Classically trained folkloric dance artist and cultural ethnologist Kimberly Miguel Mullen contributes to a legacy of dancers and religious practitioners from Cuba and Brazil. Her work throughout her solo career and teaching is the product of many transnational and transcultural genealogies. By straddling the tensions and differences between sacred and commercial dance making, Mullen claims and perpetuates networks of artistic heritage and cultural exchange that link her performances to Yoruba/Lucumi, Arara, and Congo Lineages. Her dance practice is rooted in ritual dance expressions from AfroCaribbean religious systems of deities called the Orichas/Orixas. Through ongoing innovative performances, in-depth workshops, and dance intensives, Mullen expands the reach of African diasporic forms. Mullen is among a select few artists and scholars who combine knowledge and technical excellence in ritual dance forms, culture, and histories.
She has spent her life and career as a cultural ambassador. By combining ritual and religious dances with concert dance stagings and styles, Mullen has introduced AfroCuban and AfroBrazilian dance styles to international audiences. As the bearer of danced traditions through apprenticeship, Mullen combines the influences of her training in Silvestre technique, a contemporary dance technique based on AfroBrazilian symbols developed by Rosangela Silvestre, with traditional AfroCuban and AfroBrazilian dance styles to which she has devoted herself as she trained with dance masters including Teresita Domé Perez, Juan Carlos Blanco, Susana Arenas, Jose Barosso, and Juan De Dios Ramos for over twenty years – to name a few. Through the process of apprenticeship, Mullen has received permission from respected dance masters within AfroCaribbean communities to perform and adapt specific dances. Though she works as an AfroCaribbean dance instructor, choreographer, and performer, she constantly negotiates her position within the communities in which she has apprenticed by demonstrating understanding of cultural values through movement practices. Her work bridges gaps among different AfroCaribbean dance forms and represents an important example of a relationship to African peoples based primarily on artistic choices and performance.
Mullen’s movements and choreographies arise out of a deep understanding of the transnational circulation of sacred images and knowledge. Her personal identity as a woman of mixed heritage who identifies with the cultural mélange of island culture and her natural athleticism and grace have led her to explore cultures and interact with new communities through dance. Mullen identifies herself as of Filipino descent on her mother’s side and Portuguese and culturally Hawaiian through her father. As she humbly immerses herself in the center of many dance communities in the US, the Caribbean, and Brazil, she expertly brings traditional forms into mainstream markets due to her rare gift of making ethnographic knowledge accessible through embodied channels. Her international training experience in Brazil, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, and Puerto Rico, positions her to make unique contributions to the field and spirit of dance ethnology.
From early on in her career when she graduated from Portland State University with a BA degree in International Studies of Africa and was the recipient of the prestigious Presidential Award for her work as Director of The World Dance Office. In 1998, the Caribbean Cultural Association of Portland and Global Graduates awarded her an internship to the Tobago Museum in 1998 where she worked as a liaison to the Ministry of Culture and fostered relationships with Trinidadian icons Margorie Boothman and Trini Clyde Noel. This ability to merge academic knowledge with artistic outreach led Mullen to her graduate studies in the World Arts and Cultures Department at UCLA.
Mullen’s success in earning a Master of Arts degree in Dance from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures was a crowning achievement to her active pursuit of ethnographic knowledge. Though it was her successful athletic career in Volleyball at The University of Oregon as “Rookie of The Year” that led her to Portland State University’s Black Studies program, while at PSU she re-directed her path from sports to dance and cultural studies. Working closely with academic giants including archaeologist Kofi E. Agorsah, World Historian Candice Goucher, and Anthropologists Catherine Evelshin and Halbert Barton, she has conducted extensive, hands-on research in the Caribbean. In 1998, she travelled to Cuba with anthropologist Yvonne Daniel as part of a research team studying the Conjunto Folklorico Nacional de Cuba. Mullen’s research focuses on the relationship between sacred and commercial presentation of religious dance forms in honor of deities called orichas and she continues to pursue her interest in dance ethnography by traveling around the world to foster links among the various cultures that she encounters. Paying forward out of the extensive mentoring that she has received, Mullen is also a University dance professor who guest lectures at various academic institutions including University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Loyola Marymount University, California State University of Los Angeles, Portland State University, and Wesleyan College. She recently completed an 8-year Adjunct Faculty position at Occidental College teaching AfroCaribbean and Afro Contemporary dance courses.
