WHo IS Bashi Arts?
Our History
Bashi Arts is named after the late Nygiar Theodore Bashi Jordan, the "chief" of his Brooklyn tribe. The original forerunner, or Bashi, was like many talented kids from South Brooklyn who lacked the access to the necessary resources to develop, produce, and present their work. Despite these challenges, he still found the tenacity to create and give back to his community through his dedication to the arts.
Continuing in this legacy through their work as independent artists, co-founders Rachel DeForrest Repinz and Enya-Kalia Jordan recognized a sustained and ongoing need for high-quality dance programs and resources in South Brooklyn, specifically for Disabled and Black dancers. Committed to providing equity-driven, dance-based research, pedagogy, and performance programs, they have led collaborative projects for nearly a decade centered on expanding meaningful access for young artists, presenting this work nationally and internationally since 2018.
Bashi Arts, Inc. was formalized as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in 2025.
THE BASHI TEAM
Dr. Enya-Kalia Jordan, MFA, PhD
Co-Founder, Board of Directors
Dr. Enya-Kalia Jordan (she/her) is a choreographer, dance studies scholar, and culture curator from Brooklyn, New York. She received a BA in Arts & Letters Dance from Buffalo State University and MFA from Temple University in choreography and performance. In 2023, she was named an “Artistic Visionary,” honored as Temple University’s 30 under 30 distinguished Alumna. She will receive her doctorate in Dance from Texas Woman’s University in spring 2026. She is also the proud founder and artistic director of Enya Kalia Creations a movement-based artistic collective established in 2016. Enya Kalia Creations is 2023-25 recipient of the BAX & CUNY Dance Initiative Arts & Social Justice Residency at Brooklyn College.
She has performed and presented choreography at iconic venues such as Conwell Dance Theater, BAAD! Ass Women in Dance Festival, La MaMa EstroGenius Festival, Bates Dance Festival, Brooklyn Art Haus, Movement Research at Judson Church, Klienhans Music Hall, United Nations Headquarters, and many more. She has previously served as faculty at the University of Mount Saint Vincent, SUNY Erie Community College, and the University of Virginia. Enya-Kalia has also been a teaching artist with the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Abrons Center for the Arts, Notes in Motion, Dancewave, and many other distinguished cultural institutions across the East Coast. She has presented social justice research on interdisciplinary performance and restorative community practices at numerous conferences and festivals. Highlights include the Collegium of African Diasporic Dance hosted by Duke University, the International Association of Blacks in Dance, the Decolonizing Tertiary Dance Education Conference hosted by Stockholm University, and the Decolonizing Bodies: Biennial International Dance Conference hosted by the University of the West Indies. she has also conducted research in Tokyo, Japan; Guimaraes, Portugal; Amsterdam, Holland, Netherlands; and Paris, France.
Rachel Deforrest Repinz, MFA, PhD ABD
Co-Founder, Board of Directors
Rachel DeForrest Repinz (she/her) is a visually impaired multidisciplinary artist-scholar based in Brooklyn, NY. Rachel’s work is rooted in the postmodern tradition and disability aesthetic lineage, weaving together movement, text, time, and sound as primary modes of inquiry through a Disabled worldview. Engaging access as creative praxis, experimental approaches to audio description, and improvisational time-based performance practices, her work takes an experimental, embodied, approach to accessibility.
Rachel received a BA and MFA in Dance from SUNY Buffalo State University and Temple University, respectively, and is a current PhD in Dance candidate at Texas Woman’s University. She serves as the Advisor of Dance and Disability for the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO), and was awarded as a Dance/NYC ‘Disability. Dance. Artistry.’ Dance and Social Justice Fellow (2023). Rachel founded and artistically directs RACHEL:dancers (spoken as Rachel and Dancers), a multi-modal dance performance company, and co-directs Bashi Arts with Enya-Kalia Jordan. Rachel is on faculty in Temple University’s Dance Department, is an administrator for the Hunter College Dance Education programs, and serves as a Staff Writer and Editorial Board member for thINKingDANCE. Her artistic and scholarly work has been presented nationally and internationally. Some of her favorite venues include Judson Memorial Church (2025), La MaMa ETC (2024), Dixon Place (2024), the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (2024), Movement Research (2022), the University of the West Indies Barbados (2018), and the NDEO national conferences (2018, 2019, 2022, 2024). Rachel has worked with esteemed choreographers, including Merián Soto, Heidi Latsky, Sidra Bell, Abdur-Rahim Jackson, Dr. S. Ama Wray, Awilda Sterling-Duprey, Carlos R.A. Jones, and as a principal dancer for Enya Kalia Creations, among others.
Joy Guarino, MFA
Field Advisor for Dance Education, Board of Directors
Joy Guarino is the Director Emerita of Global Engagement and Professor Emerita of Dance at SUNY Buffalo State University. She received her MFA from Temple University and holds a K-12 Teaching Certificate in Dance and Social and Emotional Learning Specialist II in NYS. Working in higher education for the past thirty-five years, she orchestrates experiences that bring creative curricula and engaging opportunities, benefiting faculty, staff, students, and local, national, and international community organizations with the goal of forming meaningful partnerships and collaborations. In addition to the teaching and learning of dance technique and pedagogy, she impresses upon her students that a culture’s values are embodied in its dance forms and guides them to embrace dance as a conduit to cultural humility and an empathetic global perspective. Dedicated to providing this worldview for students, she developed a dance program at Buffalo State that centered on a civic and community engagement philosophy and advanced a curriculum that is taught through a decolonizing lens and rooted in JEDI principles. Joy guides students to fulfill their distinct aspirations and to pursue their desired career paths, while addressing societal priorities through service-learning, scholarly outreach projects, and choreography/performance. She views international experiences as a pathway to cultural awareness, civic engagement, and mutual respect. As a result, she embeds local and international service-learning partnerships into the curriculum and has led numerous short-term study abroad experiences with the goal of developing students as well-rounded individuals and enhancing their global proficiency.
As an advocate for the dance and the Child international (daCi) vision, every child has the right to dance…within a spirit of international understanding, she served on the daCi USA board of directors as a member at large, chair-elect, chair, and is currently serving as national representative and liaison to the international organization. Joy is committed to scholarship that advances research on dance education's connection to 21st century skills, critical thinking, community building, and all that makes us human. Joy continues to consult, present, and publish on her research in kinesthetic learning, global learning for all, service-learning, and developing dance students as active citizens nationally and internationally.