Rafael Tillery is a Chicago-born, Brooklyn-based, dancer, choreographer, educator, and interdisciplinary performance artist who works across movement, image, drama, and ancestral memory. His creative research looks at improvisational performance practices as mystical, embodied strategies for survival, and a means through which to channel intergenerational knowledge from the past and future. He’s interested in how these practices can help individuals and communities process emotions together.

Rafael has been performing professionally and as a freelance dance artist for more than a decade. He has danced with the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company II, Shen Wei Dance Arts, and the Modern American Dance Company, and performed work by choreographers such as Bebe Miller, Ronald K. Brown, Ronen Koresh, Nejla Yatkin, and Joanna Kotze.

He has contributed to dance education as a Visiting Professor of Dance at Austin Peay State University, and as a director of dance at KIPP Liberation College Preparatory. His choreography has been presented at the American College Dance Association, the Tennessee Association of Dance, the Saint Louis Arts Alliance, and the Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts.

Rafael holds a B.A. in Theatre and Dance from Austin Peay State University and an M.F.A. in Dance and Choreography from Florida State University.

Instagram: @all.the_rara