Ni’Ja Whitson, an assistant professor in UC Riverside’s Department of Dance, was part of a team that won a Bessie award for outstanding visual design. The “Bessie’s” are presented annually to artists with exceptional choreography, performance, music composition or visual design, and are considered one of the highest honors in the field of dance. This is Whitson’s second win and second time being nominated.

“It continues to mean a lot to me,” said Whitson, who served as artistic director. “There were such emotional reasons as well as academic and intellectual reasons. It came from a space to honor the ghosts in the corners, honoring the voices that have been relegated to these spaces in order to be invisibilized. To have the creative effort honored was and continues to be very special.” 

Their performance piece, titled “Oba Qween Baba King Baba,” received three nominations in all: For Outstanding Production: Outstanding Performer for team member Kirsten Davis; Outstanding Visual Design for costumes created by Whitson and team member Jeanne Medina;and for Projection and Video, produced by team member Gil Sperling, and lighting courtesy of team member Tuçe Yasak. 

The performance was co-commissioned by the Danspace Project and Abrons Arts Center and premiered in March 2019 in New York. The work was influenced by slavery, religion, and gender, and embodied Whitson’s own personal identity, history, and art styles.

“There’s an emphasis on moving form, meaning in the body and space as constructed by light and video,” Whitson said. “The audience was placed in the upper gallery of this space, which was historically a slave gallery, and we took that opportunity to have the floor fully illuminated with video, spread around the entire room, on the audience’s bodies, as well as on the performers and the ceiling. The idea of encompassing the entire room and building as the spirit does.”

Whitson, an award-winning, gender nonconforming interdisciplinary artist and writer has been teaching in UCR’s Department of Dance for three years. They utilize the intersection of gender, sexuality, race, and spirituality within their art and have won numerous awards, including a Bogliasco Fellowship and LMCC Process Space Residency prior to employment at UCR as well as a Creative Capital Award and a Jerome/Camargo Fellowship since their employment with the university.

"Ni’Ja’s transdisciplinary performance...enacts ways of being and knowing characteristic of Afrodiasporic cultural practices and are inclusive of diverse trans and gender-nonconforming corporealities and subjectivities,” said Joel Smith, assistant professor of dance. “The incredible recognition they are receiving for their research and creative practices in the field undoubtedly brings visibility to the university, CHASS and the department and will have positive, long-lasting affects not only for recruitment, but for the mission UCR espouses." 

Dance is more than movement for Whitson. It’s a way of telling stories, recreating history, and pushing back against conventions.

“I would describe my art as deeply informed by African diasporic ritual,” Whitson said, “particularly Yoruba ritual cosmologies. Ritual and the sacred are fundamental to what I make, and I get at the sacred in a very intense way - through spirit and emotional practice. The assumption is that it is softer and slow, so I am constantly pushing against the conventions around the performance of ritual.” 

Whitson has been dancing since they were a child, beginning with ballet and rapidly growing as an artist. Whitson has since received multiple New York Times, Time Out New York and Chicago Critic’s Picks, and a few years ago, founded the NWA Project. The project creates an interdisciplinary performance space for Queer people of color that allows for what Whitson calls “space making and shape-shifting.” The project primarily features Whitson and founding company member Kirsten Davis, as well as rotating guest artists, and draws heavily on influences from African Diaspora, or the collection of communities descended from those kidnapped and imprisoned during the 16th-19th century slave trades.

Whitson’s performances explore the political intersections within dance and performance, utilizing both an Interdisciplinary Performance undergraduate degree and a highly acclaimed master of fine arts Studio degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) to convey interdisciplinary visual arts.

“I was asked by a mentor once what kind of artist did I want to be,” Whitson said. “This was very different from what kind of dancer I wanted to be or what kind of dance I wanted to make. That framing of that artistry and artistic practice helped me look at what I had been doing and to have a needed acknowledgment of possibility.”

Whitson is planning on continuing their art, and is currently utilizing their award to develop a new performance project. Titled “The Unarrival Experiments,” it will be both a book and a multi-site performance project, and will unfold over the next seven years. 

“Ni’Ja is a valued colleague,” Smith said. “The rigor they bring to the classroom and to our students has been impactful, and they have contributed greatly to helping expand our undergraduate and graduate programs.  Their own research agenda and the fresh perspectives they bring have inspired important discussions among faculty about curriculum development and have led us to make necessary shifts/changes in our multiple programs."

FEATURED PHOTO. Photo courtesy of Ni'Ja Whitson.
Assistant Professor of Dance Ni'Ja Whitson is pictured holding a Bessie Award for their recent experimental piece “Oba Qween Baba King Baba"