Ebony Golden

Ebony Noelle Golden is a city-born, southern Black woman. She is a descendant of self-emancipated sharecroppers who migrated from rural east Texas and Louisiana to Ft. Worth, Dallas, Houston, and Los Angeles for jobs and university.  She works as a theatrical ceremonialist, culture worker, public scholar, and entrepreneur who wields ecowomanist and Black feminist practices– often invoking messy, magical, and medicinal methods to support movements for cultural wellness and social justice. Since 2009, Ebony has worked with more than 100 justice-oriented organizations through her consulting practice, Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative. In 2020, she established Jupiter Performance Studio as a space to practice and perform Black diasporic, spiritual, and cultural traditions. Her approach to community arts, consulting, teaching, and cultural organizing is steeped in the practices of Black women, activism, and experimental performance as well as the socio-spiritual power that resides in the communities with which she organizes.

Golden’s performance art oeuvre venerates the everyday rituals of southern Black folks, as witnessed in the site-specific ceremonies and visual poems she devises, choreographs, and directs. Golden’s work embodies the power of art and collaboration as drivers of the movement for liberation.  Ebony’s work has been profiled by the New York Times and National Endowment for the Arts and has been commissioned by National Black Theatre, The Shed, Weeksville Heritage Center, Apollo Theater, and Double Edge Theatre. Golden is an esteemed alumna of Cave Canem, Yaddo, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, MacDowell, and Hi-Arts. Additionally, she has received Creative Capital, National Theater Project, and Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s Transformational Practice Awards.  

Ebony’s recent work includes The Divining, The Keeping, specter of sunlight// (an evening-length dance ritual), and 79 Moons (a performance film).  Her current work, again, the watercarriers, the next iteration of In The Name of the M/other Tree, uplifts the wisdom, healing practices and earth-affirming rituals of Black women and femme healers, the primordial mothers described in Yoruba cosmology as the Iyaamí, and her own maternal lineage. The work is slated for a 2025 tour. 

Golden holds degrees in poetry from Texas A & M University (B.A.) and American University (M.F.A.), and in Performance Studies ( M.A.) from New York University.  She has served as an entrepreneurship fellow at Princeton University, a visiting Associate Professor of Performance and Performance Studies in Pratt’s graduate program, and a visiting lecturer at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at New School, among other institutions. She is a proud member of the United Order of Tents-Diretha Tent #35, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, and serves on the board of directors for Double Edge Theatre.  Learn more about what Ebony is up to by visiting bettysdaughterarts.com, jupiterperformancestudio.co,m or via Instagram.

Photo Credit: Melisa Cardona