We were lucky to catch up with Sadé Jones recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Sadé thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
The pandemic was a time that caused a lot of dissociation for many people, where we had to isolate ourselves from one another, become hypervigilant in our efforts to stay safe, yet still lost a lot of people in a short amount of time. I kept this in mind when I worked as the creative director and choreographer on a project called Bright Mother: An Invitation into being.
Writer and co-director, Rachel Long and I wanted to help people acknowledge the complicated emotions of this pandemic, move through them, have the space to grieve and also help them birth into new ways of being. It was an interactive performance art project guiding people through all the chakras by engaging their senses from light, sound, smell, taste and touch. It began with a guided tuning meditation by a bonfire, then moved inside beckoned by a live soundscape. Under each audience member’s chair were sensory materials: essential oils to smell, rose petals and paper upon which to write their intentions. These were tools for processing during the journey through light using dance, prose, song, and silence. Towards the end of the performance, they’d head back to the bonfire where they’d throw in the words and intentions they wanted to leave behind, and keep the ones they wanted to bring back into the world anew.
Living through this pandemic made a lot of us afraid of/for our bodies and made us suppress a lot of grief that can one feel alien to their own self. I already believe that healing cannot and should not be done in isolation, yet this pandemic made us sit with difficult feelings all on our own. So this project sought bring us back together in a way that prioritized safety yet gave people permission and room to navigate through feelings they sometimes didn’t even know they had. That’s the kind of space I like to create as a movement alchemist and creative Doula. To help people who imagine a different world for themselves, find the pathway and know how to walk through with their whole selves.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Tell our readers about yourself
I’m an award winning dancer, actress, choreographer and movement director.
Theatre-making in all forms and spaces is my joy. As a dark skinned, spiritual, black woman I was born in the liminal space and my work lives there as well. Born and raised in 1990’s Brooklyn – I developed an incomparable root in arts, culture and community. My performance training supported this magic spanning across creative techniques of the African Diaspora. My accolades include awards by B. Iden Payne and Austin Critics Table. My work has been featured on PBS Arts In Context as well as in the Criterion Collection and AfroPunk.
I’ve made an impact through my workshops and trainings with SXSW, Facebook and more. My work as a creative doula can be seen with Magna Carda, Riders Against the Storm and Trouble In The Streets. I hold a graduate degree in Social Psychology and am a 2025 candidate for a Master’s of Fine Arts at Duke University studying Dance as Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis.
I curate artistic, mindful and culturally relevant ways for individuals and groups to embody innate wholeness and address otherwise ‘charged’ topics in a heartfelt yet honest way. My work is heralded as “cathartic, genuine, provocative and beautiful.” My personal life is dedicated to the reverence of my ancestors and the deepening of my spiritual practice. I love salsa dancing, gardening and caring for the animal that often cares for me.
How you got into your industry / business / discipline / craft etc,
The beginning of my business came as a culmination of multiple endings. 2020 was a year where nothing that worked would work anymore. I evolved past the containers I compartmentalized myself in. There was just so much more to offer in education, psychology, performance, wellness…that wouldn’t work in isolation. They had to come together in order to morph. It was a boiling point really. In some spaces, I felt the resistance and had to move on. In others, I was in denial and had to be shown. But one thing’s for sure – change was inevitable. I watched people struggle to sit still with their minds and bodies. I saw the effects of this on interpersonal, organizational and even national scales. People were saying the world was on fire…and I could see the source. I had to do something. So I retired from teaching and turned the 86 page document of personal resources I created for my own wellbeing into a social media platform, wellness services and performance projects. I was open to anyone who genuinely wanted help. And they came: performers, yogis, care providers, spiritual leaders, educators, politicians. And a business began to form organically, helping people grieve the endings and birth new possibilities.
what type of products/services/creative works you provide?
Movement/Creative Direction (doula), Choreography, Interactive workshops, trainings, retreats for creatives and non-creatives, Keynote Speaking, and Social Emotional Learning through Dance for youth.
what problems you solve for your clients and/or
At the individual level…I get people authentically and holistically in their bodies so they can do whatever it is they do unencumbered by their trauma. Revealing the body’s response to the spoken and unspoken story.
At the organizational level…there’s a lot of people trying to shift policy and haven’t shifted in themselves because our society has not allowed the space for internal awareness of how we show up in spaces – for ourselves and others. My work helps facilitate that process through radical self care to sustainably embody the change we are working toward.
At the creative level…I use movement to influence personal identities and ultimately cultures so they may in turn, enrich societies. I make and help make art that is so delectable, that people don’t even know they are participating in change. No matter the project, I ensure art immortalizes cultural practices with integrity. The spaces I create call in the creative and ancestral supports felt by everyone involved. The process with me is an effortless and respectful collaboration. The art that I create personally dismantles barriers of access that demonstrates the type of community support and encouragement necessary to keep our roots and heritages alive.
what you think sets you apart from others.
The current healing model in the western world is individually focused, in which one is in isolation, taking personal responsibility for their challenges under the belief that the self is an island and so should healing be. I operate under the model that healing is communal and this is due to my background as a trained dancer where art is created in a collaborative process, as well as my spiritual background where we are the manifestations of our ancestral lineages. Communal healing is the acknowledgement of our interconnectedness, of turning to each other for hope while being accountable to evolve past ways we can harm. As a Creative Doula, I take this same process to help other creatives birth their projects by helping them move through the blocks in the way of their inspiration. I help them come home to their own body, conjure the spirits of each character in their project, be the guide that gives order and direction to their idea.
What are you most proud of?
I’m going to sit here and list off the many accomplishments that I have. What I will say is I am proud of the ways I apply the work I do for others to myself. I am proud of the being that I am. I am proud of how I take care of myself so that the accomplishments are sustainable and legacy creating.
what are the main things you want potential clients/followers/fans to know about you/your brand/your work/ etc?
Have you ever watched a movie with difficult subjects on trauma or injustice, and they left you feeling devastated, heavy or disturbed with no way forward? What you will get from my work always, is truth brought to you with care and safety. If my work invokes a shadow part of self or society, you can trust that I will have built an opening, a nurturing of the process and a place to put it down or at least work through it. It’s easy to rile up and sensationalize tough emotions, but I take care to give my audience, my clients the know-how for what to do with them. Truth, with care and safety.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
Interconnectedness isn’t just some cute, naive idea about we are all one so let’s hold hands and sing. The current shift in society has shown us the dire consequences of thinking we do not belong to or are not responsible for one another. We are seeing in real time the failure of individualism and how it’s literally killing us. My mission is for everyone who works with me to harness the power of healing on purpose and out loud. Then we can see what our part is on the web of our collective existence.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
I’ve worked with a few corporate clients who often underestimate the role of the arts in helping employees be the best versions of themselves. I don’t work on the sole purpose of increasing productivity in employees as though they are just cogs in the machine, but the result of people being able to reconnect the parts of themselves they often had to exile, inevitably results in them being better people, better employees for a better company. Everything in an imagination, a thought that is then made real. Creatives are the shepherds of these ideas, the bridges between muses and humans, the ones who facilitate the process that births great ideas into existence.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sadeizm.com
- Instagram: @sadeizmbemoved
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sadeizmbemoved/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkupOvMM2qmHBJwDEvHJsZg
Image Credits
Kate Taylor Sandy Carson Adwoa Danielle Trouble In The Streets