Circle O

From our Artistic Director & Founder Kayla Hamilton: My dad, Gene Hamilton, made his physical transition on February 14, 2026. He was the last person I spoke to before I boarded my flight to Nigeria on Thursday, February 12. In our final conversation, he told me how proud he was of me, how brave he thought I was and how much he loved watching my life unfold. I feel deeply grounded knowing those were some of the last words we shared. My father shaped me in quiet, lasting ways. When I was growing up, he would call me into the room to watch Serena and Venus Williams, Dominique Dawes, Surya Bonaly, and other Black women doing what they do. He wanted me to see “excellence” that looked like me. He wanted me to know what was possible. That stayed with me as a Black girl being raised in a small Texas town during that time It taught me to dream boldly, to take up space, and to believe I belonged in the world. I watched him grow from sometimes being unsure what to make of my bold spirit to admiring it fully, and we would smile and say, “This is what you helped create.” He loved the farm. He could sit for hours just watching the land, being still with it. He loved music. And he was one of the hardest working men I have ever known. I am now back from Nigeria and headed home to be with my family as we make arrangements. This is me practicing what I often speak about — learning to ask for what you/I need. If you would like to support us, prayers, meditations and etc for the Hamilton family mean so much right now. Other support is also appreciated — Venmo (Kayla-Hamilton-M), or gift cards for DoorDash, Uber Eats, or Grubhub are especially helpful during this time. I’m learning just how hard it can be to care for yourself while grieving. You can also send a text, DM, or email to check in without any expectation of a response. It would mean a lot just to know you are thinking of me and my family. Thank you for holding us with what you have the capacity for. And if you are a parent to anyone — or anything you love — tell and remind them you are proud of them. Those words can become the fuel that carries them forward long after you’re gone.

Learn about what Circle O offers: Performance Circle O, led by Founder and Artistic Director Kayla Hamilton, presents innovative performances rooted in disability artistry frameworks. These frameworks prioritize access as integral to the creative process, incorporating forms such as audio description, tactile exploration, and other modalities to enhance the experience for diverse audiences and participants. Education At Circle O, education is at the heart of what we do, and we strive to cultivate spaces where innovation, accessibility, and collaboration thrive. Circle O offers a rich array of educational programming designed to deepen engagement with access practices in the arts. Consulting Circle O partners with organizations and individuals to strategize and implement programming that centers disabled artistry and explores innovative ways of fostering connection. From initial planning to implementation, we bring curiosity and thoughtfulness to every stage of the process, helping to create programs that reflect shared values and transformative possibilities. Join us to discover more about our collaborative partners and the impactful work we’re building together. Let’s reimagine how we can be together—better. Learn more about what we do via our website: [Image description in the comments] #CircleO #Performance #Education #Consulting

Check out our origin story and where our name comes from! [Video Description: The opening scene is of a farm on a bright sunny day. There is a tractor. cattle trailer and bright green trees in the background where Kayla begins dancing. Throughout the entire video, Kayla’s family, friends, community members, and collaborators are being interviewed in different settings. Some locations throughout the film include; her first dance school, her grandparents home in Foreman, AR, and busy streets of New York City. At the end of the film, the Circle O logo appears in front of a montage of Kayla’s family photos. The logo has four white imperfect concentric circles that create a ripple. At the bottom it reads: Circle O Performance, Education, Consulting, & Community. The video ends with one of Kayla’s past performance and gently fades to black.] #CircleO #Performance #Consulting #Community #BlacknessAndDisability #OriginStory Transcript Part 1: Kayla: I do this work to liberate myself and others from systems, from ideas that don't inherently want them to thrive. Like this is my way of documenting stories of Black folks who did some bomb shit.  Kayla: While I'm dancing, I am like my fullest self. I am not thinking about a checklist. I'm not thinking about what I have to do right after it. Like the thinking is happening in the body.  Paloma: Kayla has a vision that is pushing in multiple directions and kind of creating some innovative ways to think about what dance can be and who can be making it.  Alice: The underpinnings of it, the layerings of it, the wow, the performance of it, I'm like, this person, yeah.  Elisabeth:The ways her work touches people and impacts people is important and people are missing out, if they don't get to experience that.  Phyllis: Good evening, good morning, good afternoon. I'm the oldest aunt of Kayla Hamilton. We grew up in Foreman, Arkansas.  Kayla: My grandfather was a principal of an all-Black school, and it's still named after him today.  Gene: Oscar Hamilton Elementary, and he was known as Big O and I was known as Little O.  [Rest of transcript in comments]

Welcome to ✨Talking Tuesdays✨ This is where I practice what I invite others into, which is a practice of vulnerability, and moving towards discomfort or being inside of it. For today, we are thinking about who gets centered in spaces that we create. And we are curious what will happen if we make those decisions consciously. Let us know below what would happen if we consciously and explicitly named who is being centered in the spaces we create? #Talking Tuesday #CircleO #Community [Video Description: a clip of Kayla, who is a dark-skinned Black woman with their locs down. They have red cat-eyed glasses and are wearing a black wrap around the neck headset and a blue sweater. Behind them is a white wall.] Transcript located in the comments.

