Cheri Stokes

Cheri Stokes will be in residence February 14-21, 2024.

With sixteen years of experience in the field of Dance Education, Cheri L. Stokes received her B.A. in Dance Studies with a K-12 North Carolina Teaching Licensure from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her early career in the field of dance began as a Dance Educator at Penn-Griffin School for the Arts in High Point, NC (2005) teaching dance to grades 6-12. Upon receiving her M.F.A. in Choreography and Performance from The Florida State University (2017), Cheri has gained  opportunities to guest teach and choreograph works at colleges and universities around the nation. Her artistic and teaching practice includes West African Dance forms, Contemporary, Afro- Contemporary, Dancehall, and Hip-Hop.

Cheri L. Stokes, Brooklyn, NY homegrown, received her M.F.A. in Choreography and Performance from The Florida State University. She received her B.A. in Dance Studies with a K-12 North Carolina Dance Teaching Licensure from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.  Her performance background spans the genres of West African, Afro-Contemporary, Contemporary and Hip-Hop dance forms. Her choreographic research examines the ways in which facets of social vernacular dance forms, specifically Hip-Hop and Dancehall, have influenced her contemporary practice and art making.

Additionally, Cheri’s expertise includes over ten years of dance education and over five years of arts administration. She has had the pleasure of rehearsal assisting notable choreographers such as Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Okwui Okpokwasili (MANCC Residency). Presently, Cheri is a part of the Urban Bush Women (UBW) family serving as the Associate Producer of Special Projects and is an inaugural fellow of UBW’s Choreographic Center Initiative Producing Program (CCI 2.0).

Since 2018, Cheri's artistic project entitled, “The Living Room Series”, has served as an intimate works in progress showing for New York City based performance artists, which she co-curates with her artistic collaborator Love Muwwakkil. She has been a guest teaching artist at The Florida State University, Austin Peay State University, and a guest choreographer at Elon University. An excerpt of her latest work, DA Block was featured in the MODarts Collective Thread Festival in March (2021).