Samara Atkins is a teaching artist at Destiny Arts Center, where she teaches hip hop dance and movement in our programs at schools and community centers throughout the East Bay. Originally from Oakland, CA, Samara has been with Destiny since 2011.
Samara knows that movement and dance are powerful tools for everyone to share their story, process, cope, and heal from the things we experience in our society. Movement brings communities together and connects people to people. Samara believes that through movement, youth are able to access and channel their emotions, communicate their experiences more clearly, connect with others, and empower, as well as express themselves in ways that allow them to thrive.
Samara has danced for CHIC ft. Nile Rodgers at the 2015 FOLD Festival, representing Destiny Arts Center. She has been a featured dancer for Adobe Max product launch and their 2017 Adobe Design Achievement Awards ceremony. Samara has been featured in music videos, news articles, and was a dance journalist for Dance Studio Life magazine. She has co-founded Mix’d Ingrdnts, an all female-identified performance company est. in 2010, that exists to empower womxn, youth, and the community to express themselves through performance and dance education. As co-artistic director, choreographer, and dancer of the company, Samara has received notable dance awards, notoriety in the community and internationally, and appeared on the Harry (Connick Jr.) Show. She also was choreographer and director of Howard University’s Vizion Performance Company while attending. Samara has been a dance company member and received training from two of Oakland’s premiere studios/companies Newstyle Motherlode and Dance-A-Vision. In addition to her work with Destiny Arts Center, she has co-started and co-lead Power of Hope Bolinas since 2015, and been a lead-facilitator for Partners of Youth Empowerment Global’s Creative Faciliation Training.
Samara is a core member of the grammy-nominated Alphabet Rockers as choreographer, dancer, singer, and songwriter. Through Alphabet Rockers, Mix’d Ingrdnts, Destiny Arts Center, and her own mantra in life, Samara engages in, creates, and produces content that positively impacts social change and creates spaces for people to be seen & heard. She also really loves to travel and share her love of dance and storytelling.
Through Mix’d Ingrdnts, Samara has received Bay Area’s Best Dancer award. She’s also represented the US on a dance tour in China and workshopped with Debbie Allen at her studio with the St. Mary’s Dance Ensemble, under Naa Dodua – Diane Green. Samara will always spread her joy and love of dance to people around the world.