
Chezale Rodriguez
Category: Artist/Individual
Discipline: Teaching Artist / Teacher / Professor
Program Affiliations: *Certified Cross-Sector Service Provider | Arts Foundation Grantees

Chezale is a multidisciplinary teaching/performing artist, and arts & cultural worker. She is native to Pittsburgh, PA with Tucson, AZ being her home for most her life.
Chezale has recorded and released two full-length studio albums with collaborations and features, both nationally and internationally. She has served as a dance educator and mentor, as well as a practical dance instructor with the University of Arizona’s Africana Studies and Hip-Hop Minor, since 2016. Chezale has served Arizona’s West Valley as an arts and cultural administrator and is currently completing her graduate degree in Dance Education.
In the wake of her recovery and healing journey as the result of a life-altering event, Chezale went on to create Diverse Dance Arts…”Dance expression for diverse beings that promotes confidence, liberation, well-being, community & visibility.”
Chezale's dedication to the arts and to her new life has moved her to commit to providing authentic, mindful, inspirational, educational, inclusive and accessible components to her work that positively impact the communities she works with.
Choreographed, Written & Performed by: Chezale Rodriguez
After expressing through dance my entire life and being involved in the art of Dance as a student, performer, instructor turned educator for a culmination of about 30 years…
THIS…is my very first official choreographed, recorded and performed piece…post-accident as a spinal cord injury survivor and wheelchair user. Navigating this process was not only cathartic for my healing process after experiencing such a devastating and life-altering trauma, but in many ways it was and IS a returning to home.
I am so looking forward to the new pathways of expression and new ability that I discover for myself around dance as an artist. I’m deeply inspired by many of the works I’m seeing and learning, which is a huge part of the foundation for creating Diverse Dance Arts.
I hope this piece can be an example to whomever comes across it, to shed perhaps a new, very real and beautiful light on what mobility, ability and Dance can be in its full expression through diverse beings. And may this song help you in breaking through your own challenges.
~Chezale
Special thanks to Austin & Alyssa Twaits with Danswest Dance Studio.
Filmed by Wade Antonio Colwell.
Visual Description: Chezale, a brown-skinned woman with locs pulled back in a ponytail, dressed in a black tank top and loose fitting dance pants is seated in a wheelchair and performing fluid choreography to a song titled “BREAK”, set in a dance studio. Edited in black and white film.