Deviant Dance--Home

Grace has won Best Kept Secret of 2008
Click here for website: Zaghareet Golden Belly Awards

mmm Grace's unique passion and stage presence have enthralled audiences in the Bay Area, the Pacific Northwest, and beyond. Her original style is imbued with intricate beauty, wild improvisation, and powerful storytelling. In addition to her solo work, she is the founder, director, and lead dancer of Deviant Dance based in Portland, Oregon, and a principle dancer in Dreams of Cleopatra based in the Bay Area. She was a contributing member of the Bay Area troupes Good Vibrations, Four Elements, and Morada Raks until her relocation to Portland in late 2004. Grace was recently nominated for Zaghareet Magazine's Best Kept Secret Award in 2008.

Traveling often as a child between the magical land of Hollywood, CA, and her Indian reservation in the heart of the Arizona desert, Grace has straddled the worlds of urban culture and untamed nature ever since. A lifelong dancer, she choreographed solo interpretive dances at an early age and began learning yoga from her mother at the age of three. Between 1982 and 1996 Grace studied tap, modern, Haitian, and West African dances. She took her first belly dance lesson in 1990, and began formal study in 1996 at the age of nineteen. Her work is influenced by her Native American heritage and her travels in Central America and Southeast Asia, particularly Bali, Indonesia.

Grace's solo dances are always improvised. Deviant describes her philosophy: that each dancer must be different--deviating from everyone else, for every dancer has a unique spirit, a singular mythology that comes from experience and imagination that no other can describe. Grace devotes her art to representing both the light and the dark, that which is sacred, sensual, and absurd. She strives to express in dance the magic of this strange world with devotion and reverence. kabuki

"To watch Grace perform is to leave the mundane behind and be initiated into a realm of humor, beauty, ecstasy, and creativity. She has inspired me to dance outside the belly dance box and seek to tell the stories within the dance. Grace is a mystical experience seasoned with a fine sprinkling of absurdity. It doesn't get any better than that!" ~ Pamela

"Grace's artistry is mesmerizing. It draws from a fusion of many artistic dance styles that range from very dramatic to fun and mischievous. She performs with a playful openness you rarely see today." ~ Tatseena

"Grace is an inspiration to me because she takes dance and creates a powerful performance that can be many things: exotic, strange, beautiful, and humorous. Grace has shown me how to dance beyond the set boundaries and create a story from my heart. Grace is one of the most creative and wonderfully down to earth people I've ever met!" ~ Tenya