Alysha Higgins is a dance artist and ethnologist, mother, yogi, doula, Fulbright scholar, and UC Berkeley alum. She studies dances of the African and Indian diaspora, including Classical Odissi and Afro-Caribbean dance. Her research focuses on Trinidad and Tobago, her mother’s homeland. During her 2013 Fulbright in Trinidad, she produced two documentary short films on dance, “Walking with the Ancestors: Orisha Dance for Education and Empowerment” and “All Ah We Is One,” and ongoing project that looks at the connections between African and Indian dance and culture in Trinidad. She has also studied Silvestre technique and Dances of the Orixas extensively in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil with Rosangela Silvestre and Vera Passos. She has performed in the US with various companies including Duniya Drum and Dance Company in SF, as well as in Trinidad for the play “The King and I.” She teaches Bollywood, Indian Contemporary, and Caribbean dance at various dance studios throughout California. Her current choreographies seek to explore how Afro- and Indo-Caribbean contemporary and spiritual dance practices live in the body.