About

Vo Vera [he/they] lives inside a macrocosm of creative experimentation and intentionality. He is a multidisciplinary movement artist with over two decades of experience as self-trained street dancer and instructor. Inspired by indigenous traditions, practices, and knowledges, he seeks to identify colonization and implement indigeneity by creating the platforms that inspire social change and serve this intention in a good way. Vo Vera thrives on traveling, collaborating in artistic spaces, and engaging with local community everywhere he goes. Independently and alongside his street arts collective, The Sacred G’s, he has spoken at conferences, and taught workshops and performed at events and festivals across the country. Between The G’s and his other endeavors, they have received over 20 grants since 2020, and produced many cross-community arts and culture events, including performances, competitions, and social gatherings.

In his heart is a special place for inspiring the next generations to become talented artists and good humans. Thus, Vo Vera spent a decade performing, choreographing, and creating curriculum for youth development organization The Be Kind People Project. He currently works with Free Arts AZ, which uses the arts and mentorship to transcend juvenile trauma into resilience. Another current collaboration Vo Vera has been blessed with since 2019 is with Los Angeles-based contemporary dance icon Jacob Jonas The Company as a dancer and grant writer.

Vo Vera holds a Masters of Fine Arts in Dance from Arizona State University (ASU). As an educator, he loves to teach about Hip Hop dance and history, Breaking and street dance concepts, creative movement practices, yoga, and grant writing. His academic research was in developing and codifying the street dance technique Framing, where he produced several work-in-progresses, a bound document, and over 100 movement patterns. He has served as Faculty Associate at ASU, and as Faculty Adjunct at Mesa Community College, Glendale Community College, Chandler-Gilbert Community College, Scottsdale Community College, and Estrella Mountain Community College. He has guest taught for Paradise Valley Community College, Grand Canyon University, and Southern Utah University.

In 2019 Vo Vera founded Bodyknots & Balances to establish and brand the language for a phenomenon that he and contortion-level movement artists around the world have been exploring. In his experimental multidisciplinary work, Vo Vera has developed photography and fine art prints by intersects his unique body shapes with photography, environmental psychology, and poetry to generate powerful multimedia imagery. He is currently in the early stages of developing a photo-poetry book that speaks to his life’s journey, from injury to recovery, overcoming a motorcycle accident that handicapped him for some time, and had doctors declaring he would never dance again.