LaTasha Barnes

Multi-Bessie award winner (2021/2023), and New York Times celebrated Best Dance & Breakout Star (2021) LaTasha Barnes is an internationally awarded and critically-acclaimed dance artist, choreographer, scholar, and tradition-bearer of Black American Social Dance co-based in Phoenix, AZ and New York. A Richmond, VA native, she is globally celebrated for her musicality, athleticism, and joyful presence throughout the cultural traditions she bears: House Dance, Hip-Hop, Waacking, Authentic Jazz, and Lindy Hop, among them. Barnes’ expansive artistic, competitive, and performative skills have made her a frequent collaborator to The Kennedy Center for The Performing Arts, Summer Dance Forever & Foundation Hip-Hop Center Amsterdam, Singapore-based Timbre Arts Group, Ephrat Asherie Dance, and many more. 

Barnes’ leadership and business acumen have placed her in positions of service as Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees for Ladies of Hip-Hop Festival®, Vice President of Marketing & Outreach for the International Lindy Hop Championship®, Directing Board Member of the Black Lindy Hoppers Fund, the Frankie Manning Foundation, and a contributing member to the NEFER Global Movement Collective.

Expanding the scope of impact for the communities she serves, Barnes completed her self-designed Masters in Ethnochoreology, Black Studies and Performance Studies thru New York University Gallatin School of Individualized Study (2019). Her thesis and continued applied research are working to bridge the gap between communities of practice and academic cultural dance research, performance, preservation and pedagogy as well as expand the reach of dance as a healing tool for disabled US military veterans like herself. 

In support of this dialogue, Barnes was honored to be a contributing author to the 2022 National Dance Education Organization Ruth Lovell Murray Book Award winning text Rooted Jazz Dance: Africanist Aesthetics and Equity in the Twenty-First Century - Univ. FL Press (2021). Ensuring future artists and dance scholars maintain authentic cultural context as they move through the world bearing forth Black dance traditions. To further support this effort Barnes joined the esteemed faculty of Arizona State University School of Music, Dance & Theater in Fall 2021. Now Associate Prof. of Dance, Barnes is the second tenured Hip-Hop Dance professor in the US, proudly representing the class of academic educators who actively contribute to the cultures studied.

From the analysis of her research and in deeper concert with the mission to strengthen Black artists reverence for and expression with Jazz, Barnes is honored to be the visionary creator and Artistic Director of the multi-award winning and NYT critically acclaimed intergenerational and intercommunal cultural arts project  The Jazz Continuum.  First commissioned by Guggenheim Works & Process, further supported by The Joyce Theater (2022) TJC is a recipient of the prestigious NEFA National Dance Project grant (2022), and two Bessie Awards for Outstanding Creation/Choreography & Outstanding Music Direction.

Additionally she is also honored to be a part of the Brain Trust that developed the ground-breaking stage production Sw!ng Out, bringing the passion and power of Lindy Hop and its community to the concert stage. The New York Times said of her collaboration with Caleb Teicher in Swing Out, “Barnes is especially extraordinary for the way the past and the present can pass through her...”

Across all her endeavors, Barnes' eternal purpose is to inspire fellow artists and arts enthusiasts to champion artivism in their creative expressions and daily lives.