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Amina Olushola Heckstall, is a dancer and a cultural performing arts specialist with twenty-eight years of dance training and performance/ choreography experience. Local companies, since her beginnings at the age of three, have sought after Amina as a dancer and choreographer.
Amina Heckstall has a reputation as a “Young Master†in the African Dance Community. Ms. Heckstall is also known for being an African American dancer who can embody the essence of the ancestors of Africa within her movements and choreography.
Amina has been granted a Fellowship from The Sam And May Rudin Foundation for Community Service in Arts Education. She has also been awarded the Building Blocks Award, as well as the New Neighbors Award for her work with intergrating immigrants into their communities several times consecutively, using the arts. Amina has been recognized by "Vh1 Songwriter of the Year Contest", as a finalist in April 2006, in the Hip Hop category. It is her specialty, when working in her favorite environment of arts education, to intergrate Hip hop and African diasporic culture in to her lessons with the youth.
Amina was a freelance dance instructor and a guest artist with the all-Guinean "Tokounou All-Abilities Dance Company" (a company with able bodied and disabled African dancers and drummers) with whom she has done a six-week residency in Florida teaching dance to at-risk/ foster care children and performing June, July, and August 2002. In September of 2002 she went with Sidiki Conde (Director of Tokounou), Nikki Heckstall, and Bintu Camara (Of Les Percussions De Guinee) to Italy to perform in Rome and Grosseto for a organization of artists with disabilities, festival called, "La Farfala" (The Butterfly).
In October of 2002, Amina performed for the first time with the internationally known, all Guinea, African company Les Mervielle De Guinea African Ballet. She continues to perform with them when available, most recently in Boulder, Colorado August 2006.
In June of 2004, Amina did a 7-day concert production with M'Bemba Bangoura's, "G'Bassikolo Dancers And Drummers" in Toronto, Canada for Dance Dimensions.
In January/ February 2005 Amina traveled to Guinea with her Lead Drummer and friend, Fode Bangoura, to study with The Ballet of Matam, and other African Ballets in Conakry, Guinea West Africa.
During July 14th to 16th, 2005 Amina produced the first Annual African Dance and Drum Conference in Brooklyn, NY called, "Africa Meets African America Cultural Arts Festival".
July & August 2002, 2003, 2005, and 2006 film screenings for The African Film Festival featured performances by Les Merveilles De Guinee in Harlem and Brooklyn venues (guest artist, Amina Heckstall) and Ballet International Africans (at The Queens Museum of Art) throughout Queens, New York.
In her free time, Amina teaches children Jazz dance, African dance, song, drum, and folklore in various after school programs, dance schools, and community centers throughout New York City.This is what I do. Amina is a dancer, but more specifically: an African/ Contemporary dancer and choreographer. This is me. This is who I am. This is what I love to do. _______________________________________________________
***Those with children interested in dancing and training under Amina in her group "Modupue Kidz/ Youth African Performance Ensemble" (a children's branch to BIA)or BIA II (the teen branch of the company ages 13 to 16), please send an e-mail to [email protected] or visit www.myspace. com/modupuekidz. There are auditions coming up. Please go to Ballet International's website to find out when and where!CHECK OUT OUR UPDATED WEBSITE! WWW.BALLETINTLAFRICANS.COMHERE IS SOME FOOTAGE OF BIA DIRECTOR AMINA IN PERFORMANCE WITH MERVEILLE DE GUINEE IN 2002 AND A SEGMENT FROM A KWANZAA PRODUCTION IN 2005 W/ B.I.A.
HERE IS A SEGMENT FROM BIA'S 2005 CONCERT/ AFRICA MEETS AFRICAN AMERICA CULTURAL ARTS CONFERENCE...
