Kai Hazelwood is a queer African American cis woman who spent much of her formative years in the ballet world at institutions like The San Francisco Ballet School, Dance Theater of Harlem, Alvin Ailey, and the Kirov Ballet in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
This lived experience has made finding, understanding, and purging how white supremacy lives in the body a very personal mission. She now works as a dedicated dance educator, event producer, and public speaker raising the profile of bi+/queer and BIPOC community issues through art projects, events, and public speaking.
After completing her BFA at UCLA, where she began to hone her voice as an choreographer and arts agitator, Kai founded and serves as the artistic director of Good Trouble Makers. Inspired by the words of John Lewis, Good Trouble Makers are committed to making; making art, making room, making change, making good trouble. Good Trouble Makers are a genre expanding, practice-driven collaborative that is perpetually investigating what anti-racist and queer dance making, devising, teaching, and performing looks like. Their work has been covered extensively by the press including an op ed written by Kai appearing in The Advocate Magazine, a leading national LGBTQ publication.
Kai has produced events centering queer BIPOC for the LA Department of Cultural Affairs, and served on the steering committee for the Western Arts Alliance’s day celebrating Black Artists in LA. Kai is also an organizer of AmBi LA, an over 3,000 person strong social and support group for bi+ people. She has appeared in BuzzFeed videos and speaks at high schools and colleges about bi+ community issues. She choreographed the 2016 bi+ contingent of the LA Pride Parade featuring the cast of Crazy Ex Girlfriend.
After a contract with Axis Integrated Dance Company, and participating in numerous trainings with them, Kai began integrating accessible language into her teaching and collaborating with disabled artists including Alice Sheppard. Kai is now the Artistic Director of Downtown Dance & Movement, a fully accessible rehearsal and performance space in downtown LA.