+ Dohee Lee

Performance artist, Ritualist and Educator

Dohee Lee was born on Jeju Island in South Korea. Her creative vision comes from traditional Korean music, singing, drumming and dance which is rooted in Korean indigenous ritual. Since her arrival in the US she has been a vital contributor to both the traditional and contemporary arts landscape of the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. She utilizes art to heal fractured relationships in the urban environment – relationships between humans and the land, histories and stories between individuals and their communities. She is the founder of Puri Arts, a producing organization of performance and ritual.

Her work has been acknowledged by several awards, such as Guggenheim Fellowship, Hewlett 50 Arts Commission, Herb Alpert Award, Doris Duke Impact Award, Creative Capital, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Isadora Duncun Dance Award, Zellerbach Family foundation and more. www.doheelee.com

+ Samia Karimi

Dance artist, Teaching artist and Choreographer

Samia Karimi is a dance artist, teaching artist and choreographer who immigrated to the U.S. from Afghanistan at the age of 5. Her curiosity to reconnect with her culture brought her to the Bay Area where she has been training and performing with Ballet Afsaneh since 2015, under the artistic directorship of Sharlyn Sawyer and with Nava Dance Collective under the directorship of Miriam Peretz. While living in the Bay Area, Samia ran a nonprofit called Danceversity - World Dance for Youth and has been working with Luna Dance Institute - teaching creative dance to children and families.

Samia recently moved back to Southern California where she is involved in organizing work for Afghan Human Rights while exploring the art community in Los Angeles. She has performed at numerous private and community events as well as several Afghan music videos and is currently producing a cultural documentary around Afghan music and dance. Samia envisions a world where dance is celebrated as an art form everywhere and hopes to teach, research and document dance in Afghanistan one day.

+ Music & Healing Space with Dr. Jean Pierre Ndagijimana and Inkeshagitaramo & Inzora dance groups from Rwanda

Dr. Jean Pierre Ndagijimana: African Communities Well-being Coordinator, Partnerships for Trauma Recovery (PTR).

Jean Pierre Ndagijimana knows first hand that the greater a community’s loss in common ground, the greater the resulting gain in violence. He has worked in the fields of trauma and community healing with post-genocide and refugee communities for over 10 years in a variety of settings both in Rwanda and in the United States.

Through WIHERANWA, a community-led healing effort in Rwanda, Dr. Ndagijimana together with the communities he works with have co-developed community-driven, culturally, and contextually relevant homegrown strategies to reduce and heal impacts of individual, societal toxic stress in the post-genocide Rwanda and in the US African diaspora.

In his effort to center ways of healing directly generated from experiential knowledge and cultural assets, Dr. Ndagijimana has particularly partnered with some Rwandan traditional musicians turning the Rwandan/African community drumming traditions into healing spaces. He believes that WE can, collectively, shape peace together, and we are shaping it.