Grant Recipients Grants to Artists Dance 2026

Ogemdi Ude

Photo by Chidozie Ekwensi.

2026 Grants to Artists
Dance
Choreographer and Director
Born 1994, Queens, NY
Lives in Brooklyn, NY
She/Her
Additional Information
ogemdiude.com

Artist Statement

I am a performance and interdisciplinary artist embodying and honoring the experiences we are conditioned to expel—grief, confusion, failure. I take a corporeal approach to Black femme futures, mourning, and memory, refuting white hegemonic distancing from death and Western expectations of how to historicize Black stories. I integrate the disparate histories etched into my body: Afrobeat Nigerian parties in childhood; Atlanta pep rallies and football games in adolescence; postmodern dance training in college. I bring this physicality, alongside writing and visuals, into processes of reckoning with and rebuilding from loss.

- December 2025

Biography

Ogemdi Ude is a choreographer and director whose performances center Black femme grief, legacies, and futures. Her work engages the fleshiness of the Black femme body in motion as a site for enlivening lost peoples and histories. Across her practice, Ude investigates the necessity of losing, and how—in the midst of it—we attempt to make meaning from memory and show evidence of our relationship to the lost subject. "Black femmes are given to grief," as Ude writes, and her work emerges as an expression of gratitude for that inheritance.

Ude’s reckoning with grief, nostalgia, and impossibility within her practice sparked her study and performance of Black Southern majorette dance. Her work MAJOR, which premiered at Kampnagel’s International Summer Festival in Hamburg, Germany (2025) and had its U.S. premiere at New York Live Arts in New York, NY (2026), reclaims majorette dance—a form she trained in as a child but lost touch with after years of predominantly white dance training. MAJOR asks how one might reorganize the body to dance in the ways one was born into, inviting audiences to reckon with the pleasure of re-membering: stitching together memories of home and returning to a body that has come undone.

More broadly, Ude’s work foregrounds witnessing as an intimate and vulnerable practice. She asks that we trust in the navigation of gaps in one’s history and knowledge of a form, culture, or story, proposing that such navigation—rather than mastery—produces performances of value, tenderness, and risk.

Her other works include what wanting wanted with what wanting was, which premiered at The Kitchen, New York, NY (2024); Cameo, which premiered at Gibney, New York, NY (2023); I know exactly what you mean, which premiered at Danspace Project, New York, NY (2022); and Dig/Hear/Sing/--, which premiered at Abrons Arts Center, New York, NY (2022). Ude is also a contributing author to Watch Me in Dance History(s): Imagination as a Form of Study, edited by Thomas F. DeFrantz and Annie-B Parson, published by Dancing Foxes Press and Wesleyan University Press (2024).

Ude has been recognized by the Princess Grace Honoraria in Choreography from the Princess Grace Foundation (2025), an Artist Fellowship in Choreography from NYSCA/NYFA (2025), the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship from Jerome Foundation (2025), a Creative Research Grant from Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA) (2025), and an Artist Fellowship from the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (2024). Ude also received two Emergency Grants from FCA (2023, 2019).

Ude holds a B.A. from Princeton University (2016).

Ogemdi Ude is climbing a ladder that is built into the floor at The Kitchen. She is looking down with one foot and hand in the air. The light blue lighting in the room reflects on Ude’s white clothing and shoes, the ladder, the pipes, and the wall. Behind Ude, in the corners of the room, are a table with a black table cloth that features a small green plant and several candles glowing with a pink shade, a harp, several chairs spread throughout the room, lighting, and six windows with blackout curtains.

Performance still from what wanting wanted with what wanting was at The Kitchen, New York, NY, 2024. Performed by Ogemdi Ude. Photo by Cherylynn Tsushima, courtesy of The Kitchen.

Four dancers in mid-movement. In the left corner, one dancer lays face down on the ground. In the center of the image, another dancer straddles their knees while they sway to their left side, opening their mouth and closing their eyes. Behind them is an ethereal white sparkle coming from a light, which also reflects onto the entire room in white and blue hues. Behind them, also in the center, are two more dancers who are standing up and holding each other’s shoulders with their heads touching. In the background are several squares covered in a green texture that look similar to moss. The floor may or may not be marble, but appears to be one that is cold to the touch.

Performance still from MAJOR at New York Live Arts, New York, NY, 2026. Pictured: Junyla Silmon, song tucker, Jailyn Phillips-Wiley, and Chanel Stone. Photo by Maria Baranova, courtesy of New York Live Arts.

Runako Campbell and Selah Hampton stand with their hands to their sides, looking away and above the camera with lighting pointed towards them. They are both wearing all white and barefoot, between two projector screens displaying a previous moment of the performance in flipped views. The projector display to the left is tinted light blue, while the one to the right is a darker shade of blue. The ceiling is without lighting but the back of the room features bright yellow, red, and green lights.

Performance still from Cameo at Gibney Center, New York, NY, 2023. Pictured: Runako Campbell and Selah Hampton. Choreography by Ogemdi Ude. Photo by Elyse Mertz.

Ogemdi Ude, Symara Sarai, and Selah Hampton sitting on carpeted steps and talking to each other in a performance space. Each of them is holding a microphone and wearing white shoes, with one foot resting on a step above the other. Projected on the wall is light blue text that layers over itself. Some of the words that can be seen include “went to LA to dance at the Debbie”, “dance”, “is an”, “show and its a”, “to, “of you from”, “doing”, and “class”.

Performance still from I know exactly what you mean at Danspace Project, New York, NY, 2022. Performed by Ogemdi Ude, Symara Sarai, Selah Hampton. Photo by Ian Douglas, courtesy of Danspace Project.

Ogemdi Ude stands in the middle of the room with her hands sustained in the air. She is surrounded by shiny balloons spread throughout the floor, which reflect the white lighting coming from above, as well as the yellow, pink, and blue lighting that encloses the dance floor. Ude is wearing a flowy baby-doll long sleeve dress, which matches the colors of the balloons. Audience members are behind her and to her sides, gazing towards her. Everyone in the audience is wearing a mask.

Performance still from Sing at Abrons Arts Center, New York, NY, 2022. Performed by Ogemdi Ude. Photo by Maria Baranova.

Excerpt from MAJOR at Kampnagel, Hamburg, Germany, 2025. Performed by Selah Hampton, song tucker, Chanel Stone, Kayla Farrish, Junyla Silmon, and Jailyn Phillips-Wiley. Videography by Lars Zimmerman.

Excerpt from I know exactly what you mean at Danspace Project, New York, NY, 2022. Performed by Ogemdi Ude, Symara Sarai, and Selah Hampton. Videography by lex moh.