Enya-Kalia Jordan is a choreographer, dance studies scholar, and culture curator from Brooklyn, New York. She received a BA in Arts & Letters Dance from Buffalo State University and MFA from Temple University in choreography and performance. In 2023, she was named an “Artistic Visionary,” honored as Temple University’s 30 under 30 distinguished Alumna. Currently, she is a doctoral candidate at Texas Woman’s University, scheduled to graduate with her Ph.D. in dance studies in 2025. She is also the proud founder and artistic director of Enya Kalia Creations a movement-based artistic collective established in 2016. Enya Kalia Creations is 2023-25 recipient of the BAX & CUNY Dance Initiative Arts & Social Justice Residency at Brooklyn College.

WHO IS ENYA?

She has performed and presented choreography at iconic venues such as Conwell Dance Theater, BAAD! Ass Women in Dance Festival, La MaMa EstroGenius Festival, Bates Dance Festival, Brooklyn Art Haus, Movement Research at Judson Church, Klienhans Music Hall, United Nations Headquarters, and many more. She has previously served as faculty at the University of Mount Saint Vincent, SUNY Erie Community College, and the University of Virginia. Enya-Kalia has also been a teaching artist with the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Abrons Center for the Arts, Notes in Motion, Dancewave, and many other distinguished cultural institutions across the East Coast. She has presented social justice research on interdisciplinary performance and restorative community practices at numerous conferences and festivals. Highlights include the Collegium of African Diasporic Dance hosted by Duke University, the International Association of Blacks in Dance, the Decolonizing Tertiary Dance Education Conference hosted by Stockholm University, and the Decolonizing Bodies: Biennial International Dance Conference hosted by the University of the West Indies. she has also conducted research in Tokyo, Japan; Guimaraes, Portugal; Amsterdam, Holland, Netherlands; and Paris, France.

ARTIST STATEMENT

As a creative, my work is born of smiles, sweat, spirit, and sport poured on the dance floor. I let the body do the work. My performance practice critically engages improvisation, African diasporic movement practices, and storytelling. As an artist,  I position myself as a body in motion, both flesh and spirit, Black and woman, teacher and student, choreographer and dancer, healer and wounded. I embrace this creative practice as a river that ebbs and flows. It cleanses the spirit, carries the burden of accountability, bends to intention, stretches to include intersectionality, and washes away anything that does not serve its greater purpose. Likewise, my research works through the collective negotiation of Black womanhood through time and space. Influenced by Afro-femme movement articulations, my life's work (choreography, activism, & writing) documents Black dance narratives and their cultural implication.