Latanya d. Tigner performs professionally with Dimensions Dance Theater within multidisciplinary works rooted in African diasporic dance. She holds a B.A. in Physical Education/Dance, a Master’s in Arts Administration, directs DDT’s youth company, lectures at UC Berkeley, and is certified in the Akimbo Level of Talawa Technique™. Latanya served as co-artistic director of the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival (2018-2021), for which she curated the presentation of Africana dance forms never before included in the festival. In 2022, she co-author of the essay Close up: Step-Touch in New Orleans Popular Dance. In spring 2021 she received The Michael Mansfield and Randy Sweringen Social Justice Award for Artistic Excellence in Creating a More Equitable and Inclusive World. Latanya’s research on African dance retention in African American social dance led to the creation of Dancing Cy(i)phers in 2019. DC has presented Hip Hop’s Embodied Expression of Resistance and Resilience, Back to the Root: The Healing and Spiritual Power of the Spine and Pelvis in African Rooted Dance (a year-long lecture and master class series), and Back to the Root: Dancing Ancestral Cosmologies. She has presented workshops at CADD, IABD, CDEA, NDEO, Show and Prove, University of the West Indies (Barbados), and in Paris. She has also served as a member of the Hewlett Foundation’s Arts Education Task Force, an advisor for Alliance for California Traditional Arts’ Taproot Initiative- a national initiative supporting traditional arts and living cultural heritage- and served on California Dance Educators Association’s greater board of directors.