light + beginnings=flowering/journey

-collaborator

Hailing from the Bayou City, Houston, TX, Ebony Noelle Golden is a cultural worker, artist, and creative director of Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative.  Ebony began her formal arts training at Welch Middle School where she studied dance and rhythmic gymnastics.  She began to choreograph for community events in high school and developed a love for poetry and performance. 

Fortified by faith and community, Ebony left Houston to undertake collegiate studies at Texas A & M University-College Station, as a scholarship recipient and Undergraduate Research Fellow in English Literature and Creative Writing.  As an undergrad, Ebony established herself as a performer, poet, and choreographer.  She served as a choreographer for the Young Performers Program at the Ensemble Theater in Houston, TX, taught Creative Writing at Project Row House, and danced as a company member with Fade to Black Dance Ensemble. 

Upon graduating, Ebony left Texas to pursue an M.F.A. in Poetry at American University in Washington, DC.  As a graduate student, Ebony performed in Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues, directed Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls, co-founded MoonSong Women's Performance Ensemble, and served as a teaching artist throughout Maryland, DC and Virginia. Her graduate thesis, jigaboo princess, has been published, in part, over the past five years. 

After her tenure in DC, Ebony transitioned to Durham, NC to teach.  She taught 4th and 6th grade, Adult Basic Education, English, African American Literature, and Creative Writing.  Ebony taught at Louisburg College and served as the Director of the Visiting Writers' Series.  She also taught at North Carolina Central University, Vance Granville Community College, and Warren County Medium Security Prison. 

While teaching, Ebony built relationships with local community and educational organizations including SpiritHouse-NC, Carolina African American Writing Collective, Mamisis of Ma’at, North Carolina A & T University, Voices of Our Nations, Healing With CAARE-Inc., Alternate Roots, Righteous AIM, UBUNTU, and BrokenBeautiful Press.  These relationships have grown dynamic in recent years as some of these organizations and individuals continue to collaborate with Betty’s Daughter.

Today, Ebony lives and works in New York, NY.  A recent graduate of New York University’s Performance Studies program, Ebony works as an arts consultant and community educator, specializing in grassroots arts and social justice programming.   

In recent years, Ebony's, projects have been generously supported by New York University, Atlantic Center for the Arts, SpiritHouse, The Ebony Foundation, North Carolina Humanities Council, Fund for Southern Communities, North Carolina A & T State University, Road Scholars Speaker's Bureau, Louisburg College, and several private donors. She has held residencies at Medgar Evers College, staged plays at IRT and Manhattan Theater Source, taught workshops at Brecht Forum and Space on White.

Bodies of work currently in development:

1.  “again the watercarriers”-a multi-media performance/publication project  exploring migration, loss, spirituality, and inter-generational healing.    

2.  “love is radical”- a documentary film about Gumbo YaYa/ or this is why we speak in tongues. www.iamnotaproject.wordpress.com

3.  “body ecology”- an inter-disciplinary, performing activism workbook exploring  social justice and transformation.

4.  “gumbo yaya/ or this is why we speak in tongues”- an inter-generational healing, reproductive justice, and creative arts circle for girls of the African diaspora.

5.  “I hear you breathing for me/ an embodied blues for Meagan Williams”-a multi-media performance/publication project exploring sexual violence.

 Please request a CV/artist resume for further credentials.