Kenshaka Ali (Director/Multi-disciplinary artist/Educator) cut his artistic teeth during Harlem’s fabled Black Arts Movement where his aesthetic grew from revolutionary street theater to evolutionary theater of redemption and transformation. Former Artistic Director of Mind Builders Performing Arts Center, NY, Harambee Productions (Pittsburgh Public Theater), Empowered Vision, Ontario and presently proprietor of Coaching Greatness, Los Angeles, his directing style is rooted in assiduous textual analysis and the Stanislavski system’s notion of “spiritual realism,” while also being eclectic, celebratory and physical. Ritualistic in its incorporation of martial arts, yoga, metaphysics, African dance, jazz dance, and vocal arts, Kenshaka’s work seeks to inspire love and activate change. Utilizing minimalism and judicious use of silence, space, symbolism, and metaphor, he creates spectacles to shift sensorial perceptions and redefine worlds. Masterful at creating ensembles of unity, equality, justice, mutual respect , accountability and appreciation, his is a process of artful joy, discovery, discipline, and wonder; with the intent to facilitate moment to moment metamorphoses in both the artist and the spectator. Knowing how and when to "ask the right questions" is another strong suit.
Kenshaka has taught theater and devised and directed plays off and off-off Broadway and in over 15 colleges and universities in America and abroad. Truthful, forthright, steady, detail oriented and imaginative, he is the epitome of servant/leader whose greatest content is to SERVE the myriad creatives who make up a company and to champion the sanctity of excellence in artistic expression.
In his lifelong devotion to this calling, Kenshaka holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts, where he focused on the spiritual aspects of performance, an MA in Theater Directing with emphasis in dramaturgy, textual construction, devised and applied theater, and a BA in Transformative Theater from City University's Special Baccalaureate Program for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies., where he was mentored by the first two African American woman to direct on Broadway, Vinnette Carroll of the Urban Arts Theater (Don't Bother Me I Can't Cope) and Glenda Dickerson (Reggae). A devoted lifelong learner, he is a graduate of the Agape University of Transformational Studies and Leadership and serves as an Agape Licensed Spiritual Practitioner, dubbed "The Singing Sage". In this capacity, Kenshaka anchors peace, love, joy, beauty, compassion, wisdom and understanding in all his creative endeavors.
