Vena Jefferson

Vena will create The AfroSphere, a contemporary African art concept celebrating Black peoples’ organic similarities in America, the Caribbean, and Africa. It will offer a lens into the contemporary melding of roots by using folk art, jazz, and hip-hop to disrupt socio-political ideas of “African-infused” art. Vena aims to present and create an authentic dialogue and experiences for people of the Black Diaspora.

Vena will recreate dance-theater work paying tribute to the African American artists who performed on the cabaret circuit during the 1930s and 1940s, many of whom were blacklisted from Hollywood and other mainstream platforms, because they demanded equal pay and refused to play for segregated audiences. Vena’s goals are to engage audiences and create dialogue about pioneering African American artists who used their celebrity and artistic talents as tools for activism and social justice.

Vena will travel to Senegal, West Africa to study the healing dance and music of various groups such as the Maninka and Djola peoples. She was inspired to return to Senegal, due to requests by dance therapists and others for specific programs that utilize African dance as a healing tool for young African American women and teenage mothers who have been abused. Having traveled to Senegal before, she is familiar with the language, customs, and art forms, enabling her to study with medicine women and spiritual leaders to better understand the relationship between healing and these art forms. Once she returns to Philadelphia, she will create a dance therapy-centered program for young African American women. This project hopes to offer an alternative concept of healing through dance that is based in African traditions.

Vena is the director and founder of Urban Africa Cultural Arts. She is a dancer, storyteller and teacher, drawing primarily from African and African American traditions. She aims to make the connections between hip-hop culture and West African movement and rhythmic patterns and also seeks to work against homophobia and sexism, which prevents boys from participating in dance and girls from participating in drumming. Vena's work is often directed toward helping women heal from abuse, but she ultimately creates it to empower the entire African American community with love, self-esteem, history, culture, and knowledge of one-self.