FILMMAKER. SCHOLAR. PERFORMER.
Originally from North Carolina, Benae is a Philly based filmmaker and scholar interested in the use of the body through movement and rhythm as a dismantling and destabilizing tool. As a filmmaker, she is interested in stories that underscore the complexity of human emotion and the use of ritual and community as black cultural markers of hope and what is possible. Her desire to engage ritual and ethical kinship within the Black community led her to earn a Bachelor of Arts from Colgate University, a Master of Arts from Yale University, and a PhD in Social Ethics from Boston University.
Benae’s experience as a tap dancer, using movement, rhythm, and space as tools to sculpt sound are integral to her perspective as a filmmaker, specifically her pacing, blocking, and themes within her screenplays. Currently, she is a company member with Subject:Matter, a Boston-based tap dance company under the direction of Ian Berg. Benae has performed with Subject:Matter at the Southern Vermont Dance Festival, Joe’s Pub in New York City, and the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston. Before joining Subject:Matter, Benae danced with the internationally acclaimed North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble (NCYTE) under the direction of Gene Medler.
Her artistic work and scholarship examine the extraordinary and spectacular in the everyday, focusing on the way that the mundane can be sacred ritual. Benae’s work is informed by things that speak to black, Southern culture, like the importance of history, genealogical connection with nature, the importance of community, and the refusal to waste any resource. These truths find their way into her work and are as inseparable as the realities of oppression and creativity in Southern culture.
Her academic work is in religion, ethics, and culture, specifically black cultural expressions that employ ritual and reflect moral imagination. She has written work exploring ethics and how it connects to tap dance, fashion, and more. At its core, all of Benae’s work examines intersectional identity and how the seemingly mundane resists, unmakes, and undoes oppressive systems. Through her scholarship, she locates her own clear artistic voice and uses the research and synthesis skills from academia to write blackness back into historical and artistic discourse.