Afro Fusion

Mondays, 6 - 7:15 pm

at Soft Medicine, 186 N Main st, Sebastopol, CA, 95472

Join us for this joyous, sensual, and rhythmically lush dance class. Explore and celebrate movements from the West African Diaspora and African inspired contemporary choreographers. Come ready to sweat, release your spine and hips, and find your power! We will root in the Earth and cleanse our spirits in vibrant community. Open to all levels.

Z’s bio

(aka Zahava Griss, pronouns: they/them)

I grew up in the African diasporic dance communities in NYC with Baba Chuck Davis, Katherine Dunham, Urban Bush Women, Ron Brown, Nia Love, and Wanjiru Kamuyu. I also danced for St. Lucian choreographer Tania Isaac, and Oh!ni Sowa of Ghana. I studied dance and drum in Senegal with Marie Basse Wiles. Having started with 20 years of ballet, I learned how differently cultures define dance, the body, sex, the soul, and our relationship with the Earth. Dancing in different cultures gave me important perspective about the white supremacy culture in America. Dance became how I experienced the values and possibilities a community created.

What does it mean to teach Afro Fusion in a white body?

This question has been in my heart much of my life and the longer story you may see in my performance ritual, Waters of the Soul. The short story is for decades I have been invited into black communities and black spaces. I have been trusted, and asked to learn and share these dances and stories in service of healing, resilience, remembering, and liberation. In 2000, I went to Gorée Island off the west coast of Senegal where humans were held as slaves before being shipped across the Atlantic. I stood there in shock at age 19, feeling the energy of that place, unable to comprehend... I knew I could not live my life without dedicating myself to healing this. That year I co-founded a dance company to heal racism called White Folx Soul, By Any Dance Necessary. We collaborated with the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, the White Privilege Conference, and developed our own grass roots healing with our closest friends and family. 24 years later I continue to co-create spaces to heal around race.

Some of my anti-racism collaborations include:

• co-authoring an anthology called Sacred Body Wisdom by contributing a chapter on “Transforming the Culture of Whiteness in Dance and Sexuality Communities”

• White Folx Soul, By Any Dance Necessary, an experimental dance company exploring the incompatibility of wholeness and the race construct for white people.

• “Crusin the Divide,” choreographing for this performance about race and the Kentucky Derby with the Actors Theatre of Louisville. Kentucky is where my mom comes from! This included interviewing 70 community members and creating a performance with the community and for the community based on racial divides. It also included teaching race 101 class for local high schoolers including white youth who parents were in the KKK and the one black human who was in school with all of them.

• co-faciliating “Move beyond Racism” with Mazin Jamal

• co-facilitating Healing the Way we Create Social Change with Victor Lee Lewis, as part of the White Privilege Symposium we co-organized

• Togethering from the Root of our Hearts with Anu Gupta, Nehemoyia Young, and Teeni Dakini

• fundraising and directing a Grief & Eros Film on race, eros, secure attachment and gender

• I am also a grief ritualist rooted in Sobonfu Somé’s lineage from the Dagara Tribe in Burkina Faso. I’m currently co-creating Love Together: a healing ritual through racial grief, dance, and dreaming out loud with Ali Montgomery.

I am also a love coach, with a focus on kink, gender beyond the binary, secure attachment, and conscious power exchange (all in service to personal and cultural liberation!) Learn more and join my newsletter for invitations at www.EmbodyMoreLove.com.