Join us for a special performance by Black CHamoru (Guåhan) dancer-singer-scholar Ojeya Cruz Banks. Black in the Blue Pacific blends dance, storytelling and genealogy with live music, featuring Cruz Banks singing and speaking the words of the late world-renowned Pasifika Black poet Teresia Teaiwa. The piece activates Teaiwa's vision to weave connections between lineages of the Black Atlantic in the Pacific. The choreography traverses island ecology, the middle passage and the magnetic relationship between night sky, and ocean, and takes shape within and in response to the exhibition Whai Wāhi. This performance is presented in collaboration with Va’aomanū Pasifika—Pacific Studies at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.

The day prior to this event, Wednesday 4 March, Cruz Banks will be presenting the lecture: Portraits of Black Pacific Dance: What does Dr. Teresia Teaiwa, Parris Goebel and Beyoncé have to do with it?, at 2:10pm in the Hunter Building, lecture theatre HU323, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. All are welcome, visit the University website for directions.

 Dr. Ojeya Cruz Banks is a dancer-ethnographer-singer-mother-performance curator-educator informed by her African American-Pasifika CHamoru (Guåhan/Låguas) ancestral intelligence. Banks is an Associate Professor of Dance and Black Studies at Denison University, Ohio, USA, and a chair of the Department of Dance. For over a decade, she lived and worked in Aotearoa and developed an interest in Black Pacific dance. Cruz Banks is a member of the Gi Matan Guma, a coalition of CHamoru artist-researchers. Her 2025 collaboration Mareas/Tides at the Wexner Performing Arts Center was named best of dance in Columbus, Ohio and recently, she performed in Barbados and Brazil. Her forthcoming book is Indigenous and Diaspora Dance Evolution: Choreographies of the Black Pacific. Cruz Banks is a 2026 visiting scholar-artist of Va'aomanū Pasifika at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.