ARTIST BIOS

Maurya Kerr is a bay area-based choreographer, writer, filmmaker, performer, and the artistic director of tinypistol. Much of her work, across disciplines, is focused on black and brown people reclaiming their birthright to both wonderment and the quotidian. Maurya was a member of Alonzo King LINES Ballet for twelve years, an ODC artist-in-residence from 2015 to 2018, and holds an MFA in dance from Hollins University. Maurya’s sophomore film, Saint Leroi, was recently described in the Village Voice as “a surreal meditation on Black history, violence, and American decay and a powerful indictment of racism.” Maurya co-curated, with artist Leyya Mona Tawil, ODC Theater’s 2023/24 season, and was recently appointed as ODC Theater’s Resident Curator for their 2024/25 season. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart prize, appears in multiple journals, including Magma Poetry and Southern Humanities Review, and is anthologized in “The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry.” Maurya was a 2021/22 UC Berkeley ARC (Arts Research Center) Poetry & the Senses Fellow, and her first chapbook, MUTTOLOGY, is forthcoming with Harbor Editions in 2023.

Bernard Brown is a Los Angeles-based performer, choreographer, and educator who situates their work at the intersection of Blackness, belonging, and memory. With an extensive performing career, Brown now serves as Director of Bernard Brown/bbmoves – a social justice dance company, choreographing for stage, specific sites, film, and opera presented globally. Brown has received invitations, residencies and commissions from the Centre de Développement Chorégraphique la Termitière (Burkina Faso), Dance Italia (Italy), The Music Center (Los Angeles), The Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (Los Angeles), Dance Mission Theater (San Francisco), among others. Brown facilitates residencies, workshops, and master classes internationally, namely in Israel, Burkina Faso, and Brazil, and across the US. A first-generation college graduate, Brown earned his MFA from University of California, Los Angeles and BFA from Purchase College. He is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Loyola Marymount University and a Certified Katherine Dunham Technique Instructor candidate. The Los Angeles Times has called him “…the incomparable Bernard Brown…”