taisha paggett (She/\They)
Associate Professor 

taisha paggett (they/\she) is the continuation of Cheryl Yvone McGhee, Arveal Paggett Jr, and the relatives who’ve held her. paggett respectfully resides on the original gathering lands of the Cahuilla, Tongva, Luiseño, and Serrano, colonially called Riverside, CA. paggett’s research speaks from and beyond a black, queer, insider/outsider vantage, upholding dance, choreography, and its methodologies as something to break open–a lens and lung through which to engage ideas–specifically concerning questions of language, form, presence, and the terrain of racial trauma, grief, land longing, and manufactured identities.

paggett’s project’s have been presented at the Remai Modern (Saskatoon), Redcat, Hammer Museum; Commonwealth & Council; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, ICA Philadelphia; DiverseWorks (Houston); the Whitney Museum; Studio Museum in Harlem; Danspace at St Mark’s Church (New York); Defibrillator (Chicago); Gallery TPW (Toronto); the Audain Gallery (Vancouver), and their home, amongst other known and emergent venues. Additional recent project and research support has come from MacDowell, the Graham Foundation, MAP Fund, National Performance Network, Clockshop, Show Box LA, and the Headlands, among other institutions. paggett was the recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ Merce Cunningham Award in 2019 and is currently collaborating with Tara Aisha Willis and Jaime Shearn Coan on an artist book, taisha paggett: In the Horizontal Plane, to be published by Soberscove Press.

B.A. UC Santa Cruz Department of Art History
M.F.A. UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance