Dyane Harvey-Salaam is a performing artist, dance educator, movement director, and founding member/assistant to director Abdel R. Salaam of Forces of Nature Dance Theatre Company. In 2021, this Harlem-based company will celebrate 40 years with a continuing mission of audience empowerment and the preservation of this planet. Harvey and husband Abdel Salaam received the 2019 Spirit Award from the Fort Greene Brooklyn Juneteenth Arts Festival. She is a 2019 BESSIE nominee and earned the 2017 BESSIE AWARD, the Woman of Distinction Award (given by the Harlem Arts Alliance and the Harlem Chamber of Commerce), the Walk A Mile In Her Shoes Award (given by the Hempstead African-American Museum), the Dance for Life Award (from Better Family Life, a cultural arts/social empowerment organization in St. Louis, Missouri), two AUDELCO Awards, actress in a musical (Dunbar) and choreography (The Great Men of Gospel), the Monarch Merit Award, the Black Theatre Award for contributions to the theatre community, and the Goddesses and Gurus Award. In early 2020, the Lincoln Center Library Dance Division paid tribute to her long career including her participation in the “Oral History Project”, and the afternoon video sharing program “The Dance Historian Is In”. A chronicle of experiences of improvised performance collaborations, with Ntozake Shange, “Making Movement as an Act of Listening, Riding with The Muse” , has been published for the College Language Association Journal’s Shange Special Issue. She has performed as principal soloist with the Eleo Pomare Dance Company for approximately 50 years, having toured the United States, Italy, Australia and Lagos, Nigeria (as U.S. representative in F.E.S.T.A.C.-the Second Black and African Festival of Art and Culture). Mr. Pomare is responsible for shaping her approach to movement and theatricality in expression of relevant art. In 2009 she reconstructed two of his iconic solos and offered a presentation on his life as part of “The Black Dance Project” at the Centre National de la Danse in Paris. Dyane has performed with other companies including Tony Award Winning George Faison’s Universal Dance Experience, the Walter Nicks’ Dance Theatre, Otis Sallid’s New Art Ensemble, Joan Miller’s Dance Players, internationally recognized Dance Brazil and the Trinidad Repertory Dance Theatre, to name a few. Theatre, film and television credits include: “Free to Dance” (PBS Special), “The Wiz”, and “Timbuktu!” “Spell #7”, “Ailey Celebrates Ellington” (CBS Special), and the Paris Company of “Your Arms Too Short To Box With God” at the Mogador Theatre. Most recently she served as movement director/choreographer for the Classical Stage Company (director Timothy Douglas), Blackberry Productions (director Jeffery Thompson), The Acting Company, NYU’s Graduate Acting Program (director Reggie Montgomery), Ramapo College (director Shona Tucker), for the University of Florida at Gainesville and the Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina (writer Ntozake Shange- director Dr. Mikell Pinkney). Previously a dance instructor at Borough of Manhattan Community College and Lehman College, she created courses to enhance technique and hone the craft of dance production. For more than 20 years she has served as educator at both Princeton and Hofstra Universities developing courses that inspire, enlighten and empower students in the creative arts and humanities. Her love of the Pilates System as introduced to her by Master Teacher Judy Covan resulted in the creation of Ma’at Pilates, a system of exercise crafted to balance the physical, spiritual and mental aspects of the body-temple through a focus on the breath as a conduit to strengthen and stretch. Ase to those who came before.