Dr Celia Weiss Bambara is a dancer, choreographer, and scholar as well as a dual citizen of the US and Burkina Faso. She is the artistic director of the CCBdance Project, which was co-founded with Burkina Faso born dance and theater artist, Christian Bambara in 2006. Her choreography, improvisation and/or site-dance work, and screen dance have been shown in the United States, the Middle East, Canada, the Caribbean, West Africa, and in Europe. Her works have been shown at venues including: Dancespace (NYC), Movement Research (NYC), Zaccho Studio (SF), Links Hall (CHI), Drucker Center (CHI), Alliance Française (CHI), Jane Addams Hull House (CHI), African American Museum of Iowa in Cedar Rapids (IA), Occidental College (LA), University of Southern California (LA), Belk Theater at UNC Asheville (NC), Institut Français in Abidjan, Goethe Institut in Abidjan, National Theater in Abidjan (CNAC), National Arts Conservatory in Abidjan (INSAAC), National Television in Haiti, Trinidad at Alice Yard, in Jamaica at the Caribbean Studies Association, Donko Seko in Mali, Cannes at the MJC Picaud and Laborgras in Berlin.

Her works have been awarded grants from Cornish College of the Arts, Puffin Foundation, Maryland State Arts Council, The Djerassi Foundation, École des Sables (Senegal), Donko Seko (Mali), Tanzart (Germany), UCIRA (University of California Institute for Research in the Arts), the US State Department among others.

Celia received a Ph. D in Dance History and Theory from the University of California, Riverside in 2008 and an MA in Dance from the University of California, Los Angeles’s World Arts and Cultures program in 2002, while building her professional dance career and dance company in LA and Chicago.

Celia is an improviser and experimental dance maker-her work engages global contemporary movement techniques and training. She has danced for artists in Haiti and the US including Florencia Pierre, Elizabeth Chin, and Rachel Thorne Germond. She has collaborated with Jessica Ray, Jana Schmuck, Kayla Hamilton, Kimathi Moore, Abou Bassa, Christian Bambara, Jean-Luc Okou and Djenane St. Juste among others. She works with Haitian and African based dance practices, somatics, yoga, modern and post-modern dance in experimental terms. Most recently, her solo work “Who Fears Not Death” was shown in France, San Francisco, Germany, New York, and Michigan. Her collaborative screen dances for the CCBdance Project, “Cycles of Growth” and “Je Te Souhaites Du Bien et Après” have been screened nationally and internationally at screen dance international film events. Her site dance works have ranged from longer productions with students in collaboration with artists as well as through solo endeavors. They have been presented in Trinidad, North Carolina, Washington, Chicago, and Maryland in diverse locations ranging from city squares, botanical gardens, log cabins, arts centers, galleries, street benches, and university community spaces.

Her practice-based work addresses the intersections of practice as research in contemporary and African diasporic dance. She has published work in the Journal of Dance and Somatics Practices, Susanna Sloat’s 2010 volume on Caribbean Dancemaking, The Journal of Haitian Studies, Australasian Drama Studies, The Chicago Artist Resource, Chicago’s Social Justice Journal Area Magazine, and The Encyclopedia on Race and Racism. Celia has directed dance programs at Coppin State University and the University of North Carolina Asheville and worked on curriculum at those institutions. She has also taught at Cornish College of the Arts as an Associate Professor, University of Illinois, Chicago as a postdoctoral fellow in African American Studies, INSAAC Conservatory in the Ivory Coast, Glendale Community and Occidental College. Her book project addresses overlapping Jewish and African diasporas through questions of improvisation and somatics as practices of interculturalism. She is also working on a co-edited volume on Jewish Arts and Somatics with Ben Spatz, Nicole Bindler, and Kristen Smiarowski.