Maria Bauman-Morales (she, hers) is a Bessie-Award-winning, Brooklyn, NY-based, multi-disciplinary artist and community organizer from Jacksonville, FL. Bauman-Morales is also a sought-after facilitator and public speaker on the topics of social justice practices within performing arts, embodied and arts-based leadership development, and racial equity in the arts. She creates bold and honest artworks for her company MBDDance, based on physical and emotional power, insistence on equity, and fascination with intimacy. Bauman brings the same tenets to organizing to undo racism in the arts and beyond with ACRE (Artists Co-creating Real Equity), the grassroots organizing body she co-founded with Sarita Covington and Nathan Trice. In particular, Bauman’s site-responsive dance work centers the non-linear and linear stories and bodies of queer people of color in multiple ritual settings. She draws on her long study of English literature, capoeira, improvisation, dancing in living rooms and nightclubs, as well as concert dance classes to embody interconnectedness, joy, and tenacity. Currently, she is an Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center Fellow and a BRIClab resident artist. She has also been Community Action Artist in Residence at Gibney Dance, Artist in Residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and DiP Artist Resident under the direction of Eva Yaa Asantewaa. Bauman-Morales’s art has been celebrated both formally and informally. She won a 2017 Bessie Award for Outstanding Performance with Skeleton Architecture. She is currently one of five national Fellows with the Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center Initiative, as well as being a 2019-20 Gibney Dance in Process resident artist. She and her company were awarded a 2020 Dance Advance grant from Dance/NYC and a 2020 Brooklyn Arts Foundation creation grant. She was an Artist in Residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange from 2017 to 2019 and was also 2017 Community Action in Residence at Gibney Dance. Bauman-Morales is also a mentor with Queer l Art. Some of the best recognition she has gotten is from teenagers in New Haven’s Black and Brown Queer Camp who, upon seeing her dance exclaimed “Ooooooooo! She baaaad!“ In New York, Bauman-Morales’s work has been showcased at Harlem Stage, SummerStage NYC, Danspace at St. Mark's, BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center, Dixon Place, the Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts, WOW Café Theater, and more. Bauman-Morales and MBDance have also shared artworks across the U.S., in South Africa, and in Singapore.