Dr. Cornel West

Cornel West is a prominent and provocative democratic intellectual. He is the Class of 1943 University Professor at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. He has taught at Union Theological Seminary, Yale, Harvard and the University of Paris. He has written 19 books and edited 13 books. He is best known for his classic Race Matters, Democracy Matters, and his new memoir, Brother West:  Living and Loving Out Loud. He appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, Colbert Report, CNN and C-Span as well as on his dear Brother, Tavis Smiley's PBS TV Show.  He can be heard weekly on Tavis Smiley's NPR radio program, The Smiley and West radio show, a highly acclaimed progressive program. He made his film debut in the Matrix and was the commentator (with Ken Wilbur) on the official trilogy released in 2004. He also has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films including Examined Life, Call and Response, Sidewalk and Stand. Last, he has made three spoken word albums including Never Forget, collaborating with Prince, Jill Scott, Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, KRS-One and the late Gerald Levert. His recent spoken word interludes were featured on Terence Blanchard's Choices (which won the Grand Prix in France for the best Jazz Album of the year of 2009), The Cornel West Theory's Second Rome and the Raheem DeVaughn's Love and War: Masterpeace. In short, Cornel West has a passion to communicate to a vast variety of publics in order to keep alive the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.; a legacy of telling the truth and bearing witness to love and justice. www.cornelwest.com

Joshua Bennett

Joshua Bennett is an award winning performance poet from Yonkers, NY. He has recited his original work at events such as The Sundance Film Festival, The NAACP Image Awards, President Obama's Evening of Poetry and Music at the White House, the ESPN documentary One Night in Vegas, and alongside former U.S. Poet Laureates Billy Collins and Rita Dove at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. In addition, he was a featured poet on the original cast of the HBO series Brave New Voices. He also was commissioned to create an original work for Ralph Lauren's RUGBY ad campaign, The Rugby Poets Club. An alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania, Joshua graduated with the distinctions of Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, after double majoring in English and Africana Studies. In addition to receiving a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship, Joshua was also awarded a Marshall Scholarship and earned his Masters of Arts in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Warwick in the UK. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in English from Princeton University. Joshua thanks God for his gift, and is grateful for, and humbled by, the opportunity to inspire others. http://thestriversrow.com/artists/joshua-bennet.html

Garth Fagan Dance Company and Garth Fagan

Now in its 40th season, Garth Fagan Dance is "unfailingly original" deemed the The New York Times, which also named the Company's piece, Mudan 175/39, third of the top six dance watching moments of 2009. Tony award-winning choreographer Garth Fagan's dancers communicate with unbridled energy the depth, precision, and grace of Fagan's work. The troupe has performed throughout the United States, Europe, Africa, Asia, the Near and Middle East, North and South America, New Zealand, Australia and the West Indies. Foreign tours have included a 13-city tour of The Netherlands; appearances at France's Maison de la Danse and Chateauvallon Festival; Turkey's Istanbul Festival; the New Zealand International Arts Festival; Germany's Internationales Tanzfest N.R.W.; Switzerland's Basel Tanz; the Israel Festival in Jerusalem; the Vienna Festival-Tanz; a tour to Harare, Zimbabwe with the United States Information Agency; and the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy. Critics have called Garth Fagan "a true original,"a genuine leader," and "one of the great reformers of modern dance" Fagan is the founder and artistic director of the award-winning and internationally acclaimed Garth Fagan Dance. Fagan continually renews his own distinctive dance vocabulary, which draws on many sources: sense of weight in modern dance, torso-centered movement and energy of Afro-Caribbean, speed and precision of ballet, and the rule breaking experimentation of the post-moderns. http://garthfagandance.org/