Aaliyah Christina
Born in Ruston, Louisiana and raised across Louisiana, Maryland, and Texas, Aaliyah Christina creates and supports performance work as an administrator, curator, movement artist, and writer. She choreographs & scores dances and writes poetic stories about relationship & power dynamics, mental health, and Blackness as a resident on the Southside of Chicago. She received her BA from the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago with a minor in Fiction Writing in 2016. In 2021, Aaliyah received the 3Arts Make-A-Wave grant, anonymously selected for her work in Chicago’s dance & performance communities. Then in 2024, she was selected as a Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist and the Chicago Cultural Center Dance Studio Residency cohort. She has worked with organizations like Links Hall, Assata’s Daughters, and Southside Together in order to: steward artist residencies, fellowships, and labs; provide mutual aid and basic needs to her neighbors; canvass and petition for changes to public policy; and manage operations to support community organizers in building power for the people, by the people. She created PRAISE MOTHER SQUAD to highlight the multifaceted possibilities of Black majorette dance, also known as j-sette, and platform stories about generational mental health, reproductive justice, and queer/chosen family dynamics.
Profile image by: Michelle ReidFeatured Artworks
Still taken from her work entitled praise mother: a (N) spiritual
Image captured by Joshua Taylor
Image captured by Kymon Kyndred
Image captured by Michelle Reid
Image captured by Ashley Mia
Aaliyah Christina has crowd-funded a project with 3AP
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- $6,150 raised of $6,000 goal
- 0 Days 0:00:00 LEFT
It has been a childhood dream to create and cultivate my own majorette squad while conjuring dreams for communal liberation and support. praise mother is a community initiative and dance theater project highlighting stories of relationships between Black matriarchs and …
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