grace shinhae jun 전 신 혜
grace shinhae jun 전 신 혜 Ph.D./MFA is a mother, wife, educator, and dancemaker. With over 30 years of experience, her research and artistic practices are grounded in Hip Hop culture and cross cultural collaborations that honor her ancestral lineage.
In 2001, she founded bkSOUL a collective of artists that merge together movement, spoken word poetry, and live music. Their work has been presented in Trolley Dances, WOW Festival, Live Arts Festival, Philadelphia Fringe Festival, Brooklyn Dumbo Arts Festival, San Diego International Fringe Festival, Link’s Hall in Chicago, and Lawrence University. grace has also choreographed and created for numerous staged plays, most notably for Will Power’s “The Seven” at Occidental College and recently in Shattered Dreams by UCSD MFA playwright Mack Lawrence. In addition to bkSOUL, she has performed with tammy l. Wong (Singapore), Monica Bill Barnes (NYC), Allyson Green, Wendy Rogers, Patricia Rincon, Jean Isaacs, Gabe Masson, Sean Curran, holly johnston, and with CONTRA-TIEMPO. grace also co-founded the Asian Solidarity Collective (2016), has collaborated with Street Dance Activism/Global Dance Meditation, and currently co-directs the Asian American Dance Festival in San Diego.
Her scholarship includes publications in the Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Dance Studies, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music Journal, and is forthcoming in the Applied Theatre and Racial Justice: Care, Community, Change anthology. She is the co-editor for Dance Studies Association’s 2022 Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies “Cyber-Rock: A Virtual Hip Hop Listening Cypher” and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Dance Studies Association. She has presented her research at numerous academic conferences and has been invited to guest speak at Duke University, Ohlone University, Purdue University, University of San Diego, Cal State Long Beach, and co-organized the 2025 Show & Prove Hip Hop Studies Conference.
grace received her BA from UC San Diego, MFA from Sarah Lawrence College (New York). and PhD in Drama and Theatre from UC San Diego/UC Irvine. She is an Assistant Professor of Dance at San Diego City College, where she also serves on the Sankofa Social Justice & Education Conference committee, serves as a teaching artist with transcenDANCE Youth Arts, and has been a continuing lecturer at UC San Diego, where she was the recipient of the 2022/2023 Barbara and Paul Saltman Distinguished Teaching Award.
Ant Black
Anthony Blacksher Ph.D. (Ant Black) has helped bring the San Diego poetry community to national prominence. He is one of the founders of Collective Purpose and the open-mic Elevated. A five-time member of the San Diego Poetry Slam Team he led the 2013 team to final stage at the National Poetry Slam. He is a professor of sociology at San Bernardino Valley College and a Ph.D. candidate in Cultural Studies at Claremont Graduate University. His research interests include race and ethnicity, Black studies, popular culture, and the representation of spoken word poetry in commercial media. He is the associate publisher for the San Diego Poetry Annual and facilitates the blog sociooetix.org which uses spoken word poetry to illustrate sociological themes.
Miesha Rice
Miesha “Ocean” Rice is a mother, daughter, sister, and all things WOMAN. She has a B.A. and M. A. in English Literature and Liberal Studies and has been writing and performing original and collaborative works for over 15 years. She started traveling, teaching and performing poetry with the Concrete Generation, based in Charlotte, NC in 2005 where she was given the stage name: Ocean. She has released three spoken-word albums, placed 4th at the Women of the World National poetry slam in 2009, and has competed nationally with the two-time National Poetry Slam champions, SlamCharlotte and the 2011 Elevated! San Diego Slam Team. She was welcomed into the synergy of bkSOUL, a collective of artists for social justice advocacy in 2014, where she continues to practice her belief that the stage is a sanctuary and a vessel for expression. Her opportunities for collaboration and teaching has been the most dynamic form of maintaining creativity. “I am always learning, and I love sharing and exchanging knowledge and experiences.”
Kendrick Dial
Kendrick Dial is a Navy veteran and artist with a purpose. Utilizing the mediums of theatre, poetry and music, he continues to find ways to balance his mediums artistic expression with meaningful messages understanding self-love, healthy relationships and social justice. He attended SDSU where he received his BA in Africana Studies/Psychology in 2010 and graduated in 2013 from USC with his MSW. His last productions include Blacktop Sky (IARP Theatre) and Ordinary Magic with Gill Sotu. He currently works as an EOPS counselor at City College, a trainer with the National Conflict Resolution Center, the Culturally Responsive Academy, and a coach the Strengths Finder Consultant Group.
Jesse Mills
Jesse Mills, Ph.D. has been writing and playing music since age 11. His musical influences range from Jimi Hendrix to Nina Simone, Jeff Buckley to Maxwell, B. B. King to Meshuggah, Guns N Roses to Public Enemy. Jesse has sung with the New England Conservatory Gospel Choir, the Coro Alegro Italian folk choir (Santa Rosa, CA), and has performed solo and in ensemble settings in schools and coffee shops in Northern and Southern California. At the University of San Diego, he is currently Chair of the Ethnic Studies Department and the Humanities Center Chair of Collaborative Research. Jesse proudly serves the community as an artist, activist, and scholar, organizing with the taxi union UTWSD, social equity funders SECF, and Black Lives Matter San Diego. He has degrees in Philosophy, African American Studies and Ethnic Studies, and his research, teaching, and community work challenge racism, imperialism, and injustice to contribute to collective social transformation.
Shivon Carreño
Shivon Carreño is a trained jazz vocalist from San Diego and has been singing professionally since the age of 11. Shivon has performed at venues such as the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee and The San Diego Dixieland Jazz festival, and Spreckels Theater to name a few. Shivon joined bkSOUL in 2014 and has had the honor of performing in Love H.E.R, Illegible, and The Lioness at the San Diego International Fringe Festival, Live Arts Festival, and the Social Justice Education Conference at San Diego City College. When not singing, Shivon is finishing her BS in Public Health, advocating for autistic people, providing coaching and education for parents of autistic children to ensure their needs are met in and out of school, creating a youth choir, tirelessly advocating for her patients at UC San Diego, and caring for her two sons, dog, and cat.