Tonya Marie Amos – Dance/USA Artist Fellow

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Image Description: Tonya Marie Amos is smiling warmly directly at the camera. She is a light skinned Black woman with dark brown curls that stop above the shoulder. She's wearing a red spaghetti strap top with bows at the shoulder with red lipstick to match. Photo courtesy of artist.

Tonya Marie Amos

she/her

Oakland, CA | Ohlone, Muwekma, Confederated Villages of Lisjan

Tonya Marie Amos grew up in the Sunnydale neighborhood in San Francisco, received a BA in Cultural Anthropology from U.C. Berkeley, and trained four years on scholarship at Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. A member of Actors Equity Association, as a Young Dancer, Tonya appeared with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater & Donald Byrd, was a member of Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, Footprints & Amy Pivar Dances, performed in International and National Broadway Tours, and was featured in numerous print ads & TV commercials.

As a Grown Dancer, Tonya founded Grown Women Dance Collective, which is comprised of dancers in their 50s and 60s from major repertory companies. As GWDC’s Artistic Executive Director, she uses Arts & Wellness for Social Justice via Narrative Shift Choreography, free community arts & wellness classes, and wellness-based workforce development. 

She is the owner of Aspire Pilates Center, for which she was awarded 5 business awards, including Best Pilates Studio and Small Business of the Year. She is on the forefront of diversifying the Pilates industry, and in partnership with industry leader, Balanced Body, Inc., she scholarships, trains, and mentors 230 BIPOC students (many of them artists and community leaders) locally, nationally, and internationally in twelve countries. Towards her goal of impacting Black health disparities, she trains highly skilled, empathetic, rooted-in-community BIPOC Pilates teachers to impact Black Maternal Health, keep our elders safe, independent and on their feet, decrease back & joint pain, and help folks collaborate with their bodies. She works to help restore resilience, resistance, self-empowerment, and joy in Black and Brown communities and uses her expertise in the intersection of arts & wellness to create social change.

Learn more about Tonya Marie Amos:

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Image Description: A Black female dancer is dancing in front of a giant photo of Rosa Parks after being arrested for refusing to give her seat on a segregated bus. A quote on Ms. Parks’ photo says, “Took a stand by sitting down.” Center stage on a lit black Marley dance floor, Tonya is wearing a form fitting short sleeved black shirt, A-shaped black skirt, and has her brown, shoulder-length curls pushed back from her face. Standing on one leg, the other leg crossed as if sitting in a chair, her bent arms are spread wide at 90 degree angles as she looks up diagonally in deep thought and reverence. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.
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Image Description: 4 Black & 1 BIPOC dancers (2 men and 3 women), dressed in brightly colored street clothes and sneakers work in partnership to lift a Black female dancer over police tape on a darkened stage. With fierce determination and partnership, many hands grasp her for support, holding her upside down on the back of a man in a green dashiki and dark pants. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.
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Image Description: Black and white photo of a Black woman with shoulder-length curly hair standing alone in an expansive pitch black background. Framed from the hips up, she is wearing a white blouse and headband, her head is thrown back, one arm is up, the other is out to the side, with her chest and face up to the heavens. She has a sense of joy, relief, and exhalation on her upwards smiling face. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.
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Image Description: Black female Pilates instructor wearing black clothes, purple socks, and a N95 mask assists a Black man with locs wearing a blue striped shirt, yellow basketball shorts, and a N95 mask doing a plank on a Balanced Body Pilates Reformer. His elbows are on a Pilates black leather box, toes standing on the Reformer footbar, he is holding his plank intently as three Black female Pilates teacher trainers observe. Photo by Wren Amos.

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