Chicava

For more than twelve years, Chicava mentored women in the dream of being a burlesque performer for a night, for life and in between through The Broad Squad Institute, the teaching wing of the Brown Girls Burlesque project. After teaching burlesque performance for a few years she started developing Sacred Burlesque to combine her lifelong study of dance, yoga, qigong, and sacred sexuality with the bump n’ grind to create a burlesque class that’s womb-centered workout, that’s balancing and filled with revitalizing exercises.

She received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from Goddard College with areas of interest being performance art, women of color in burlesque heritage, and sacred sexuality and spirituality. She is the foremost scholar on the history and heritage of black burlesque. Chicava is a Universal Healing Tao Instructor under the Grand Master Mantak Chia and Sharon Smith.and a Tai Chi, QiGong and Martial Arts practitioner.  She brings her arts and spiritual studies together through her school Sacred Chrysalis, the space where the sacred sexuality of Taoist Womanly Arts, burlesque, and sistering community meet.