Latasha Barnes

LaTasha Barnes is an American dancer, choreographer, educator and scholar based in Richmond, Virginia, whose work reconnects Black American social dances across generations. In the 2010s, she emerged in international battle and social-dance communities while beginning to trace the relationships among house, hip-hop, funk, jazz and swing-era vernacular dance. Rather than treating these as isolated genres, Barnes studied how African diasporic rhythm, improvisation, social exchange and individual expression recur across them, bridging community knowledge with academic research. She completed a self-designed master's degree in ethnochoreology, Black studies and performance studies at New York University's Gallatin School in 2019, and joined Arizona State University's School of Music, Dance and Theatre faculty in fall 2021, where she now serves as an associate professor.

In 2021, Works & Process commissioned *The Jazz Continuum*, which premiered at the Guggenheim Museum before appearing at Jacob's Pillow. The work brings together dancers and musicians fluent in vernacular jazz, Lindy Hop, house, hip-hop, waacking and related practices, with sound design and music composition by Charles Turner and Sean Mason. Barnes has also contributed to *Swing Out*, a collaborative concert work developed with Caleb Teicher, Evita Arce and Nathan Bugh that preserves the improvisational and communal conditions of Lindy Hop.

Barnes's achievements have been recognized widely. The Bessies honored her as an Outstanding Performer for sustained achievement in 2021, and in 2023 awarded her the Outstanding Choreographer/Creator prize for *The Jazz Continuum* at the Joyce Theater. Her work is distinctive for demonstrating how rhythmic logics migrate across distinct dance forms—a house-derived jack settling into Lindy Hop pulse, compact footwork widening into waacking's arm pathways, jazz timing surfacing inside a hip-hop groove. In *The Jazz Continuum* and her teaching, these transitions are the argument itself: continuity is demonstrated through shared impulse and social exchange rather than a linear parade of named styles.