Edisa Weeks
Edisa Weeks (she/her) is a Brooklyn, NY-based choreographer, educator, curator, and founder of DELIRIOUS Dances. She creates intimate environments that merge theater with dance to explore our deepest desires, darkest fears, and sweetest dreams. Described by the New York Times as having “a gift for simple but striking visual effects,” her work has been performed in a variety of venues including the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, chashama theater, Works & Process at the Guggenheim Museum, Harlem Stage, Inside/Out at Jacob’s Pillow, The Kennedy Center, MANCC, The Mermaid Parade, Mount Tremper Arts and The Yard. She has also performed in swimming pools, senior centers, sidewalks, storefront windows, and various living rooms, including living rooms in Berlin, Germany, as part of Haus der Kulturen der Welts 50th anniversary celebration. Edisa is currently working on3 RITES: Life, Liberty, Happiness, a multi-disciplinary, interactive experience that integrates dance, live music, text, video, two visual installations, community conversations, and shared meals to interrogate the meaning of life, liberty, and happiness in America, and how these rights manifest in the body. The work premieres in Fall 2023 at 651 ARTS.
Edisa was the inaugural Kupferberg Center for the Arts Incubator Project Artist for which she created ACTION SONGS/PROTEST DANCES (2022) which is inspired the by work and life of Civil Rights Leader James Forman, whose personal papers are in the Queens College Rosenthal Library Civil Rights Archives. Edisa was nominated for an inaugural Antonyo 2020 award in Best Choreography for Novenas for a Lost Hospital (2019) by Cusi Cram, Dir. Daniella Topol, at Rattlestick Theater; she also choreographed The Transfiguration of Benjamin Banneker (2020) by Theodora Skiptares at La Mama Theater. Edisa appeared in the movie Rachel Getting Married, Dir. Jonathan Demme, and has been on the cover of several magazines including Wired and La Fotografia. She grew up in Uganda, Papua New Guinea, and Brooklyn, NY; and has a BA from Brown University and received a full fellowship to attend New York University’s TISCH School of the Arts where she obtained an MFA in choreography. She has had the joy of performing with Annie–B Parsons Big Dance Theater, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Co., Dance Brazil, Jane Comfort, Jon Kinzel, Muna Tseng, Reggie Wilson Fist & Heel Performance Group, Sally Silvers, Spencer/Colton Dance, among others. In addition, she performed in the 2016 “Bessie” award-winning performance by The Skeleton Architecture.
Edisa has taught at the Alvin Ailey School, Bard College, Brigham Young University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Milwaukee University, Princeton University, Saint Ann’s High School, and currently is an Associate Professor of Dance and Acting Chair of the Department of Drama, Theatre and Dance at Queens College. She teaches modern technique, improvisation, choreography, the collaborative process, and mentors emerging artists. She is on the Board of Directors for Movement Research; has been a panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts, the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, and other funding organizations; and served on the Bessie Committee which recognizes outstanding dance and performance in NYC from 2014-2018. She has also served multiple times as an adjudicator for American College Dance Association Conferences. In her work as an educator, artist, and mentor, Weeks is committed to creating equitable teaching and working environments; and motivating people to help establish a more just and equitable society and nation.