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Eva's Bio

Eva Yaa Asantewaa (photo: Scott Shaw)

 

Eva Yaa Asantewaa (she/her) is a veteran writer, editor, curator and community educator. She won the 2017 Bessie Award for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance. Her most recent projects are Black queer contemporary fantasy novels. She is an alumna of New York Theatre Workshop's Mind The Gap intergenerational playwriting program (Summer 2024).

Since 1976, Ms. Yaa Asantewaa has written dance criticism and journalism for publications such as Dance Magazine, The Village Voice, SoHo Weekly News, Gay City News, The Dance Enthusiast, Time Out New York, her arts blog, InfiniteBody, and hosted podcasts on the arts (Body and Soul; Serious Moonlight).

In 2016, for Danspace Project’s Lost and Found platform, Ms. Yaa Asantewaa created the skeleton architecture, or the future of our worlds, an evening of group improvisation featuring 21 Black women and gender-nonconforming performers, a cast that won a 2017 Bessie for Outstanding Performer. In 2018, Queer|Art named one of its awards in her honor, the Eva Yaa Asantewaa Grant for Queer Women(+) Dance Artists. In 2019, Yaa Asantewaa was a recipient of a BAX Arts & Artists in Progress Award. She was Founding Director of Black Diaspora and founder of Black Curators in Dance and Performance. She was a member of the 2024 cohort of mentors for Queer|Art's mentorship program working with her mentee, Katherine Bahena-Benítez, a dancer, actor, and writer.

From 2018-2021, Ms. Yaa Asantewaa served as Senior Director of Curation as well as Editorial Director at Gibney, creating, directing, and curating numerous programs such as Solo for Solo, Black Diaspora, Imagining journal, Deeper Lectures, Deeper Duets, and WORD!

She was a member of the inaugural faculty of Montclair State University’s MFA in Dance program. She has also served on the faculty for New England Foundation for the Arts' Regional Dance Development Initiative Dance Lab 2016 for emerging Chicago-area dance artists as well as the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography's inaugural Forward Dialogues Dance Lab for Emerging Choreographers.

Ms. Yaa Asantewaa was a member of the New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Awards committee for three years and has been a consultant or panelist for numerous arts funding or awards organizations including the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Dance/NYC.

 

As a WBAI radio broadcaster (1987-89), Ms. Yaa Asantewaa worked with the Women’s Radio Collective and the Gay and Lesbian Independent Broadcasters Collective (OUTLOOKS) and co-hosted the Tuesday Afternoon Arts Magazine with Jennifer Bernet as well as producing her own specials. 

Ms. Yaa Asantewaa was born in New York of Barbadian immigrant heritage and makes her home in the East Village/Lenapehoking.

At Gibney, A New Curatorial Director Makes A Revolution by Gia Kourlas, The New York Times, September 29, 2019


Eva Yaa Asantewaa (Photo: D. Feller)

 

 

In addition to her work in the arts, Ms. Yaa Asantewaa maintains a private practice in Tarot based in animistic mediumship. From January 2001 to January 2005, Eva published DancingWorld, a monthly email newsletter devoted to Tarot, psychic and spiritual development, and creativity. She is an ordained minister (ULC, Modesto, CA) and legally registered with the City of New York as a marriage officiant with special interest in neo-pagan and secular-humanist ceremony.


While studying at Fordham University--where she received her B.A. in Communications in 1974--Ms. Yaa Asantewaa was introduced to Jungian psychology and the "mind games" techniques created by Robert Masters and Jean Houston. She also studied Community Health Education at Hunter College School of Health Sciences and received the Hunter College President's Award for HIV/AIDS Creative and Scholarly Work, First Prize, 1992.


Through Radical Magick (which she founded in 1992), Ms. Yaa Asantewaa produced and facilitated workshops and special events sponsored by over sixty health and social service, spiritual, feminist, people of color, and LGBTQ+ organizations in the New York metropolitan area. Among these are the New York Open Center’s Womanspirit Journey program, New York Theosophical Society, College of New Rochelle, Healing Works, New York State Conference on Women’s Health, Riverside Church Wellness Center, Women’s Health Education Project, and Women’s Rites Center. (See below for complete list.)


