About Our Double Jump Fellows
Grace David and Amber Lucia Chabus
Grace David
Artist Bio: Miss Grace David is a Black, queer, and non-binary femme performance and textile artist based in the DC area. By using character performance, textile production, world-making, and storytelling, their work connects human emotion and personal experience with visual abstraction. Their work and film has been commissioned by Dance Place in Washington, DC, Tariq O’Meally’s BlackLight Summit, and shown at Kennedy Center. Miss Greg is the inaugural awardee of the HAUS AWARD in 2021 from haus of bambi recognizing DMV-based LGBTQ+ artists for work exploring the complexity of queer identity, and most recently was a 2024 Artist in Residence at The Nicholson Project.
What is the vision / ethos behind your work?
The vision behind my work is that I and we have the ability to escape the natural perception that is placed upon us to then bring the inside out to truly be seen.
Being an artist and creator today means that I get to create worlds, utopias, and euphorias for myself to exist in. Especially when I feel like I don’t exist anywhere, don’t want to exist anywhere, or only exist within myself. I find ways to escape my body and my environment to get closer to them.
I look to bring a uniqueness and grotesqueness that serves as a mirror that forces audiences to see themselves for their individualism. Through my work I want my audiences to be able to reimagine themselves to and the universes they exist in to truly become what they are.
Amber Lucia Chabus
Artist Bio: Amber Lucia Chabus (she/her) is a DC-based artist who finds joy moving her body in spaces with other creatives. Amber graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2018 with degrees in Dance and Kinesiology. She has performed professionally with Heart Stück Bernie, ReVision dance company, darlingdance, Orange Grove Dance, Light Switch Dance Theater, Xing Dance Theatre, and DanceTheYard. Amber was part of the inaugural Dance Metro DC Performance-in-Progress cohort and has had choreography shown at Dance Place, Atlas Performing Arts Center, Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, and The Writer’s Center (Washington, DC) and at Island Grown Dance and the Built on Stilts Festival (Martha’s Vineyard). Amber’s recent evening-length work Sana, Sana premiered at Dance Place in 2024 as part of the Co-Presentation Series and was also re-staged and performed in March 2025 as part of Atlas Performing Arts Center’s INTERSECTIONS Festival. Her current artistic research is centered around themes of healing, Hispanic heritage, and memento mori.
Based on this quote, describe how you practice community within the DMV dance ecosystem: “We are each other’s harvest, we are each other’s business, we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” -Gwendolyn Brooks
My role in the DMV dance ecosystem is one of responsibility–to support, engage, and uplift all in the community. By being involved and attuned, we can lift each other up. I show up in a variety of shared spaces; aware of where and how my presence is needed. I am a thought partner, a collaborator, a spectator, and a friend. Being a part of each other’s worlds is where we nourish and strengthen each other as fellow artists.
In particular, I practice community in shared spaces, often with other mid-career artists. Through grassroots performances, shared group chats, pop-up classes… together, we are creating the ecosystem that we want to be built in this city. And when one artist shows up for another, that cycle of support and creation continues to flourish.
I am deeply invested in the collective success of the DC arts community. When other artists succeed, it elevates us all and it elevates the external perspective of DC dance. The vitality of the ecosystem is built from within but it also needs the external spectacle from outside patrons and influences to keep dance as a profession (especially in DC) viable and attainable. We must scream loud and proud about the dance and artistry that is fostered in this city – the more boisterous we celebrate, the more opportunities will come our way.
‘We are each other’s harvest’, and I am also my own garden. I simply cannot prioritize others without gardening my own flowers too. I can give love, and I also need to accept love to continue to fill up my own cup. This involves rest. This involves communicating with fellow artists. And this involves being true and honest. The balance of supporting others, alongside the ebbs and flows, keeps the community dynamic and strong.