BdA Literary Editor and Content Writer

Ugo F. Edu is a medical anthropologist working at the intersection of medical anthropology, public health, black feminism, and science, technology, and society studies (STS). Using interdisciplinary approaches, her scholarship focuses on reproductive and sexual health, gender, race, aesthetics, body knowledge, and body modifications. Her book project: The "Family Planned": Racial Aesthetics, Sterilization, and Reproductive Fugitivity in Brazil, traces the influence of an economy of race, aesthetics, and sexuality on reproductive and sterilization practices of women in Brazil. She is working on a play, “Securing Ties,” which draws heavily on her book project as a means for critical public engagement and an incorporation of the arts in her scholarship. “Securing Ties’ was a Semifinalist in the 2018 Bay Area Playwrights Festival. She has experience developing theatrical material and performing in a UCB Black Theater Workshop production titled, "At Buffalo" in 2011. She assisted in data collection and as a capoeira consultant and performer for a theatrical piece about the Freddy Gray murder in Baltimore, written by Greg Pierotti. She has been a collaborator with Brazilian choreographer Isaura Oliveira as dance and capoeira performer since 2014 with the Teatro Brasileiro de Dança: The Bahia in Oakland Collective stage productions. She was a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) Equity Fellow (2016-2017).

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Driver of AudioVisual Caravan

Miles Lassi, is an interdisciplinary artist based out of Oakland, CA. As a musician, he has performed in over 150 cities throughout North America, Europe and Asia with many different ensembles ranging from the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall to the national tour of Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story on Stage.

Notable artists Miles has performed alongside include, Béla Fleck, Tangerine Dream, John Rutter, Monophonics, Oh No, and The Alchemist. As a session musician, Miles has recorded for producers Sean C and LV (P. Diddy’s Hitmen) for artists including Talib Kweli, Miguel, Fabulous, Bun B, and Jadakiss. He has also worked with Grammy award winning producers Om'Mas Keith, Corte Ellis, Jack Vad and Tony award winner Peter Schneider.

In the dance field, Miles has collaborated with Anna Halprin, Urban Bush Women, Axis Dance Company, Afro Urban Society, Kambara+, Gerald Casel Dance, PUSH Dance Company, Sarah Bush Dance Project, SOCO Dance Theater, the Tamalpa Institute, and has accompanied classes at Sonoma State University, University of San Francisco, Mills College and UC Berkeley.

Miles is dedicated to creating new sounds and music and has done so at the New York Musical Festival, Lincoln Center, Apollo Theater, ODC Dance Commons, wcciJAM, the deYoung Museum, Big Sur's Esalen Institute, and the New York Film Festival.

As a producer/ engineer/ mixer, Miles works out of Skyline Studios in Oakland, clients include Berkeley Rep, Pig Pen Theatre Co, Opera Parallèle, Ayesha Curry, Mistah Fab, Andre Ward, calm.com, GoDaddy.

Miles is a graduate of Mannes School of Music

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BdA Artistic Development Conductor

Originally from London, England, Mr. French is a writer, director, and creator of theatre. As a boy, he saw “Cathy Come Home” on the seminal British television series “Play for Today” and was transformed. He created the Glasshouse Theatre Company thirteen years later where he wrote and directed the Ovation award-winning play “The Rainy Season.” Mr. French also co-wrote “The Buddha Prince,” a ‘walking’ play about the life of the Dalai Lama, which has toured the U.S. extensively and was performed in Central Park in New York City in 2005 and 2008. More recently he was selected as one of the only twenty-five directors to the prestigious Lincoln Center’s Director’s Lab program, and one of only eight directors to the Great Plains Theatre Conference. Mr., French is an associate artist at the Oakland Theatre Project, Co-Creative Director at Other Hand Studies, a resident artist at Playground, and currently adapting the Heinrich von Kleist novella, ‘The Betrothal of Santo Domingo” for production in 2021.

BdA Arts Production Conjurer

2AM. Many say that is the time our ancestors speak to us. For 2AM it is the time that she finds silence in a chaotic world surrounding her. Within that silence, the artist goes within, connecting to her higher self, becoming a vessel to the hidden messages of yesterday. This creative method is a channel investing concrete evidence to African Religions, traditions, and cultures by way of visual expression.

