Rashida Bumbray

Rashida Bumbray is an American curator, choreographer, author, visual and performing arts critic who lives and works in New York City. Bumbray's choreographic work Run Mary Run was included in The New York Times list of the Best Concerts of 2012. In 2014, she was nominated for the distinguished Bessie Award for “Outstanding Emerging Choreographer," and in the same year she was recipient of the Harlem Stage Fund for New Work. Bumbray is currently the Senior Program Manager of the Arts Exchange at The Open Society Foundations the Open Society Foundations.

Education Rashida Bumbray earned her Bachelor of Arts in African American Studies and Theater & Dance from Oberlin College in 2000, and completed her Master of Arts in Africana studies at New York University with a focus on Contemporary Art and Performance Studies in 2010. Her work has been presented by Columbia University, Caribbean Cultural Center, Dancing While Black, Harlem Stage, Project Row Houses, and Weeksville Heritage Center. Additionally, she has published texts on various topics pertaining to contemporary art, Africana studies and comparative literature. The ring shout is a tradition that was developed during slavery in America as an attempt to blend African spirituality with Baptist and Methodist sects of Christianity who censured the Africana dance and drum rituals. In the dance, 12 dancers move in clockwise circles with steady rhythm, singing call-and-response patterns to chants and catchphrases in a manner that almost disguises the remnants of African traditions. The New York Times critic, Ben Ratlif described the performance as, "motion and music and memory, entwined" in his 2012 review. The show displayed the work of four artists who through their installations engaged with the communities in and around the Weeksville Heritage Center. The installations focused on Funk by Xenobia Bailey, Medicine by Simone Leigh, Jazz by Otabenga Jones & Associates, and God by Bradford Young. The work drew from stories on how self-determination can be achieved through the claiming and holding of a neighborhood–but also from radical local battles for land and dignity from the 1960s to today. The exhibition explored the implications of gentrification, specifically in the neighborhood of Crown Heights' in Brooklyn which received a 25.2% rent rate increase in 2014. Each installation in the exhibition was located at sites throughout the neighborhood, significant of black radical self-determination, expression, and world building. The exhibitions focus on local participation was intended to celebrate the neighborhood and its existing members rather than use art as a way to draw the general public toward a community, thus making it desirable to new residents, instead of addressing contemporary realities.