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Image description: MK Abadoo, a medium brown-skinned African American person smiles. They wear a pink buttoned up shirt against a forest green background. Her black hair is in a short, tapered cut with red highlights and slender black earrings frame their wide smile. Photo by Shaka Shot Dat.
they/them/theirs/she/her/hers
Susquehannock/Piscataway; Columbia, MD and Powhatan; Richmond, VA
MK Abadoo (they/she) devises intergenerational and immersive dance performance rituals that combine Africanist and post-modern movement vocabularies with place honoring community building. Moving from a spirit of joy and ease, their work amplifies the lives, stories, and wisdom of gender expansive, queer, Black cultures. MK’s work has been commissioned by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, the University of Richmond, and the Dance Exchange. She was a 2017 U.S. Fulbright Fellow, working with the Noyam African Dance Institute and the National Dance Company of Ghana. They received a 40 Under 40 award from Prince George’s County Social Innovation Fund in 2017, were included as a “rising star” in Dance Magazine’s 2018 25 to Watch, and were awarded by Richmond, VA Dance Awards for their choreography in the 2019 commemorative justice site-specific work performed at one of the United States’ oldest African burial grounds. MK is an assistant professor of Racial Equity, Arts and Culture in the Department of Dance and Institute of Inclusion, Inquiry and Innovation at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is also a Trainer with the anti-racist organizer collective, the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond.
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