The Team: Liberation Academy
The Leadership Team
Sarah Crowell
Sarah Crowell is an unapologetically Black, queer dancer and choreographer who has taught dance, theater, mindfulness, arts integration and violence prevention for over 30 years. She performed and toured with multiple dance companies for 15 years, including Impulse Jazz Dance Company in Boston and the Dance Brigade in San Francisco. She also co-directed the dance/theater company i am Productions!
Sarah is the Artistic Director Emeritus at Destiny Arts Center in Oakland, where she served in different capacities for 30 years. She founded and co-directed the award-winning Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company, which was the subject of two documentary films. She is the recipient of many awards including the KQED Women’s History Local Hero award and the Bay Area Dance Week award. She is a four-time finalist for a Tony Award for Excellence in Theater Education.
Sarah believes passionately that movement must be part of all movements for social change.
Kara Mack
Kara Mack is a choreographer and creative director with an expertise in African diasporic music and dance. Recent credits include Coming to America 2 (Assistant Choreographer) as well as Freeform’s Good Trouble. Other notable credits include assisting industry-leading choreographer Fatima Robinson on Kendrick Lamar’s iconic performance at the 58th Grammy Awards, Busta Rhymes’ performance at the 2021 MTV VMA’s, and the upcoming “The Color Purple” movie.
Other television credits include co-choreographing Chance The Rapper’s performance on Saturday Night Live as well as projects with the NBA, Disney, NBC, and Fox and being Margot Robbie’s movement coach for the movie “Babylon”. Kara is the founder of AFRICA IN AMERICA®, which serves as a primary resource for professionals and participants of African diasporic music, dance, arts & culture in America. Her passion and expertise have led her to teach all over the nation including the Debbie Allen Dance Academy. Kara was also an artist-in-resident at the renowned theater of Hearts; a Los Angeles based non-profit organization focusing on reaching at-risk youth through the arts.
As a dancer Kara has performed on several award shows including The Grammys, NAACP Image Awards, The BET Awards, and The Billboard Music Awards.
Bongo Sidibe
Bongo Sidibe is from Guinea, West Africa where he lived until 2008 when he moved to San Francisco. Bongo studied drumming from master drummer Mamady Keita and was a youth leader in his Conakry neighborhood. As Co-Artistic Director of Duniya Dance and Drum Company, Bongo directs evening-length West African music and dance performances, including “The Madness of the Elephant” about Guinea’s first president, Sekou Touré. He has performed with Joan Baez, Mickey Hart, Cass McCombs, Black Nature from the Sierra Leone Refugee Allstars and appeared in Michael Franti’s “Once A Day” video. Bongo teaches West African drumming with the San Francisco Ballet, Loco Bloco, Ruth Asawa SF School of the Arts, LEAP, San Francisco Arts Education and others. He drums for a weekly West African dance class at Dance Mission, and does many performances for cultural events. Bongo has collaborated with the African Advocacy Network to present the African Arts Festival in 2013, 2016 and 2019. The festival has received support from the California Arts Council, Wattis Foundation, Haas Foundation and others. Bongo has received the Creative Work Fund and San Francisco Arts Commission funds to support his work in the African communities of the Bay Area and focuses on providing paid artistic work for the many Guinean and Senegalese artists that live in the Bay Area. Bongo and his wife, Duniya’s Artistic Director Joti Singh, lead a bi-annual trip to Guinea, West Africa and founded the Duniya Center for Arts and Education in Conakry, where Guinean artists learn marketing, computer skills and English language. Bongo is currently working on “Raices y Révolution ” a collaboration with Cuban choreographer Susana Pedroso, about the postcolonial connections between Guinea and Cuba. In addition to being a drummer, Bongo is a vocalist and is releasing his first album in early 2022.
Workshop Leaders
Others TBD
Lorenzo “Rennie” Harris
Lorenzo “Rennie” Harris was born and raised in an African-American community in North Philadelphia. In 1992, he founded Rennie Harris Puremovement, a hip-hop dance theater company dedicated to preserving and disseminating hip-hop culture. Voted one of the most influential people in the last one hundred years of Philadelphia history, Mr. Harris has received several accolades, including the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, the Governor’s Arts Award, a United States Artist Fellowship, and an honorary doctorate from Bates College. The London Times wrote of Mr. Harris that he is “the Basquiat of the U.S. contemporary dance scene.” Rennie Harris Puremovement was chosen by DanceMotion USA as one of four companies to serve as citizen-diplomats to tour Egypt, Israel, Palestinian territories and Jordan in 2012. Mr. Harris’ other contributions to Ailey’s repertory include Love Stories (a collaboration with Judith Jamison and Robert Battle) and Home.
Production/Design Mentors
Stephanie Anne Johnson
Stephanie Anne Johnson (she, her) is a second-generation theatre practitioner whose mother, Virginia Greene (Johnson) worked with the American Negro Theatre. Johnson has been a lighting designer working locally, nationally, and internationally for forty nine years. Locally, she has worked with Cultural Odyssey, Afro Solo, Ubuntu Theatre Project, Marin Theatre Company, TheatreFirst, The Lower Bottom Playaz, and many other groups. Johnson is also a visual artist who has had two one-person shows in San Francisco. Her public and site-specific installations have focused upon the use of light and projections as tools for symbolic and metaphorical examinations of African American history. She has also worked as an electrician on films with Robert Townsend, Pratiba Parmar, and Alice Walker.
Dr. Johnson is a Professor at California State University, Monterey Bay where she is one of the founding faculty members who developed the Visual and Public Art Department when the campus opened in 1995. Her work can be seen at www.lightessencedesign.com.
Chi Chi Okonmah
Chi Chi Okonmah, since moving to the Bay Area, California in 2000 has successfully held management, consulting, and contractor positions for many of the most prominent, rooted and historic Artists, Art-ivists & Arts organizations in the Bay Area & beyond. With almost 20 years of experience in stage & production management for live dance & theater performances, as well as, event planning for multi-day indoor & outdoor events and festivals, Chi Chi’s professional career in the Performing Arts is a true testament to her lifelong love of dance and music. Chi Chi celebrates 20+ years as a Rhythm Tap “hoofer” & enjoys choreographing, dancing & teaching at all levels. Chi Chi has also directed multiple Bay Area stage premieres, and is always excited to co-create with talented and joyous artists!
Dancer, Art-ivist, Entrepreneur, Stage & Production Manager, and Business Arts Consultant who lives and breathes her passion. Learn more about Chi Chi Okonmah by visiting her business website: www.c2orhythmandarts.com
Ray Archie
Ray Archie, the CEO and co-Founder of MixLuv, Inc. is infinitely the musician’s advocate. Ray is also a musician who plays cello, bass, & piano and has performed internationally with Leonard Bernstein, Michael Tilson-Thomas, LSO, SF Symphony orchestra, & many others. Ray crosses the boundaries of classical, jazz, rock, hip-hop, and soul music.
As a technologist, Ray has extensive technology, telecommunications and business experience. While working as the Director of Streaming Operations for CBS Radio Corporate, he helped to build one of the largest streaming networks in the world.
Ray’s passion for music and the creative process led to the creation and launch of MixLuv – a social platform designed for musicians, songwriters and engineers to collaborate, create and manage their world of music online. His advocacy for the musician led to the creation of Notes to the Soul, an organization whose purpose is to promote well-being through the language of music. Notes to the Soul is the parent organization of Music Makers Workshop.
