World Arts West announces the 2026 cohort of its Grants Accelerator Program (GAP), a yearlong capacity-building initiative designed to address long-standing inequities in arts funding that have disproportionately impacted culturally specific, community-rooted dance artists and organizations.
Founded in 1978 in response to the major demographic shifts following the 1965 Immigration Act, World Arts West was created to serve the rapidly growing cultural arts communities of the San Francisco Bay Area. Over the past five decades, the organization has grown from a grassroots platform into the nation’s largest world dance network, supporting professional culturally specific dance companies led by nationally recognized artists, elders, and culture bearers.
Despite this dramatic artistic growth, many cultural dance organizations continue to face significant barriers to accessing philanthropic and public funding. These challenges are often rooted in structural inequities within funding systems that were not designed to support community-based, culturally specific work. Many organizations operate with limited or no paid staff, fragile infrastructure, and minimal access to culturally responsive grant support.
Launched in 2021, the World Arts West Grants Accelerator Program was developed as a direct response to these conditions. Co-developed and co-led by World Arts West Executive Director Dr. Anne Huang and nationally recognized Grant Specialist Krista Smith, GAP supports artists and organizations in building the skills, confidence, and systems needed to pursue foundation and government funding on their own terms.
Grounded in principles of resource equity and self-determination, the program reframes grant writing as a tool for sustainability rather than a gatekeeping mechanism. GAP centers the lived experience, cultural knowledge, and leadership of artists who are deeply embedded in the communities they serve.
From 2022 to 2025, artists participating in GAP collectively raised over $1.4 million in grant funding. These resources have supported transformative shifts across the program’s cohorts, including compensating artistic directors for the first time, hiring administrative staff, paying teaching artists, providing youth scholarships, and enabling culture bearers to travel and share their knowledge across communities.
The 2026 GAP cohort reflects the diversity and leadership of the Bay Area’s cultural dance ecosystem, including artists and organizations rooted in immigrant, refugee, LGBTQ+, disabled, and other historically excluded communities. Cohort members will participate in monthly webinars and working labs, receive one-to-one coaching and proposal reviews, and benefit from peer learning and promotional support throughout the year.
2026 Grants Accelerator Program Cohort
Despite this dramatic artistic growth, many cultural dance organizations continue to face significant barriers to accessing philanthropic and public funding. These challenges are often rooted in structural inequities within funding systems that were not designed to support community-based, culturally specific work. Many organizations operate with limited or no paid staff, fragile infrastructure, and minimal access to culturally responsive grant support.
Launched in 2021, the World Arts West Grants Accelerator Program was developed as a direct response to these conditions. Co-developed and co-led by World Arts West Executive Director Dr. Anne Huang and nationally recognized Grant Specialist Krista Smith, GAP supports artists and organizations in building the skills, confidence, and systems needed to pursue foundation and government funding on their own terms.
Grounded in principles of resource equity and self-determination, the program reframes grant writing as a tool for sustainability rather than a gatekeeping mechanism. GAP centers the lived experience, cultural knowledge, and leadership of artists who are deeply embedded in the communities they serve.
From 2022 to 2025, artists participating in GAP collectively raised over $1.4 million in grant funding. These resources have supported transformative shifts across the program’s cohorts, including compensating artistic directors for the first time, hiring administrative staff, paying teaching artists, providing youth scholarships, and enabling culture bearers to travel and share their knowledge across communities.
The 2026 GAP cohort reflects the diversity and leadership of the Bay Area’s cultural dance ecosystem, including artists and organizations rooted in immigrant, refugee, LGBTQ+, disabled, and other historically excluded communities. Cohort members will participate in monthly webinars and working labs, receive one-to-one coaching and proposal reviews, and benefit from peer learning and promotional support throughout the year.
2026 Grants Accelerator Program Cohort
Samuel Cortez is a Mexican dance artist and cultural leader whose work centers on the preservation, teaching, and continued evolution of Mexican folklórico in the United States. Born in Celaya, Guanajuato, Mexico, he began his dance training at an early age and has spent more than three decades directing, choreographing, and advancing folklórico through performance, education, and community-based practice.
Rafi Ruffino Darrow is a disabled trans antidisciplinary artist working on Ohlone land in so-called Oakland, California. Raised in Buffalo, NY, their art is rooted in the pervasive illness that has shaped their hometown, and the ways in which this troubles the boundaries of the human body and the unsure contours of our global futures. Their work lives in the liminality this precarity creates, and the inter-marginalized care and intimacy it necessitates.
CAROLÉ TACHÍRIA ACUÑA FLAMENCO is the fifth generation flamenco & Spanish dancer in her Gitano family legacy, an actor, stand-up comedian, singer, choreographer, author, an MFA candidate, flamencologist.
Parya Saberi is an Iranian contemporary dancer, choreographer, and producer whose art bridges ethnic identity, personal narrative, and cultural memory. Her interdisciplinary work draws inspiration from Iranian poetry and folk music.
Tainah Damasceno is a performing & teaching artist, dancer, producer, and Artistic Director of BrasArte: a Berkeley CA based cultural arts non profit. Her work is primarily focused on cultural arts education-- sharing with people of all ages how profound Brazilian history and dance can be, and encouraging participants to dive into the joy and force that permeates BR arts culture.
Carmen Roman is a dancer, choreographer, educator, filmmaker, and emerging scholar. She was raised both in Lima, Peru, and in the Bay Area. As a choreographer, her work is deeply rooted in Afro-Peruvian dance vocabulary and also uses movements inspired by other dances of the African Diaspora and modern dance using her practice as an art form and vehicle for self-expression.
Dr. Farima Berenji has spent her lifetime researching, training, and presenting dance and culture of Persian and the Silk Road, traveling to do on-site research among villages and regions that hold the origins of cultural heritage. Dr. Farima is an Iranian-American dance scholar that speaks, writes, and understands Farsi and English. She has had close artistic collaborations with many masters and scholars of dance, music, and culture of Iran.
Muisi-kongo Malonga is a dancer and culture bearer whose arts practice is steeped in a staunch Bay Area legacy of cultural preservation, social justice, and service through art. She is one of the foremost keepers of Congolese dance traditions in the U.S., and is dedicated to preserving culture and cultivating the healing power of African arts traditions.
Karla Flores was raised in the Bay Area’s vibrant street dance community. Her artistic practice is shaped by the cultural ecosystems where Hip Hop, African diasporic movement, queer expression, and immigrant stories coexist. As a cis-femme Nicaraguan artist, Karla’s lived experience sits at the intersections of Latinx identity, Black liberation, and femme resilience. These identities guide how she shows up, what she preserves, and the communities she builds with.
Suhaila Salimpour is a first-generation SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) belly dancer recognized as a pioneer in the field. As the creator of the first certification program and codified pedagogy in belly dance, she has reshaped performance and education, inspiring dancers worldwide to engage with the art form with depth and integrity. Her work is grounded in somatic awareness, centering embodied learning, pelvic intelligence, and cultural lineage.