BODY INTELLIGENCE ACADEMY

Maybe it was my fault for thinking I could just treat dance as some side hobby , something to do just for fun. After all I had bombed my audition at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, so maybe a career in dance wasn’t on my horizon. When I got accepted to Virginia State University I was elated to be going to an HBCU. I had gotten over the disappointment of being rejected from my first choice of school, (and my second, Howard university) and if we’re being honest and had made peace with the fact that I was headed to Petersburg, VA to study sociology. I fucked off my first 2 years of high school and I was paying for it.  While it wasn't an arts institution like UArts, and it didn’t have a dance program like Howard, it did have a “dance team” and offer a dance class in the form of a P.E requirement. I thought that would be enough.

Damn was I wrong. The dance class was miserable. We didn’t even wear dance attire, instead donning...

What is it about a woman knowing exactly what she wants that terrifies and disgusts the masses?

Maybe it's the fact that you cannot shame a woman who own everything about herself. You can't weaponize the truth against her.

You can't get her to see herself as anything less than who she is because your validation is not required.

She won't be paralyzed by guilt or find herself drowning in self- sacrifice.

She won't feign satisfaction for the sake of your ego.

She has nothing to prove regarding her intellect, competency or ambition.

She will receive what she needs and disengage from the rest.

I can see why some find her dangerous.

She has found Supreme Acceptance and is not easily manipulated.

She is free.

Strip clubs can be fun and magical places. The combination of women, music and alcohol make for a highly sexualized fantasy world in which both men and women can get their needs met. The exchange of currency for titillating entertainment and attention are the same everywhere but depending where you are the experience can vary in a major way. Some clubs give you the feeling of being at a wild glamorous party where all the women are baddies and the champagne flow likes water. Others make you want to go home and bathe in bleach and leave you feeling sad & disheartened. 

Luckily for me the primary club I worked in over my 10 year run as a stripper was the former. Touted as the “World Largest Stripclub”  it was open 24 hours a day 7 days a week. There were  hundreds of beautiful women working at any given time, they had a pool for day parties, and a full service upscale restaurant attached serving organic non-GMO Mexican fare.They have champagne...

Let me tell you about the Cruise of Lies. 

This photo was taken on our first family cruise(which would become an annual tradition). I had made the decision to divorce my husband. My daughter was 3 years old. 

A few weeks earlier I had gotten the call that set everything in motion. A woman “anonymously” called my house to inform me that my husband had been cheating on me for some time with a co-worker. This was the culmination of many red flags that I ignored throughout the course of the relationship but that’s a story for another day. 

The decision had been made. Papers filed. He was in the process of moving out. This cruise was to celebrate my Grandparents turning 90 and it would be the first time we had all gotten together since my wedding. It was also the first  big family vacation for my daughter and I knew it would be the last one for her with her two parents as a unit. 

Everyone was so excited about this cruise,...

You’ve spent most of your life locked in your head. Thinking, ruminating and worrying, only attending to your body if it demands your attention, or you want it to do something for you.

You’ve been looking outside of your own body to feel at home and it’s led to a distrust in your decision making, lack of confidence in yourself as a sensual being and an inability to regulate your nervous system.

When you are at home in your body you are connected to the intelligence outside of your brain. You are in tune with sensation, intuition and instinct.

And being in tune leads to confident decision making, the ability to be present and an abundance of sensual pleasure.

Come on home sis.
Sit down, take your shoes off, pour yourself some tea and get comfy.

1.  Notice - Make a habit of noticing what is happening in your body and how it feels in response to different stimuli or lack thereof.What does it feel like when you are breathing deeply? When you get angry? ...

My greatest strength has always been in performing. I love to choreograph and bring out the best in others and I love being a student of dance in general but it’s in taking on the task of trying to convey something to an audience where I’m most at home. I’ve always loved dancing in front of people but I as I got older I also focused on my performance out of necessity. My body type, lack of flexibility and decent but not outstanding technique were all working against me but I knew that despite all of that I could always be a commanding presence on the stage. My kicks may not be as high, my feet may not be pointed as beautifully but damn it when I take that stage you will take notice and look at me.

My students that I set choreography for absolutely killed it the last time they performed. They commanded the stage and made people look. No one in the audience knew that their trio started as a group of 6, or that they had never twerked on stage before or that the...