Maria Bauman (she/her) is a Brooklyn, NY-based multi-disciplinary artist and community organizer from Jacksonville, FL. Since 2009, she creates bold and honest artworks for her company MBDance, based on physical and emotional power, insistence on equity, and fascination with intimacy. In particular, Bauman’s dance work centers the non-linear and linear stories and bodies of queer people of color onstage. She draws on her long study of English literature, capoeira, improvisation, dancing in living rooms and nightclubs, as well as concert dance classes to embody interconnectedness, joy, and tenacity.
Before beginning her own company, Bauman danced with Urban Bush Women and was associate artistic director of the company as well as director of education and community engagement. She has both learned much from and added much to UBW's entering, building and exiting community methodology. She has also danced jumatau poe & Donte Beacham, Nia Love/Blacksmith's Daughter, jill sigman/thinkdance, Tatyana Tenenbaum and apprenticed with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.
Bauman was recently recognized with a Bessie Award for Outstanding Production for her choreographic work on Saul Williams's The Motherboard Suite, and this follows the Bessie she won in 2017 for Outstanding Performance with the Black dance improvisation group Skeleton Architecture. Currently, she is an Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center 2.0 Fellow, as well as a member of the Bessies Selection Committee and a mentor with Queer Art Mentorship. Bauman is a community organizer and co-founder of ACRE (Artists Co-creating Real Equity) which is built on the foundation of The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond's anti-racist community organizing principles. She's also part of the Dancing While Black family/organizing circle. Organizing to undo racism informs her artistic work and the two areas are each ropes in a Double-dutch that is her holistic practice. |