Kesha McKey is beginning her 18th year at NOCCA and has deep roots in NOCCA’s creative history, starting as an alum from the Dance Department, and later as a part of the Dance Faculty, the Dance Department Chair and currently as the Director of Arts. Kesha is a skilled performing artist, choreographer and educator born and raised in New Orleans and has served the New Orleans community as an art educator and culture bearer for over 25 years. She received her BS in Biology pre-med from Xavier University of LA and an MFA in Dance Performance from UW-Milwaukee. Kesha is the founding Artistic Director of KM Dance Project (KMDP), a dance-theater company that gives agency to the voices of Black dancers and choreographers in New Orleans, creates art that illuminates racial injustices, and celebrates African American culture, and the untold stories of Black people. Her most recent work, Raw Fruit, has received a 2022 NPN Development Fund Award, a 2021 NPN Creation Fund Award and a 2019 NEFA NDP Production Grant – being the first dance company in the state of Louisiana to receive this award. Kesha has had an extensive local and national performance career in dance, theater and musical theater performing with companies such as Urban Bush Women, Junebug Productions, Lula Elzy Dance Theatre, Kumbuka African Drum and Dance Collective, Chard Gonzalez Dance Theatre, Goat in the Road Theater Company, The NOLA Project, and Le Petit Theater. Her most recent awards include a 2022 Dance USA Fellowship, 2022 Urban Bush Women (UBW) Choreographic Center Initiative (CCI) Fellow 2.0 / UBW CCI 2019 Alum, a 2020 Contemporary Arts Center N.O. SweetArts Award, and a 2018/19 CAC Southern Crossings Artist Residency.