DR. SHAMELL BELL

Personal claim

"Most people don’t want true freedom for all. They just don’t want to be the most oppressed. It’s not enough to be free of oppression, we must all co-choreograph our freedom dreams alongside each other, weaving love into all of our daily movements. As we dance our lives together, we are lifting frequencies and lifting vibrations that, with action, will create a shift in the world.”

About me

I am a “Visionary Instigator” of Street Dance Activism and Global Dance Meditation for Black Liberation. My work situates street dance as grassroots political action from my perspectives as a scholar, dancer, and choreographer and my research examines street dance movements in South Central Los Angeles through an autoethnographic and performance studies lens. I always wanted to make sure that whatever I spoke to in my dissertation spoke directly to my community, so I had to write about street dance activism, describing it as mechanism to temporize the relationships between identity and difference, between the past and the present, for the future. Today, through dance, meditation, and collective action, I want to lead people in a process of transcendence and transformation that shifts them towards a new vision and a dance piece of liberation.