Join us tomorrow at Movement Research @movementresearch for 📚 Studies Project: When Disabled Embodiment Is the Center: An Open Discussion on Pedagogy, Access, and the Body as Knowledge with Kayla Hamilton @kayla_hamilton903 Learn more and RSVP by visiting our website: /events/1433/ or click on the #linkinbio When: Tue, May 12, 2026 | 6:30-8pm Location: MR Studios, 122CC (150 First Avenue) Price: Donation-based ($5 suggested) | Spaces are limited and RSVP Required! Organized by Kayla Hamilton with participants Vanessa Hernandez Cruz, Anaís Gómez, and Parker Ramirez. **Please note: Masking will be required for this event. Masks will be available at the door.** About the event: What happens when disabled embodiment isn’t pushed to the edges, but becomes the starting point? This open discussion invites artists, educators, and practitioners to come together and talk about disabled ways of moving, sensing, adapting, and knowing as powerful ways of teaching and learning. Instead of treating access as something extra, we’ll explore how disabled embodiment can shape how spaces, practices, and classrooms are designed in the first place. This is a space for sharing experiences and reflecting together on what changes when we lead from lived experience rather than fixed rules or assumptions. About the artist: Access. Movement. Play. (A.M.P.) Residency Director Kayla Hamilton is a Leo Sun with Aquarius Rising and Moon, which means she’s always speaking in draft, dreaming big, and sometimes confusing people mid-sentence. A Bronx-based choreographer, educator, and Bessie Award-winning artist, Kayla loves the WNBA (NY Liberty + Indiana Fever fan), protein coffee, and self-help TikTok’s. She grew up in Texarkana, TX, the oldest child and only daughter in a CME church family, and spent 12 years as a NYC public school special ed teacher before striking out to build her own path. Image Description in comments

Meet Taja! @tajawillxo #HowWeMove #EmbracedBody #CircleO #DisabledArtist . . . [Image Descriptions: Slide 1: Red background with dark purple ribbon in center-right. Headshot of Taja Will,a non-binary femme with cinnamon toned skin gazes up into the camera with a soft presence. Their long hair is bunned on the top of their head and they have dark brown bangs streaked with silver. They have adorned themself with gold nose piercings and statement earring that reach from their ears down past their shoulders, their skin is artfully tattooed and they are wearing a white silver tanktop delightfully contrasting deep red lipstick. Photo Credit: Isabel Fajardo. With a smaller pic of them in the lower right corner, a bright yellow chair sits saturated in beams of bright light, light layered in through a window in distinct diagonal panels. Taja balances upside down on the ground next to the chair, they are on their back with a slight spiral in their legs which float up the wall as they reach an arm out, their balance almost seems like an illusion. White text above reads “HOW WE MOVE ARTIST”, and below reads “TAJA WILL (they/them)”. Photo Credit: Zoe Prinds-Flash, courtesy of Tence Magazine. Slide 2: Taja Will (they/them) is a non-binary, chronically ill, queer, Latinx (Chilean) adoptee. They are a performer, choreographer, somatic therapist, consultant and Healing Justice practitioner based in Mni Sota Makoce, on the ancestral lands of the Dakota and Anishinaabe. Taja’s approach integrates improvisation, somatic modalities, text and vocals in contemporary performance. Their aesthetic is one of spontaneity, bold choice making, sonic and kinetic partnership and the ability to move in relationship to risk and intimacy. Will’s artistic work explores visceral connections to current socio-cultural realities through a blend of ritual, dense multi-layered worldbuilding and everyday magic. More ID in comments.

