About Eva
Eva Yaa Asantewaa (she/her) was born in New York of Barbadian immigrant heritage and makes her home in the East Village (Lenapehoking). Sbe is a veteran writer, editor, curator and community educator who won the 2017 New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Award for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance. In 2019, Eva received a BAX Arts & Artists in Progress Award in honor of her work for the dance community.
Now on Substack, Ms. Yaa Asantewaa explores the power of Tarot imagery and other transformative divinatory practices from an animist (Spirit-informed) perspective. She is a proud alumna of New York Theatre Workshop's Mind The Gap intergenerational playwriting program (Summer 2024). Among her most recent projects are Black queer contemporary fantasy novels.
Since 1976, Eva has contributed dance criticism and journalism appearing in Dance Magazine, The Village Voice, SoHo Weekly News, Gay City News, The Dance Enthusiast, and Time Out New York as well as her arts blog, InfiniteBody. She has also created and hosted podcasts on the arts (Body and Soul and Serious Moonlight).
In 2016, for Danspace Project’s innovative Lost and Found platform, Eva curated and directed the skeleton architecture, or the future of our worlds, an evening of group improvisation featuring 21 Black women and gender-nonconforming performers. Her cast won a 2017 Bessie Award for Outstanding Performer.
In 2018, Queer|Art named one of its awards in her honor—the Eva Yaa Asantewaa Grant for Queer Women(+) Dance Artists. In 2024, she served as part of a Queer|Art cohort of mentors and worked with mentee Katherine Bahena-Benítez, a dancer, actor, and writer.
From 2018-2021, Ms. Yaa Asantewaa was Senior Director of Curation as well as Editorial Director at Gibney, creating, directing, and curating numerous programs such as Solo for Solo, Black Diaspora, Imagining journal, Deeper Lectures, Deeper Duets, and WORD! Some of her programs were created to offer over Zoom, fostering connections and support among artists and between artists and audiences during the COVID pandemic.
“At Gibney, A New Curatorial Director Makes A Revolution” by Gia Kourlas, The New York Times, September 29, 2019
Eva served on the inaugural faculty of Montclair State University’s MFA in Dance program. She also joined the faculty for New England Foundation for the Arts' Regional Dance Development Initiative Dance Lab for emerging Chicago-area dance artists (2016) as well as Florida State University’s Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography's Forward Dialogues Dance Lab for Emerging Choreographers.
Ms. Yaa Asantewaa was a member of the New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Awards selection committee for three years and has been a consultant or panelist for numerous arts funding or awards organizations including the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Dance/NYC.
From 1987-89, Eva worked with WBAI’s Women’s Radio Collective and the Gay and Lesbian Independent Broadcasters Collective (OUTLOOKS). She also co-hosted The Tuesday Afternoon Arts Magazine with Jennifer Bernet and produced her own specials.
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In addition to her extensive work in the arts, Eva has maintained a Spirit-aligned counseling practice centered on Tarot. From 2001 to 2005, Eva published DancingWorld, a monthly email newsletter devoted to Tarot, psychic and spiritual development, and creativity—a predecessor, in many ways, to her work here on Substack.
While studying at Fordham University--where she received her B.A. in Communications in 1974--Ms. Yaa Asantewaa was introduced to Jungian psychology and the "mind games" techniques developed by Robert Masters and Jean Houston. She also studied Community Health Education at Hunter College School of Health Sciences and received the Hunter College President's Award for HIV/AIDS Creative and Scholarly Work, First Prize, 1992.
