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Charles “Lil Buck” Riley is an award-winning performing artist, entrepreneur, and advocate for the arts and humanities. Lil Buck’s dance repertoire includes Memphis Jookin’, ballet, hip-hop, modern, and many other styles. He has collaborated with a number of artists, including Yo-Yo Ma, Madonna, Alicia Keys, Janelle Monáe, and Lizzo, while his dance has been featured by brands like Apple, Jordan, Gap, Lexus, and others.

Lil Buck has lent his skill to a number of commercial projects, serving as a choreographer for both seasons of the Starz series Blindspotting. He also appeared as a guest judge on Season 11 of So You Think You Can Dance. In 2019, Lil Buck’s story and creative process were captured in the documentary Lil Buck: Real Swan, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Currently, Lil Buck is producing multiple stage shows that bring attention to dance as a powerful tool to change the world.  One production currently in development, titled Memphis Jookin’: The Show, returns Lil-Buck to his hometown roots and brings his career full circle.

Jon Boogz is an Emmy-nominated director, movement artist, and choreographer. First motivated to dance by the work of Michael Jackson, he has choreographed for Mikhail Baryshnikov, Naomi Campbell, and Gloria Estefan. As a director, he has led projects that include the Emmy-nominated Where I’m From (part of the NFL’s Inspire Change Campaign), and Banana Republic’s campaign No Boundaries. His work celebrates people, style, and community and advocates for centering black artists.

Boogz’s collaborators include TriBeCa Film Festival, Terrence Malick, TEDx, and Flying Lotus. He has been featured at the Geffen Playhouse’s Backstage at the Geffen with his dance company Control Freakz, Lil Buck, and spoken word artist Robin Sanders. Recently, Boogz won an Emmy for his choreography work on Season 2 of the Starz series Blindspotting.

Boogz is currently in the process of developing a commercial theater show for the Broadway stage with Hamilton producers The Public Theater, as well as an action-adventure dance series and a feature film with Serial Pictures and Anonymous Content. He is also working to develop a biopic feature film with A24.

Dr. Stephanie Leigh Batiste is Professor of English at The University of California at Santa Barbara with affiliate appointments in Black Studies, Theater and Dance and Comparative Literature.  She studies literature, performance, theater, dance, film, and culture. Professor Batiste researches the ways imaginative structures build complex worlds while critiquing material ones to reimagine the nature of personal and social relationships and ways of being. Her award-winning book Darkening Mirrors: Imperial Representation in Depression Era African American Performance (Duke University Press, 2011) focuses on relationships between race, power, nationhood, and identity in 1930s Black theater and film. Professor Batiste is also a creative writer and performer. She has written three plays: Stacks of Obits, Young Love Found and Lost, Six Poems in a Circle, and Blue Gold & Butterflies. Her solo show Stacks of Obits about street murder in Los Angeles has been performed nationally and internationally. Her interdisciplinary research has appeared in Text & Performance Quarterly, The Black Scholar, The New Centennial Review, The International Journal of Screen Dance, and The Journal of Haitian Studies as well as collections and anthologies.