Marjani Forté-Saunders

Marjani Forté-Saunders (she/her) is a 2023 United States Artists Fellow, and recently celebrated her debut as choreographer for the New York Metropolitan Opera, El Niño. Marjani is a 3x Bessie award-winning choreographer, performer, teaching artist, and Mother.

She is an awardee of the prestigious Dance Magazine Harkness Award (2020) and the (2020) Foundation for Contemporary Arts Fellowship. She is an inaugural recipient of 3 distinguishing fellowships in dance, including the Urban Bush Women’s Choreographic Center Initiative Fellowship (2017), the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship (2018), and the DanceUSA Artist Fellowship (2019).

Saunders is a founding member of the collective 7NMS|Art x Power, alongside composer/sound designer Everett Saunders. 7NMS are recipients of the New Music USA Award (2021), the MAP Fund (2020), and the National Dance Project Production & Touring award for their latest work Prophet: The Order of the Lyricist. PROPHET recently had its Los Angeles premiere, at REDCAT ROY AND EDNA DISNEY/CALARTS THEATER (REDCAT), and was presented at the Museum of Contemporary Arts Chicago in May 2024. 

In 2021, she partnered with long-time collaborators, including composer Everett Saunders, choreographer D. Sabela Grimes, and filmmaker Meena Murugesan to create BLUEPRINT: the Memoirs of Unicorn Film. In 2022, Saunders made her off-broadway debut as choreographer of Dreaming Zenzile, written and starring Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist Somi Kakoma, and directed by Drama League Founder’s Award-winning artist Lileana Blain-Cruz. Commercially, Saunders has worked with Sundance Award-winning director Kahlil Joseph, Kevin Willmott, Kevin Everson, and Tracee Ellis Ross’ product launch video campaign for PATTERNS. 

Her latest work Garden of Unicorns - a Surrealist Ode to Blondell Cummings was an installation in The Getty Gardens as part of the Ever Present Series, curated by Kristin Juarez and Sarah Cooper. Saunders was a touring artist for five years, with Urban Bush Women Dance Company (UBW) and was the first artist (beyond Cummings) to perform Blondell Cumming’s American Masterpiece ‘Chicken Soup.' 

Humbly, she defines her work by its lineage stemming from culturally rich, vibrant, historic, loving, irreverent conjurers.

Artist photo credit: Angel Origgi