Award Winning Arts Leader, Producer, Director, & Choreographer
Hailed as "a visionary of her generation" by choreographer Rennie Harris, Mhoon is a second-generation artist and entrepreneur from Chicago and Director of the Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project at the University of Chicago. She is also the founder of the award winning Princess Mhoon Dance Institute in Washington, DC, where she resides, and was recognized as a 2021 DC Star by the DC office of Cable Television, Film, Music and Entertainment. In that same year she was a featured choreographer at the Presidential Inaugural Gospel Celebration for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. In 2016, Mhoon was invited to participate as one of the region's preeminent dance leaders by First Lady Michelle Obama during her Celebration of Black Women in Dance. Mhoon served as a panelist for The White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans during Women's History Month and was acknowledged by the administration as a Black Girl Change Maker. Mhoon has been noted as one of Dance Magazine's Top 25 to Watch for the Women's Choreography Project titled This Woman's Work (2006-2008).
Mhoon’s artistic portfolio extends across the globe. She has performed and toured with the world-renowned Ronald K. Brown/Evidence Dance Company, Rennie Harris Puremovement, Chuck Davis’s African American Dance Ensemble, Nathan Trice Rituals, and Deeply Rooted Dance Theater. In 2016 she was recognized by the DC Metro Theatre Arts for Best Direction in a Musical for Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity. She is also a Helen Hayes Award Nominee for Best Choreography in a Musical and a Helen Hayes winner for Best Musical. She has been featured as a soloist and choreographer in Japan’s Dance Delight and in 2015 she was one of 37 international artists invited to Lusaka, Zambia to perform her one woman show, The Mhoon Show and to teach master classes at the Barefeet Theatre Festival.
She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree in Dance and a Master of Arts degree in Public History from Howard University with a research focus on the Black tradition in American dance. As a scholar, Mhoon has made contributions to AFRICANA by Henry Louis Gates and BBC United Kingdom’s Series: "If My History Books Were Black” hosted and produced by Naomi Beckwith and Natalie Moore. In 2022 Princess Mhoon became an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grantee at University of Chicago’s Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture to research Black dance in Chicago where she also serves as dance faculty in the Committee on Theatre and Performance Studies. Mhoon was awarded the Owen Dodson Distinguished Alumni Award from her Alma Mater and has also served on faculty at both Howard University and American University. Her early dance training began with Alyo Children's Dance Theatre, Joseph Holmes Dance Studio, Najwa Dance Corps and Muntu Dance Theatre all located in Chicago.
Venturing into the world of filmmaking and multimedia art, Mhoon’s latest works can be seen virtually and in exhibition. RESILIENCE, a Princess Mhoon Dance Institute dance film is available to watch online. A 2022 collaboration with visual artist Umar Rashid in his Ancient Regime Change 4, 5, and 6 exhibit was featured at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMAPS1) in Brooklyn, New York. An original dance film projection titled COLOR IN MOTION directed by Princess Mhoon and choreographed and performed in collaboration with Deeply Rooted Dance Theater was commissioned by 150 Media Stream and the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts for the Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project.
Princess Mhoon, a 2022 Microsoft Legacy Project Honoree in dance, is an award winning director, choreographer, producer, educator, and scholar. Recognized by Huffington Post as one of 26 Female Choreographers You Should Know in 2016, her projects have been commissioned by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, DC Jazz Festival, and Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs where she curated a historical concert in 2022 featuring over 200 dancers to an estimated audience of 7,000. Mhoon has created works celebrating the musical cannons of Quincy Jones, Nancy Wilson, and Dizzy Gillespie. Mhoon is a proud graduate of Leadership Greater Washington - the District of Columbia’s premier leadership incubator. In July of 2023, Mhoon premiered a film projection at Chicago’s Art on the Mart, the largest outdoor digital art platform in the world. Mhoon served as Director and Executive Producer of this groundbreaking animated film starring members of the Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project. Highlighted the history of the Black tradition in American dance, the film was projected onto the facade of the Merchandise Mart—the ephemeral history of Black Dance mapped onto one of Chicago’s landmark buildings.