Eva’s poetry appears in The Zenith of Desire: Contemporary Lesbian Poems about Sex (ed., Gerry Gomez Pearlberg, Crown, 1996), Does Your Mama Know? An Anthology of Black Lesbian Coming Out Stories (ed., Lisa C. Moore, RedBone Press, 1997), Queer Dog: Homo Pup Poetry (ed., Gerry Gomez Pearlberg, Cleis, 1997), Isis Rising: The Goddess in the New Aeon (ed., Denise Dumars, 2000), Brooklyn Review, Kuumba, Starfish, WV, Tempus, The Isis Papers, and the Pegasus Dreaming, Star Leaper, and Pedestal Magazine websites. She was also published in An Eye for An Eye Makes the Whole World Blind: Poets on 9/11 (Regent Press). She has given readings of her work at numerous venues including the Brooklyn Museum, the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, A Different Light Bookstore, Bowery Poetry Club, and Cornelia Street Cafe.
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Eva has offered diverse services—consultation, curation, workshops and group facilitation, panel moderation, presentations, and special events—for many organizations and community projects in the New York metro area and beyond:
92Y Harkness Dance Center
A. J. Vargas Seminars
Abrons Arts Center
African Ancestral Lesbians United for Societal Change (AALUSC)
AIDS Center of Queens County
AIDS Service Center of Lower Manhattan
Audre Lorde Project’s Arms Akimbo Organizing Institute, 1998
Audre Lorde Project’s Wellness Forum, 2002
Bard College
Barnard College Dance Program
Bedford Hills Correctional Facility
BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange
Brooklyn Dance Festival
Brooklyn Historical Society
Changing Times, Changing Women Conference
College of New Rochelle (Brooklyn campus)
The Cauldron
The Crystal Quilt
Dance/NYC
Dancing Queerly Festival (Boston)
Dancing While Black
Danspace Project
First Universal Spiritual Church
Fourth Arts Block (FABnyc)
Gay and Lesbian Addiction Studies (GLAS) Conference (12th Annual) -- Reconstructing Recovery: Healing Technologies for the 21st Century
Gay and Lesbian Addiction Studies (GLAS) Conference (13th Annual)
Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Alliance, Kingsborough Community College
Gay Men of African Descent (GMAD) Adult HIV Prevention Program
Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) Intensive Case Management Unit
Gibney
Haitian Women’s Program
HAPI, Inc. (home healthcare workers agency)
Healing Path Farm
Healing Works
The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts
Housing Works
Howie the Harp Advocacy Center
Hunter College Dance Program
Initiative for Women with Disabilities (Hospital for Joint Diseases, Beth Israel Medical Center)
Inside Out Conference (Spirit Crossroads), 1997
Inside Out: Pride in Spirit (Spirit Crossroads)
The Lesbian Care Center
Lesbian Feminist Liberation
Liberate Your Health! Bodywork Fair
Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography’s Forward Dialogues Dance Lab for Emerging Choreographers
Manhattan Center for Living
Men of All Colors Together (MACT)
Montclair State University MFA Dance Program
National Endowment for the Arts
New England Foundation for the Arts Regional Dance Development Initiative Dance Lab
New York City Lesbian Health Fair
New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Awards
New York Live Arts (formerly Dance Theater Workshop)
New York Open Center: Womanspirit Journey Program
New York State Conference on Women's Health, 1994
New York State Council on the Arts
New York Theosophical Society
New York University Tisch School of the Arts Dance Program
Northeastern Tarot Conclave
Pepatián
Pillars of HER Tradition
Practice Progress and ARCOS Dance (UNtensive)
PWA Coalition Men’s Group
Queens Women's Health Network
Queensborough Community College Dance Program
Queer|Art Mentorship Program
Rising Spirits Healing and Learning Center
Riverside Church Wellness Center: Holistic Approaches to Cancer Care series
Rivington House
SAGE: Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders (formerly Senior Action in A Gay Environment)
Shades of Lavender (Brooklyn AIDS Task Force)
skewl (formerly, freeskewl)
Staten Island HIV Care Network: Conference 1998
Stuyvesant Chiropractic Center
The Tarot School
thINKingDANCE
To Tell The Truth 2002 Conference (Incest Awareness Foundation)
W.E.R.I.S.E. International Women Artist Conference 2003
Women’s Coffee House
Women’s Health Education Project
Women’s Rites Center
Yo SISTAH