With this practice, she creates a large series of work blending ancient indigenous cultures, with myths and legends from both the past and future. In this study she forms and shapes spirituality and creativity, through a greater understanding of personal identity, spiritual practice, and ritual magic. By building this work, the artist gives life to the many lost and stolen legacies of African and African American people, while building a foundation for those legacies to live on through Afrofuturism.

Although many of her other artistic endeavors include muraling, painting, printmaking, and assemblage, she is a woman of many talents. It is her belief that the personal is political, often many of her works speak to the issues related to homelessness, feminism, economic justice, and the state of the black human condition. She is currently focused on creating installation-performance art rooted in breaking down the construct of the black woman.

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Lead Facilitator - Lit From The Black! Fellowship

Dr. Stephanie Anne Johnson is a second-generation theater practitioner. Her mother Virginia Greene worked with the American Negro Theater in the 1950s. Johnson has been a lighting designer for over forty-five years. Nationally she has done designs for La Mama Theatre (N.Y.), Black Moon Theatre (N.Y. & Paris), Telluride Theatre (Colorado), The Arizona Repertory Theatre, The National Black Theater Festival, and The Apollo (N.Y.). Locally, she has worked with Cultural Odyssey, Afro Solo, Ubuntu Theatre, TheatreFirst, African American Shakespeare Company, Shotgun Theatre, Lower Bottom Playaz, Aurora Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, and many other groups. Internationally, she has worked in India, Holland, Belgium, Paris, Italy, and Canada. Johnson is the playwright/performer of Every Twenty-One Days: Cancer, Yoga and Me, a play that has been performed in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Berkeley, and Atlanta.

Johnson is also a visual artist who has had two one-person shows in San Francisco. Her public and site-specific installations have focused upon the use of light and projections as tools for symbolic and metaphorical examinations of African American history.

Dr. Johnson is a founding professor in the Visual and Public Art Department at Cal State University, Monterey Bay. Her work can be seen on her website

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Choir Director aka Creative Direction

San Francisco native with the incarnations of Mississippi, Tossie Long, is a experience designer, international performer artist, facilitator and director. Nicknamed "Bone Rattler," Tossie works at the intersections of music, culture and sociopolitical edges spanning from rock and roll vocals, afrofuturist productions to immersive design experiences.

As a multi-hyphenate and Grammy Nominated artist, Tossie is a practitioner of ceremonial music from around the world with a focus on diasporic cosmology, Tossie has voyaged to Haiti, Cuba and Benin tracing the migration of Vodou.

In addition to her vocal artistry, Tossie is also the co-founder and creative director of Bakanal de Afrique, a biannual afro-urban arts and culture festival that culminates into a full-length theatre production. 

An advocate for Black Women's mental and spiritual health, Tossie cofounded Blood + Bone, a think tank that centers and celebrates radical wellness. Tossie does not perform simply for the sake of performing, but rather, to challenge herself and to experiment with how far she can push her perceived limits.

Tossie Long's performances and workshops have graced many premier avenues including Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Stern Grove camp and Festival, Oakland Symphony, The Stone NYC, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Harlem Museum, Oakland Museum of California, UC Berkeley, UCSF, UC Merced, We Sing Conference, State of the Movement, Zoo Labs and Stanford D School to name a few.

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BdA Minister of Information

Kanukai Chigamba is a multifaceted dancer, musician, performer, and burgeoning photographer. At a young age in Harare, Zimbabwe, she danced at Biras and later joined the Mhembero Dance Troupe, performing traditional Zimbabwean dance. In 2010, Chigamba moved to Oakland, CA and has since expanded her dance repertoire in both traditional and urban styles as a lead performer of the renowned Chinyakare Ensemble, and principal in Gbedu Town Radio, a Pan Afro Urban Music and Dance Ensemble.

Chigamba has performed all over the United States, including at the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, Zimbabwe Music Festival USA (Zimfest), Monterey Bay Reggaefest, and the Africa Day Celebration in Washington, D.C.

