BOLD ARTISTIC COORDINATOR

Jaimé Yawa Dzandu is a choreographer, movement artist, community organizer, and facilitator with roots in Hampton, Virginia, and Wusuta-Anyigbe, Ghana. She creates movement-based art experiences that nurture restoration, social connection, and transformation. Currently, Jaimé is the Artistic Coordinator and facilitator for Urban Bush Women's BOLD Network (Builders, Organizers, and Leaders through Dance), supporting the growth of dancers and community leaders. She also serves as the Interim Director of Wellness and Youth Culture at the Lower Eastside Girls Club, where she organizes and facilitates year-round wellness and performing arts programming. She has taught and continues to teach dance/movement at universities, cultural institutions, community centers, and studios. As a community organizer, she guides individuals and organizations through change, centering on community care, sustainability, and values-driven practices that nurture transformation with compassion. As a choreographer, Jaimé creates work rooted in African Diasporic experimental practices, blending dance, natural elements, and text. Her pieces reflect the sacredness of performance, exploring the complexities of Black girlhood and womanhood, lineage, and our holistic connection to nature, which she views as a living entity offering wisdom, healing, and mirroring our human experience. Her choreographic works include ourwombtruth in collaboration with Brittany Williams (Open Season; National Black Theater, Bushwick Starr, Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans), mud diggn’: (Brooklyn Arts Exchange), mud diggn’: homework in progress (Movement Research), mud diggn’: she has always been here, sea (Corridor Gallery), mud diggn’: working with the blues (BAAD!), bridge blood breath bone (92nd Street Y and Gibney Dance), An Ode To Our Breath (Raising Voices Festival), and bridge blood breath bone (excerpt) (La Mama). She has performed and collaborated with artists, choreographers and directors who push the boundaries of performance, exploring the intersections of dance, theater, ritual, social justice such as Kendra J. Bostock, BhoodDance!, Ebony Noelle Golden (Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative), Kayla Hamilton (Circle O), Chanon Judson, Darnetha Lincoln M'Baye, (Roots In Revolution), Paloma McGregor (Angela's Pulse), Nina Angela Mercer (Ocean Ana Rising), Marguerite Hemmings, Nathan Trice (nathantrice/RITUALS), Brittany Williams, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar (Urban Bush Women). A proud recipient of the Angela’s Pulse Dancing While Black Fellowship, Jaimé holds a B.F.A. in Dance & Choreography from Virginia Commonwealth University and resides on the unceded land of the Lenape peoples (Brooklyn). Her community work is a prayer to deepen our connection to our bodies, the land, and one another, fostering care, curiosity, and reverence.