Our Black Voices Performance Series is a seminal part of the AfroSolo Arts Festival. It is where solo artists perform works giving voice to our unique experience. Our performs include: Anjali Austin, dancer; Delina P. Brooks, dancer, actor and writer; Thomas Robert Simpson, award winning solo performance artist, producer, writer and community activist and Dávia Spain, dancer, writer and filmmaker Our theme is RESILIENCE! (noun-the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.). Throughout our history, resilience has been a constant companion.  All of the works in our Black Voices Series has that ingredient in common.  We invite you to come take a journey with us that will inspire you, uplift you and reinforce your RESILIENCE! to obstacles in your path. 

Anjali Austin will perform an excerpt from Live Oak. She is a dance professor at Florida State University who inherited over 30 quilts from her maternal grandmother, Mrs. Gussie Beatrice Arnold Hill. Austin holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College. During her graduate studies she began researching the history of the quilts; some of which may have been made by slaves. It is out of this work that Austin was moved to create Live Oak. What has resulted is an exquisite work based on these quilts, their meaning and place in history, as well as a tribute to her ancestors.

Austin is a distinguished interdisciplinary artist whose career includes thirteen years of performing with the critically acclaimed Dance Theatre of Harlem.  As a movement artist, she has performed classical, neo-classical, and contemporary works by prominent choreographers, and choreographs nationally and internationally. Ballets she has performed include Billy the Kid, Swan Lake (Act II), Serenade, Flower Festival, Dougla, Concerto Barocco, Prince Igor, Paquita, and Frankie and Johnny – in which she held a vocal role. 

Austin also serves on the Board of CORPS de Ballet International, teaches ballet, Gyrotonic and Gyrokinesis at the School of Dance at Florida State University, and conducts lectures on the history and legacy of Black classical ballet dancers. For more info visit http://dance.fsu.edu/anjali-austin/

Brooks is a three time Izzie Award Nominee, Izzie Award Winner for An Open Love Letter to Black Fathers (Writer, Director, Lead Artist), Winner of PUSH Festival "Audience Choice" Award for In The Meantime (Writer, Co-Director), published in Journal of Pan African Studies and InDance Magazine. Brooks has studied and performed in Guinea, West Africa, Western Europe and the Southern Philippines.  Additional info can be found at http://www.delinadream.com/press.html 

Executive Director, Healing For Our Families & Our Nation, Mattie Scott, is a mother and activist in violence prevention, intervention and educational awareness. She has been on a nation-wide mission to address the root causes of senseless gun violence for the past 21 years. Her faith has carried her through one of the worst nightmares of her life, the tragic shooting death of her youngest son, George C. Scott. On July 17, 1996, George was killed while attending a graduation party in the Western Addition Neighborhood of San Francisco. Scott is compassionate, committed and dedicated to violence prevention. As executive director of Healing For Our Families And Our Nation, Scott works with all law enforcement agencies, government officials, clergy, educators, CBO’s and many others in the campaign in violence prevention.

Thomas Robert Simpson will perform, Courage Under Fire a personal story about a father transcendence from the insanity jim crow’s to committing an act of bravery that proved to be revolutionary.  The story mirror's the journey of many Black men as they strive to achieve and obtain all of their constitution rights. 

Simpson, actor, director, producer, and writer, is the Founder and Artistic Director of AfroSolo Arts Festival. For the past twenty-three years he has produced the award winning and critically acclaimed Festival in San Francisco, presenting over one-hundred solo artists.  He has also produced jazz concerts, organized community health fairs, hosted forums and conducted numerous workshops.   

In 2014 he created the Project Empowerment: The Audacity to Succeed-Young Black Men and Boy Soaring Into the Future, the mission being to support this population successfully transcend youth to adulthood. He is also in the process of editing an anthology of letters from mature Black men to young Black men and boys, and creating a toolkit designed to assist young people survive encounters with the police.