Join us on Saturday!! How Do We Move in Public? Saturday, May 9, 2026, 4:00-7:00 PM at The Hub, Bronx, NY RSVP requested (link in SPCUNY’s bio) Announcing the second program in the @socialpracticecuny 2026 series How Do We ___________ in Public?: a cycle of four free experimental events responding to contemporary crises shaping the cultural field, including the defunding and targeting of public institutions and the erosion of shared civic space. This second program in the series is partnered with @baadbronx BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance during the Boogie Down Dance Series. Organized by @interiorbeautysalon Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel, this event brings together dancers/choreographers with connections to the Bronx to generate movement-based actions in public spaces in the South Bronx: @argeliarossana Argelia Arreola (with support from Pepatián: Bronx Arts ColLABorative), @larokafella Ana ‘Rokafella’ García, @angelaspulse Paloma McGregor/Angela’s Pulse, and @alethea_pace Alethea Pace. Responding to escalating surveillance, policing, and state violence, particularly the terrorization of Black and Brown communities under ongoing ICE raids, the program advances movement as a counter-response to neglect, with care, and shared imagination, asking how bodies navigate, reshape, and reclaim urban space under conditions of threat. This program will activate several points along 3rd Avenue and 149th Street, a major cultural crossroads at the heart of the South Bronx called The Hub, and is funded by the Mellon Foundation and the Eugene M. Lang Foundation. Photo 2: Alethea Pace by Whitney Browne Photo 3: Paloma McGregor/Angela’s Pulse, Building a Better Fishtrap (Harlem), 2015, by Whitney Browne Photo 4: Ana “Rokafella” García, Full Circle Souljahs, 2016, by Ali Riojas Photo 5: Argelia Arreola, ACUSTIKORP, courtesy the artist [image Descriptions in comments]

Meet foster! @blackintimacypractice #HowWeMove #EmbracedBody #CircleO #DisabledArtist . . . [Image Descriptions: Slide 1: Dark purple background with red ribbon in center-right. White text above reads “HOW WE MOVE ARTIST”, and below reads “foster weems (she/they)”. foster, a fat lightskinned black person, sits in the foreground under a red-orange light. they are sitting sideways in a leather chair and their arm is draped over the chair back causing their right hand to rest in front of them at chest height; a bunny tattoo is visible on their right wrist. they are wearing a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up in an exacted cuffed. the shirt reads "black trans children" in white lettering that is stretching and beginning to peel in places. the shirt is cropped, revealing their tattooed belly rolls. their round face dons a light mustache, a double chin with a patchy light beard, clear cat eye framed glasses and a hoop in their right nostril. their turquoise locks drape over their right shoulder. they also have bangs cut above their temple. in the background of the photo, the leaves of a snake plant are visible, but blurry and through the window, bare trees, an evergreen and snow (on the ground) are visible. Smaller pic of foster, a fat lightskinned black person in the foreground. Their arms are crossed in an “x” in cover their chest and most of their face. There is a tattoo on her outer forearm that reads “paint it black. call it god.” in courier font. Her right eye and some of her locs are visible from behind her hands. They stand before a background of a white wall with neatly-arranged paintings of non-descript figures in pastels. More IDs in comments.

Meet DJ! @davianrobinson92 #HowWeMove #EmbracedBody #CircleO #DisabledArtist . . . [Image Descriptions: Slide 1: Red background with dark purple ribbon in center-right. Headshot of DJ Robinson with a smaller image of him in the lower right corner. White text above reads “HOW WE MOVE ARTIST”, and below reads “DJ ROBINSON (he/him)”. The large image is a headshot of DJ, a smiling man facing slightly toward the camera against a soft, neutral beige background. He is wearing a bright red knit sweater with a ribbed texture. His hair is closely cropped, and he has a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee. His expression is warm and confident, with a broad smile showing his teeth. One of his eyes appears clear while the other appears cloudy, suggesting visual impairment. The lighting is soft and even, highlighting his facial features and creating a polished, approachable portrait. The overall tone of the image is friendly, professional, and welcoming. In the small image, two dancers move dynamically in a bright indoor performance space. In the foreground, DJ is in a silver vest and dark pants extending both arms outward with intensity, torso pitched forward. Behind them, another dancer in a full silver outfit mirrors the energy with a sweeping arm and lowered stance, suggesting synchronized contemporary movement. Photo Credit: Ethan Candelario and Ghost Crab Production. Slide 2: Davian DJ Robinson (he/him) is a passionate and boundary-breaking visually impaired dancer, choreographer, and performer. Drawing from his lived experience and athletic movement style, he creates choreography that is both physically powerful and emotionally resonant. His work blends dynamic storytelling with raw embodiment, inviting audiences into a world where rhythm, resilience, and adaptability redefine how we move and connect. Through both performance and education, Davian challenges conventions and opens new possibilities for inclusive expression in the arts.]