Mullen also makes her knowledge of the healing and rejuvenating dimensions of dance accessible to a wide audience through her teaching and her award winning international popular dance and fitness DVDs. Her debut dance workout DVD, “Dance and Be Fit: Brazilian Body,” was awarded “Best Dance DVD” by Health Magazine in 2009 have earned her worldwide recognition and press mentions in blogs and major magazine publications such as US Weekly, Elle, People, Oxygen, Fitness, Health, Women’s World, Vogue (India), and Kee (Asia). These workouts have been translated into four languages and have been sold in Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the U.S. Mullen was even a #1 best selling artist in the German market and was the cover girl of the travel edition of Conscious Dancer Magazine in 2010. Her work as a DVD choreographer to Bollywood star Hemalayaa Behl and Yoga/Fitness expert Desiree Bartlett has also garnered widespread attention. Mullen also worked with pop star Bruno Mars and film director James V. Wvinner.
She is the founder and co-creator of Tambor Y Danza, a thriving bi-annual AfroCuban drum and dance cultural arts immersion program. Her co-founder is the Cuba Disco Grammy award recipient, Luca Brandoli. Mullen is a leader in the field of dance ethnology for her development of culturally conscious art curricula and travel abroad immersion programs to Latin America. She has co-hosted retreats at Soul Shine in Bali, Indonesia, Yemaya Retreat Center in Little Corn, Nicaragua and Amansala in Tulum, Mexico and has taught at acclaimed wellness retreat centers such as: Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, Mexico and Omega Holistic Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. Mullen has also been a faculty member for two world-renown camps for AfroCuban and AfroBrazilian Drum & Dance: California Brazil Camp in Cazadero, CA and Humboldt State University’s Explorations in AfroCuban Music and Dance Camp in Arcata, CA. These experiences hosting and teaching dance retreats and camps all over the world have culminated in her current “AfroCaribe Dance Trainings” in Maui, Hawaii.
She offers a spirited public dance class at the Electric Lodge called AfroCaribe that has gathered a loyal cult following in Venice, California. These public classes, held weekly in Venice for 12 years, became one of the top dance classes in the Los Angeles area. In 2014, she also embarked on a global tour to connect with her international audiences. Over 5 years she has expanded her reach and taught in 10 countries and over 100 cities to connect with her growing global following. Her teaching style combines intensity and vigorous energy with clear and engaging instruction as she moves seamlessly between teaching about history and culture and transmitting techniques for embodying these same cultural practices. Using movements that represent diverse cultural identities that cross-geopolitical boundaries, her classes and performances transcend divisions based on race, politics, class, gender, age, and language and encourage joy, purpose, and abundance in the lives of communities and individuals who take part.
Mullen began her solo dance career as one of a chosen few to perform at Town hall in New York City with the late legendary Cuban percussionist Francisco Aguabella.
When she performs, she brings an unparalleled percussive force to her movements. The Los Angeles Times has described her solo work as “spectacularly supple,” since she combines traditional dance forms from the African diaspora with Silvestre contemporary technique. She infuses her dancing with a remarkable ability to interpret the character of the dance as she embodies and transmits the archetypes of AfroCuban deities called Orichas or Orixas. Her choreographies navigate her position as a performer of oricha dance in the interstice between AfroCuban and AfroBrazilian dance communities.
Her 2012 solo performance of Yemanja, Mother of the Deep featured live music by singer/songwriter Mia Doi Todd and composer and AfroCuban religious practitioner Alberto Lopez. Mullen’s choreography in Yemanja operates in dialogue with her 2010 performance of Essensibility, a duet undertaken with Rosangela Silvestre and with the solo of Yemanja’s dance given to Mullen by her AfroCuban dance mentor Teresita Domé Perez. Mullen developed the choreography for Yemanja based on the many roads, or caminos, of Yemanja, an AfroCaribbean/AfroBrazilian orixa who presides over water, so that the dance moves from the aspects of the deity associated with the depths of the ocean to those linked to shallow water. In Yemanja, she has chosen to pursue AfroCaribbean/AfroBrazilian dance in ways that contribute to creole, or culturally amalgamated, dance traditions. Mullen continues to develop Yemanja, Mother of the Deep as a touring, full-length show through which she displays her unique ability to remake and reframe Africa Cuban and Brazilian traditional forms while remaining true to the legacies of the practitioners, performers, and communities that have mentored and molded her.
Mullen choreographed to the music of Morgan Sorne for the 2016 “All Souls Procession,” Tucson, Arizona’s largest outdoor procession with an audience of over 150K attenders. She has performed 360 live dance shows with Viver Brazil Dance Company at Disneyland’s “Viva Navidad” Christmas holiday showcase at Disney California Adventure Park. While I New York City she performed 52-shows in 3-weeks for a Bollywood television dance show with the Z-Living Network.
Kimberly Miguel Mullen’s performances and teaching must be experienced. In her own words, “Until you have experienced the hairs on your arms rise from the sounds of the bata drums or the goose bumps you get from dancing your first samba, it is almost impossible to describe with words a world with no limits.” Yet, as she moves from classroom to stage, she opens up new possibilities for health, spiritual practice, historical knowledge, and cultural exchange in her groundbreaking concert performances as an international touring artist and her insightful teaching across the Americas.