About Me

Sheena Johnson & Marshall Trammell,
Between You and Me (Fall 2009)

Sheena Hampton-Johnson is a dance artist currently living in Central Florida. In the spirit of Ossie Davis who once said “What is art but advocacy?,” Sheena is committed to creating social change art and collaborating w/ like-minded artists. During college, Sheena was a founding member, choreographer, and co-director of Rhythm N Motion, a campus wide dance company that performed dances of the African Diaspora.  In 2006, while living in Philadelphia, she was awarded the Leeway Foundation’s Art and Change Grant to choreograph and co-produce the multi-media performance piece Movement from the Margins: An Artist Response to Katrina. When she lived in Oakland CA in 2006-2017, she has collaborated with See.Think.Dance. and presented solo, duet and ensemble work at various venues across the Bay Area including the Museum of the African Diaspora (MOAD), Red Poppy Art House, The Garage, CounterPULSE and Dance Mission. In early 2009, Sheena performed as a guest artist with Rashad Pridgen’s Motif Performance Group in "Interludes to Intimacy".  For the 2009-2010 season, Sheena was selected by the Black Choreographer's Festival (BCF) Artist Mentorship Program to produce "Migrations" - a dance/theater piece inspired by the Great Migration of Black people from the South to the North in the early 20th century.  In May of 2010 Sheena earned her MFA in Dance emphasis choreography from Mills College in Oakland.  Sheena has received choreographic mentorship from Molissa Fenley, Shinichi Iova-Koga, Linda K. Johnson, Robert Henry Johnson, Shelly Senter, Raissa Simpson, Sheldon Smith and Deborah Vaughan. Lastly, during her 11 years living in the SF Bay Area Sheena ran her own dance company and has received numerous artist grants and commissions including the Zellerbach Family Foundation arts grant, City Oakland Arts grants and was presented by the SF Trolley Dances.

DANCE TRAINING - 

MFA Dance, Mills College, Aug 2008 –May 2010

Earned my Masters of Arts in Dance with emphasis in Choreography. Rigorously studied ballet, modern and post-modern dance forms.

Student of Umfundalai, Swarthmore College. Jan 2002-May 2005

Studied Umfundalai, a modern pan-African dance technique, under master teacher C. Kemal Nance of the Philadelphia based dance company Kariamu and Company. Selected to be in repertory senior year.