework and music, powerful performance quality from all performers, wonderful lighting, satisfying use of the boxes to create more texture in the space, and carefully considered transitions between songs/sections kept me riveted the whole time"
textile art in collaboration and response
Nina's Textures of Liberation
August 2024
Quilted fabric with embroidery
“I crafted the quilt, Nina's Textures of Liberation, in response to creating and performing in VLA DANCE's For Nina. In preparation for this show, I've sat deeply with Nina Simone's multifaceted nature and want to remember her as not only a fabulous artist, powerful activist, but also as a Black femme in need of care, community, and love. Swimming in life's streams of varying tensions and ease, I too question what it means to be here on this earth holding my identities of Black, femme, queer +. As I protest and unlearn systems of oppressive languages my body calls me to process through many forms of art and crafting this commemorative token has been transformative. The layers of the quilt are all bound together, possibly, to outline that one person can hold a kaleidoscope of realities and in order to practice liberation we often have to cradle many non-binary notions at once.”
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Red Dress costume
August, 2024
Organza fabric
Additional For Nina collaborators in 2024
Theophile Victoria (he/him), Set Designer and Fabricator, Iyun Ashani Harrison (he/him), Mentor, and Damaris "Mars" Calderon (she/her), Project Manager, and Najee Brown (he/him), Photographer and Videographer
Credits for first iteration of For Nina in 2023
Performers
Victoria Lynn Awkward (she/her) - Choreographer & Dancer, Desiré Graham (she/her) - Vocalist & Music Director, and Hua Ye (she/her) - Pianist
Collaborators
Aliza Franz (she/they) - Rehearsal Director, Sasha Peterson (she/her) -Dramaturg, Jolie Frazer-Madge (she/her) - Stage Manager, Natalie Main (she/her) - Stage Manager, Elmer Martinez (he/him) - Lighting Designer, Mikayla Williams (she/her) - Set Designer, and Theophile Victoria (he/him) - Tech Support
Young Dance Artists
Students at Urbanity Dance: Zaria Louis-Charles and Nora Welch. Jo-Mé Dance Arts Company II Under the Artistic Directors May-Lisa Chandler and Joe Gonzalez: Aliyah German, Andrea Lopez, Leah Pires, Janiah Wimes
For Nina funders and supporters include:
