Adia Tamar Whitaker

Adia Tamar Whitaker, Artistic Director of the 25-year old Brooklyn based, pick up, dance, and music theater ensemble Àṣẹ Dance Theater EAST and the 16-year old Bay Area pick up, dance, and music ensemble Àṣẹ Dance Theater WEST, has choreographed and performed contemporary dance, vernacular movement, Afro-Haitian dance, Haitian dance, folkloric song, and Hip Hop Theater in the U.S. and abroad for 28 years. Whitaker has traveled to Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ghana, Jamaica, Trinidad, Tobago, and Antigua to study, perform, and teach dance.

Whitaker received an MFA in Dance from Hollins University, a BA in Dance from San Francisco State University, and attended The Ailey School. She was an Urban Bush Women Apprentice, a Maggie Allesee Choreographic Fellow, and has received three Isadora Duncan Awards. In 2019, Whitaker received the NYSCA/NYFA Award in Choreography and completed her first residency at the Kennedy Center. In 2021, Whitaker's choreography was featured in the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Virtual Dance Africa, she completed a second residency at the Kennedy Center, became a Gerbode Foundation Special Awards in the Arts Grant recipient, and curatorial artist for Albany Symphony Orchestra and Brooklyn Children’s Museum.

In 2022, Whitaker and Dance Mission Theater received a Kenneth Rainin Foundation New Program Grant. In 2023,  Adia was awarded a Brooklyn Arts Council Creative Equations Fund; Justice, Equity, Sustainability, + Performing Arts Grant, and a NEFA National Dance Project Production and Touring Grant.

Most recently, Adia received a sabbatical grant from her full time position as a dance educator, and a CUNY Dance Initiative Residency at Medgar Ever College in Brooklyn.

Her choreographic masterpieces continue to be her two children.