COLLABORATOR

Marcus R. Grant is a professional drummer, percussionist, musicologist, and educator from West Chester, Pennsylvania. He is currently a Brown University PhD candidate in Musicology & Ethnomusicology with a secondary certificate study in the Department of Africana Studies. Grant holds a BM in jazz performance from Temple University, an MM jazz performance, an MM in musicology from the University of Miami (FL), and an MA in musicology and ethnomusicology from Brown University. As a scholar, he focuses his research on 2020 Black Lives Matter protest music and hip-hop, and the intersections of musical protest and digital culture. Other research interests include jazz studies and music of the Black church. As a performer, Grant has shared the stage with Victor Goines, Nicole Henry, Robert Glasper, Lalah Hathaway, Bilal, De La Soul, and is a performing member of the Robert Glasper Black Radio Orchestra and Derrick Hodge Color of Noize Orchestra

COLLABORATOR

Trinity Leite is a performer, choreographer, and teacher based in Newport, RI. In 2025, she graduated from Salve Regina University with a B.A. in Dance and a B.S. in Finance with a minor in Business Administration. At Salve, Trinity was a member of Extensions Dance Company and served as the Dance Program Assistant under director Lindsay Guarino. Trinity has had the opportunity to work with trailblazers in the jazz industry, such as Kimberley Cooper, Lisa La Touche, Carlos Jones, Brandi Coleman, Monique Haley, and Alvon Reed. Through her studies, she has become passionate about engaging in and celebrating the art of jazz dance. Trinity has presented her works at the Jazz Choreography Enterprises Jazz Dance Project and WaxWorks in NYC, as well as the Bridging the Gap: jazz dance and music festival in Newport, RI (2024). In 2024, she performed at Newport Jazz Festival with the Marcus Grant Trio and co-directed “The Rhythm of Life”: A Journey of Black American Music and Vernacular Dance alongside drummer Marcus Grant. Trinity’s artistic and academic research centers music as foundational to movement. She aspires to create works that honor both the music and jazz as a Black American art form.

Monique Haley, a respected creative educator in her field, is the former Acting Director of the Institute for Intercultural and Anthropological Studies, an Associate Professor of Dance (College of Fine Arts) and African American and African Studies (Institute for Intercultural and Anthropological Studies) and a Faculty Fellow in Community and Engagement for the College of Arts and Sciences at Western Michigan University. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Dance from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Jazz Dance and Performing Arts from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA. Her scholarly research, featured in the informative jazz book Rooted Jazz: Africanist Aesthetics and

Equity in the 21st Century, focuses on African cultural values and cultivating a unique ethos and sense of ritual in contemporary jazz dance pedagogy. She has worked with several national dance companies as a choreographer and has performed in numerous regional musical theater productions in the Chicagoland area. Ms. Haley's influence extends to the American Dance Festival (ADF) Summer Dance Intensive (contemporary jazz dance technique/repertory), where she has been a part of the faculty for the past four years and uses the Diasporic Encounter Method (DEM)— a working methodology devised by Haley focuses on African cultural values, cultivating visceral veracity and collective ethos in contemporary jazz dance pedagogy. In August 2024, Monique presented her research at The International African Diasporic Dance and Traditions Conference in Bahia, Brazil. This year, she recruited for ADF at the International Conference and Festival of Blacks in Dance (IABD) in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, and implemented her rooted jazz Africanist perspective, DEM, as the foundational framework for the Joffrey Midwest Summer Intensive (Detroit) program this past June 2025.

Kimberley is the Artistic Director of Decidedly Jazz Danceworks (DJD). She has been with DJD since 1989, as a dancer 1989-2013, Resident Choreographer/Artistic Associate 2002-2013, and Artistic Director since 2013. She was named Emerging Artist of the Year by Alberta Dance Alliance in 2002. Since then, she has created over 20 full-length works for DJD. DJD made its debut performance at Jacob’s Pillow with her piece, Family of Jazz in August 2023. Kimberley has also created numerous shorter pieces for DJD, and many independent works, including remounts and/ or commissions at University of Calgary (1996), SUNY Potsdam (Potsdam New York – 2006) Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, Michigan – 2023), Southern Methodist University (Dallas, Texas – 2023) Salve Regina University (Newport RI – 2023). During the pandemic, she created a series of eight short films with DJD under the umbrella title suspending disbelief, the first in the series will premiere at the Dance on Camera Festival at Lincoln Center in New York City in February 2024. She served as Artist in Residence during Calgary, Cultural Capital of Canada in 2012, and with Fall for Dance North (Toronto, Canada) from 2020-2022. Kimberley was awarded Dance Victoria’s Crystal Dance Prize in 2015 for research in Brazil. She has contributed chapters to the books City of Animals, (University of Calgary’s Humanities Department, 2017,) and Rooted Jazz Dance: Africanist Aesthetics and Equity in the Twenty First Century (University Press of Florida, 2022).