Kesha McKey - Director

Kesha McKey, Artistic Director of KMDP is a choreographer, educator and performing artist in New Orleans. After graduating from NOCCA she received her BS from Xavier University of LA and her MFA in Dance Performance from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the founding Artistic Director and Choreographer of KM Dance Project and has directed and produced concerts such as Moving Through, Vessels, Taken and Distorted Images for which she received a Big Easy Classical Arts Award as well as several nominations. Kesha has also had the honor of presenting choreographic works for the 2018 Urban Bush Women Summer leadership Institute Opening Performance, 2018 Women in Dance Conference at New York University, the Packard Foundation 2018 Summit, Junebug Production’s Power of the Black Feminine, Alternate Roots’ 2016 Roots Week, the Big Bang Educational Conference, the Courageous Conversations Summit, the Guantanamo Public Memory Project and the Dance for Social Change Festival. Kesha is one of three recipients of the 2018 Contemporary Arts Center Artist Residency, a 2016 Dancing While Black Choreographic Fellow and a scholarship recipient of 2016 Jacob’s Pillow Improv Traditions and Innovation. She was one of two 2015 recipients of The Distillery Artist Residency Fellowship at the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans where she began developing her work Boschimanne: living curiosities, which was selected and performed at the 2016 Peridance Capezio Center APAP Showcase in New York City.

Kesha has also directed multi-disciplinary productions such as the Vagina Monologues and The Origins of Life on Earth with Ashé Cultural Arts Center and has been a featured performing artist and rehearsal director for New Orleans dance and theatre companies such as Lula Elzy Dance Theatre, Junebug Productions, Kumbuka African Drum and Dance Collective, Chard Gonzalez Dance Theatre, Prophecy Dance Company, and Exhibit Dance Collective. She has studied dance at various institutions in New Orleans as well as received scholarships to study at The Urban Bush Women Summer Leadership Institute, Bates Dance Festival, Jacob’s Pillow, The Broadway Dance Center, and Celebration Barn Theater. She has had the wonderful honor and opportunity to work closely and study with well renown artists such as Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Chuck Davis, Richard Gonzales, Lynn Simonson, and Anne Reinking. She has served as a faculty member of the Urban Bush Women Summer Leadership Institute since 2011 and is currently a dance educator at NOCCA. Kesha continues to nourish her artistic talents and grow as an accomplished performer and educator as she teaches, choreographs and performs throughout the country.