Meet Uhuru! @deeepspacecraft #HowWeMove #EmbracedBody #CircleO #DisabledArtist . . . [Image Descriptions: Slide 1: Dark purple background with red ribbon in center-right. Headshot of Uhuru Moor with a smaller image of him in the lower right corner. White text above reads “HOW WE MOVE ARTIST” and below reads “UHURU MOOR (he/him)”. For both pics, Uhuru is standing in a blue-lit room with a black mesh sleeve top on, his chest out, leather pants and a corset. With his arm crutches moving, he has thick locs in his hair with silver wrap on them, and sunglasses. Slide 2: Dark purple background with red ribbon in center-right. Headshot of Uhuru Moor with a smaller image of him in the lower right corner. White text above reads “HOW WE MOVE ARTIST” and below reads “UHURU MOOR (he/him)”. For both pics, Uhuru is standing in a blue-lit room with a black mesh sleeve top on, his chest out, leather pants and a corset. With his arm crutches moving, he has thick locs in his hair with silver wrap on them, and sunglasses. Slide 3: The Uhuruverse performs drag and invokes interactive art and improv. In 2016 they directed the psychedelic film noir, “FIGHT IN HEELS,” a collaboration with the #SNATCHPOWER artist collective (founded by The Uhuruverse in 2014) and directed a follow up in 2018 titled “Channeling Calafia.” They’ve released two albums, “The Brightest Oddest Strangest Star U Ever Did Saw Up Close and Afar From Planet Earth to Mars and Beyond” and “Who Killed Kenisha?!” The Uhuruverse did their first immersive installation titled “Nightmare on Easy Street” in Folkestone, England critiquing the classism of fascism. In 2020, The Uhuruverse established The Deeepspacecraft (a Black disabled tgnc owned and operated sanctuary space) in New Orleans which has housed over 35 Black trans folks in need and/or for creative purposes.]

This semester, I spent time with graduate students in Dance Education at Hunter College. Through “Access as Structure and Moving Together”, we explored what it actually means for a dance space to hold more bodies, not by adding modifications and accommodations after the fact, but by shifting the structure from the beginning. This is the work I’m building through Circle O, and it’s continuing to grow into longer labs and more intentional learning spaces. #CircleO #Education [Image description 1: a photo of Kayla, who is a Black woman wearing a long sleeve blue blouse and black pants. She is standing in front of a class teaching about Disability to a group of dance graduate students. Next to her is a tv screen showing a PowerPoint slide.] [Image description 2: a photo of two group of students going through a series of Circle O prompts.] [Image description 3: a photo of different materials that were used during the workshop that includes: fidget toys, post it notes, handouts, markers, and blank sheets of paper.] [Image description 4: a photo of Kayla, who is a Black woman wearing a long sleeve purple blouse and jeans with her short locs pulled back and hoop earrings. She is sitting in a circle with the dance graduate students as she is lecturing. There is a whiteboard beside her with various statements and prompts.]

Meet Miwa! @mccormickmiwa #HowWeMove #EmbracedBody #CircleO #DisabledArtist . . . [Image Descriptions: Slide 1: Red background with a dark purple ribbon in center right. Headshot of Miwa Nagura McCormick with a smaller image of her on the lower right. White text above reads “HOW WE MOVE ARTIST”, text below reads “MIWA NAGURA MCCORMICK (she/her)”. In the large pic Miwa, an Asian woman with dark brown hair, is standing outside, near trees, wearing a light green, patterned shirt. In the smaller pic,three dancers lined up from the front to the back. The first dancer is on the floor, the 2nd on the chair, and Miwa is standing. She extends her left arm and leans back, and the dancer on the chair supports her weight while leaning back. Slide 2: Miwa Nagura McCormick (she/her) hails from Japan, where she got her dance bug while training in synchronized swimming as a child. She then started taking jazz dance classes and founded a jazz dance club in college. At UC Berkeley, where she studied molecular biology as an exchange student, she encountered modern dance through its dance department, founded by former Graham dancers David and Marnie Wood, and took daily dance classes there. Subsequently, she moved to NYC in 1991 to immerse herself in dance. The teachers who shaped her dance technique include David Storey, Lynn Simonson, Laurie DeVito, Diane McCarthy, and Tee Ross. She is also certified to teach the Simonson Technique. She performed in dances choreographed by David Storey, Donna Thomas, and Lisa Cluth, among others. More ID in comments