Dr. Enya-Kalia Jordan (she/her) is a choreographer, dance studies scholar, and culture curator from Brooklyn, New York. Her credentials include a Bachelor of Arts in Arts & Letters Dance from SUNY Buffalo State and a Master of Fine Arts in Dance from Temple University. In 2026, she received a PhD in dance from Texas Woman’s University, contributing to the field the theory of Ebonic Bodies in Motion. She has been awarded several prestigious honors for her research, including the Phi Kappa Phi Dissertation Fellowship and the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Spouses Education Scholarship to name a few. She is the New York State Dance Education Association’s 2026 Outstanding Leadership Award recipient. She is also the proud founder and artistic director of Enya Kalia Creations (EKC) a movement-based artistic collective established in 2016. Enya-Kalia is also the co-founder of Bashi Arts, a non-profit organization dedicated to revolutionizing dance and empowering South Brooklyn.

WHO IS ENYA?

Enya-Kalia has presented choreography at iconic venues such as Conwell Dance Theater, La MaMa EstroGenius Festival, Brooklyn Art Haus, Movement Research at Judson Church, and many more. She has an extensive teaching background, having served as a faculty of record at distinguished cultural institutions across the East Coast, including the University of Mount Saint Vincent and the University of Virginia. She has been a teaching artist with Bates Dance Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Dance Africa, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Abrons Center for the Arts, Dancewave, among others. She has presented dance research and choreography at numerous conferences and festivals. Highlights include the Collegium of African Diasporic Dance hosted by Duke University, the International Association of Blacks in Dance, the Decolonizing Tertiary Dance Education Conference hosted by Stockholm University, and the Decolonizing Bodies: Biennial International Dance Conference hosted by the University of the West Indies. This upcoming Fall 2026, she is scheduled to present at the National Dance Education Organization and the Dance Studies Association annual conferences.

ARTIST STATEMENT

As a creative, my work is born of smiles, sweat, spirit, and sport poured on the dance floor. I let the body do the work. My performance practice critically engages improvisation, African diasporic movement practices, and storytelling. As an artist,  I position myself as a body in motion, both flesh and spirit, Black and woman, teacher and student, choreographer and dancer, healer and wounded. I embrace this creative practice as a river that ebbs and flows. It cleanses the spirit, carries the burden of accountability, bends to intention, stretches to include intersectionality, and washes away anything that does not serve its greater purpose. Likewise, my research works through the collective negotiation of Black womanhood through time and space. Influenced by Afro-femme movement articulations, my life's work (choreography, activism, & writing) documents Black dance narratives and their cultural implication.