Shakiri – Dance/USA Artist Fellow

In Memoriam: Dance/USA remembers Shakiri (1962–2025) with gratitude and respect. We honor her artistry, vision, and community impact.

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Image description: The image is a close-up portrait of Shakiri, a Black woman with short curly grey hair. She is smiling and has a warm, open expression. She’s wearing large earrings that are gold and jade green and an off-white tunic with buttons at her neckline. Photo by Nano Visser.

Shakiri

she/her

Nisenan/Miwok; Sacramento, CA

Shakiri (she/hers) is a Goldie and Izzie Award winner who has been a performer, choreographer, and arts educator in the Bay Area for over thirty years. A member of the internationally acclaimed Zaccho Dance Theater Company, she has choreographed for Berkeley Rep, and danced with Dance Brigade, her own company Shakiri/Rootworkers, and others. For the last seven years she’s worked in close collaboration with Skywatchers, a multi-disciplinary community performance ensemble in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, teaching and co-creating rhythms that will build harmony in a community both challenged and resilient.

Shakiri’s work is driven by a deep feeling of love and a desire to create the world in which she wants to live. Nearing 70 years old, she continues to learn about the creative process as a maker, choreographer, teacher, writer. She moves easily between both joining in and leading, recognizing that truly joining—true collectivity and community—is an ongoing learning process.

Learn more about Shakiri:

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Image description: Shakiri in Came Here to Live, Fall 2019. Shakiri is dancing in the foreground opposite another performer. They are dressed in white, facing each other, knees bent. Shakiri is smiling, holding a mic, poised as though in a call-and-response with her companion. Another group of performers is in the top right corner of the image, maoving out of the frame. Photo by Deirdre Visser.
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