Tonya Amos is the founder of Grown Women Dance Collective, a company made up of internationally renowned dancers in their forties and fifties who have retired from full-time positions in the nation’s finest professional dance ensembles. Tonya combines her exuberant spirit, her passion for arts and community-building, and her expertise in dance, health, and wellness to celebrate Black history; build cross-cultural, cross-racial, and cross-class bridges; and bring arts and wellness services to economically disenfranchised communities all over the San Francisco Bay Area. In this podcast, she talks with host Tanya Shaffer about her extraordinary journey as a dancer, beginning in childhood where she trained in competitive gymnastics with Russian coaches and faced extreme discrimination in the San Francisco Bay Area dance scene in the 70’s and 80’s (She was told that Blacks were not allowed onstage at the San Francisco Ballet) and eventually leading her to New York and to dance on full scholarship at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. They also discuss Tonya’s work with Grown Women Dance Collective; how she became a choreographer by default; her passion for breaking down class, race, and generational barriers; and her plans to train a new generation of health and wellness experts to bring Pilates, dance, and life skills practices into communities that have previously had little to no access.

Click on the image below to visit Grown Women Dance Collective’s website.