Her arts and cultural background are reinforced by a bachelor's degree in International Relations from Sacramento State University, her travels to Togo, and her work with Yoram Savion/YAK Films, Julia Chigamba, Nkeiruka Oruche, Stern Grove Festival, Destiny Arts, Afro Urban Society, and the Oakland Museum of California.

Along with new performance work, teaching, and program administration, Chigamba is currently embarking on her next major project, a photographic essay series featuring African women navigating the complexities and opportunities of street transportation.

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BdA Chief of Import & Export

Nkeiruka Oruche is a cultural organizer, producer and multidisciplinary performer of Igbo descent, who specializes in Afro-Urban culture and its intersections with personal identity, public wealth and sociopolitical action. Since 2002, Nkeiruka has played a crucial role in ushering African culture unto the global stage from working as Editor-in-Chief of Nigerianentertainment.com, a digital magazine, and as co-founder of One3snapshot, an art collective.

In 2018, she wrote and created ‘What Had Happened Was… An Afro Urban Musical’, a hot-blooded urban dance theater piece exploring a timeline of afro urban dance and music from 1910 to the present.

She is a Kikwetu Honors Awardee, a 2018 NYFA Immigrant Artist Fellow, recipient of The Creative Work Fund, and the MAP Fund. Other grants and awards include Kenneth Rainin Foundation, California Arts Council, The Zellerbach Family Foundation, The East Bay Community Foundation, Dancer’s Group/CA$H, ACTA Living Cultures, City of Oakland and Akonadi Foundation.

Currently, Nkeiruka is focused on expanding and sustaining grassroots change-making and community health through the production, performance and embodiment of art and culture. She is a co-founder of BoomShake, a social justice and music education organization, and Director of Afro Urban Society, an incubator and presenter of Afro-Urban performing and visual arts, culture, media, and social discourse.

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Interdisciplinary Artist

New York/Miami | USA

Alexis Alleyne-Caputo lives and works in Miami, Florida, and New York. She received her Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in 2018 from Goddard College and holds a Master of Arts (MA) and Bachelor of Science (BS/MA dual studies) from New York University.

As an award-winning commissioned interdisciplinary artist, her visual narratives include (architecture, mixed media collage, painting, photography, sculpture, and film). The intersections of her artistic practice explore themes of black female identity, black feminisms, critical black studies, oceanic studies, familial and cultural kinship, spirituality, social justice, and art as education and reparations.

Selected Solo Exhibitions are “Colonial Currents: Black Women, Water, Trauma and Baptism”, (2020), “Black Acoustic Narratives”, (2018), “Art Transforming Trauma” (2017). Selected Group Exhibitions are “Bakanal De Afrique” & Afro Urban Society (2020), “Latin American Art Pavilion Project (LAAP) – DOCUMENTA III”, (2019), “Cri de Femmes – Outremer 2019 à’ Paris, A l’ Assemblée Nationale” Paris, France (2019).

She has received fellowships, residencies, and awards from Bakanal De Afrique & Afro Urban Society (2020), Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2020), Yarde Girl PHILANTHROPY-Barbados (2020), UNLIMITED BODIES: PERFORMA Biennial, NY (2019), CATALYST Miami (2019) and the Artist Certificate of Appreciation from the Miami-Dade County Office of The Mayor & County Commissioners (2016).

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Documentary Photographer

Lagos | Nigeria

Damilola Onafuwa is a documentary storyteller based in Lagos, Nigeria. He focuses on human-interest stories that create consciousness about social issues. His works are geared towards how human cultures are formed and how they shape our perception of the world. He has worked with notable organizations, NGOs and corporations; both locally and internationally. He is a member of APJD (Africa Photo-Journalism Database) and an Associate fellow at The Royal Commonwealth Society. He was a Fellow at Akoma, an African Storytelling Fellowship between 2017-2018 and a Skoll World Forum Fellow in 2019. He is the founder of StoryMaxima, a brand creating innovative stories for organizations, while training young photographers, filmmakers and storytellers and also encouraging them to share their stories.

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