Her poetry appears in The Zenith of Desire: Contemporary Lesbian Poems about Sex (ed., Gerry Gomez Pearlberg, Crown, 1996), Does Your Mama Know? An Anthology of Black Lesbian Coming Out Stories (ed., Lisa C. Moore, RedBone Press, 1997), Queer Dog: Homo Pup Poetry (ed., Gerry Gomez Pearlberg, Cleis, 1997), Isis Rising: The Goddess in the New Aeon (ed., Denise Dumars, 2000), Brooklyn Review, Kuumba, Starfish, WV, Tempus, The Isis Papers, and the Pegasus Dreaming, Star Leaper, and Pedestal Magazine Web sites. She was also published in An Eye for An Eye Makes the Whole World Blind: Poets on 9/11 (Regent Press). She has read her work at numerous venues including the Brooklyn Museum, the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, A Different Light Bookstore, Bowery Poetry Club, and Cornelia Street Cafe.



Connect:


Facebook


Instagram @evayaaasantewaa


InfiniteBody


Dancer's Turn


Imagining: A Gibney Journal 


Tarot Practice and Workshops



Ms. Yaa Asantewaa has produced and/or offered presentations, special events, workshops, groups, counseling or other services for many organizations and projects including:


92Y Harkness Dance Center

 

Abrons Arts Center


African Ancestral Lesbians United for Societal Change (AALUSC)


AIDS Center of Queens County


AIDS Service Center of Lower Manhattan


Audre Lorde Project’s Arms Akimbo Organizing Institute, 1998


Audre Lorde Project’s Wellness Forum, 2002

 

Bard College 


Barnard College Dance Program


Bedford Hills Correctional Facility


BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange


Brooklyn Dance Festival


Brooklyn Historical Society


Changing Times, Changing Women Conference


College of New Rochelle (Brooklyn campus)


The Crystal Quilt


Dancing Queerly Festival (Boston)


Dancing While Black


Danspace Project


Fourth Arts Block (FABnyc)


First Universal Spiritual Church


Gay Men of African Descent (GMAD) Adult HIV Prevention Program


Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) Intensive Case Management Unit


13th Annual Gay and Lesbian Addiction Studies (GLAS) Conference


12th Annual GLAS Conference -- Reconstructing Recovery: Healing Technologies for the 21st Century


Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Alliance, Kingsborough Community College


Gibney


Haitian Women’s Program


HAPI, Inc. (agency for home healthcare workers)


Healing Path Farm


Healing Works


Housing Works


Howie the Harp Advocacy Center


Hunter College Dance Program


Initiative for Women with Disabilities (Hospital for Joint Diseases, Beth Israel Medical Center)


Inside Out Conference (Spirit Crossroads), 1997


Inside Out: Pride in Spirit (Spirit Crossroads)


The Lesbian Care Center


Lesbian Feminist Liberation


Liberate Your Health! Bodywork Fair


Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography


Manhattan Center for Living


Men of All Colors Together (MACT)


Montclair State University MFA Dance Program


New England Foundation for the Arts


New York City Lesbian Health Fair


New York Live Arts (formerly Dance Theater Workshop)


New York Open Center: Womanspirit Journey Program


New York State Conference on Women's Health, 1994


New York Theosophical Society


New York University Tisch School of the Arts Dance Program


Northeastern Tarot Conclave

 

Pepatián


Pillars of HER Tradition


Practice Progress and ARCOS Dance (UNtensive)


PWA Coalition Men’s Group


Queens Women's Health Network


Queensborough Community College Dance Program


Rising Spirits Healing and Learning Center


Riverside Church Wellness Center: Holistic Approaches to Cancer Care series


Rivington House


SAGE: Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders (formerly Senior Action in A Gay Environment)


Shades of Lavender (Brooklyn AIDS Task Force)

 

skewl (formerly, freeskewl) 


Staten Island HIV Care Network: Conference 1998


Stuyvesant Chiropractic Center


The Cauldron


The Tarot School

 

thINKingDANCE 


To Tell The Truth 2002 Conference (Incest Awareness Foundation)


A. J. Vargas Seminars


W.E.R.I.S.E. International Women Artist Conference 2003


Women’s Coffee House


Women’s Health Education Project


Women’s Rites Center


Yo SISTAH

 



 

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