The Raven Project began in 2017 when Joi Danielle Price, moved to tears by the inclusion of Raven Wilkinson's story in the film documentary The Ballets Russes, reached out to this incredible woman to learn more about her life in ballet and get to know this classy and fierce Black woman. Ms. Wilkinson's determination earned her a groundbreaking contract dancing for a major American ballet company. Her journey led her through the Jim Crow South, to joining a convent in Wisconsin after bearing the crushing weight of discrimination, and on to a successful career in Europe.

Joi had no idea what would become of these extraordinary phone conversations, but new that more people should experience her story. Joi's storytelling experiment has evolved into a play that uses movement, the form of communication Raven Wilkinson prized most, to tell a theatrical story with music and text. Joi is joined by innovative choreographer Tiffany Rea-Fisher and genre-bending composer Jordyn Davis to create a piece that will examine Raven Wilkinson's career highs and heartbreaks in parallel with growing civil rights movement, and her role as a mentor and inspiration for Black ballerinas of recent decades.

Help us tell this incredible story!
It's time for us to bring the text, music, and choreographic elements into a studio. A deeply collaborative piece, The Raven Project will require the presence of its three creative artists to push the work forward in person. Bringing our ideas off the page and into the physical world will require us to hire dancer/actors and reserve space to work with them.

Goal: $5000.00 for Staging Workshop

Raising this amount would enable us to bring our core team of librettist, choreographer, and composer together to rehearse and stage our opening scenes. This will provide us with a crucial understanding of how to execute our vision. It would also allow us to start a website and otherwise solidify the presence and viability of our work in progress.

$50 provides the services of one professional dancer/actor for an hour
$400 provides the services of one professional dancer/actor for the duration of the workshop.
$600 provides dance studio space

Who We Are

Joi Danielle Price is a multifaceted theater artist. A native of Flint, Michigan, Price studied journalism alongside musical theater at the University of Michigan, blending her passion for storytelling with performance. Her theatrical credits include roles in Broadway productions and national tours of Mamma Mia! and Ragtime: The Musical, and the New York Innovative Theatre Award winning production of Raisin . Beyond acting, she is a dedicated playwright and librettist, active with the Untitled Writers Group, a development space for marginalized voices in musical theater. In addition to her writing and performance work, Price appeared on the Disney+ series, Encore!, which reunited her with the cast of her high school musical. She continues to contribute to projects like the 7th Inning Stretch, where she wrote a short play celebrating Black women in professional baseball. Price’s career demonstrates her dedication to amplifying underrepresented voices and fostering artistic collaboration in the theater community. Joi enjoys supporting the next generation of theatre artists by teaching acting for musical theatre at Molloy University’s CAP21 B.F.A. program In New York City.

Tiffany Rea-Fisher - EMERGE125's Artistic Director Tiffany Rea-Fisher is a NDP Award winner, a 2022 Creatives Rebuild New York Grantee, a 7-time consecutive AUDELCO Award nominee, a 2021 Toulmin Creator, a 2022 Toulmin Fellow, a National Dance Project Awardee, a John Brown Spirit Award recipient, a Mellon Grant awardee through her company, and was personally awarded a citation from the City of New York for her cultural contributions. As resident choreographer with the Classical Theatre of Harlem (CTH), she has collaborated on their productions of Macbeth, The Three Musketeers, A Christmas Carol in Harlem, Antigone, The Bacchae, Seize the King and the company's 2024 work MEMNON, recently staged at The Getty Villa in Los Angeles. Following her 2022 contributions to CTH’s Twelfth Night, for which The New York Times suggested she should have been nominated for a Tony Award, Rea-Fisher’s choreography was prominent in The Public Theater’s 2023 Delacorte production of The Tempest as part of their Public Works program. Her choreography has been produced in NYC at the Joyce, the Apollo, Joe's Pub, Aaron Davis Hall, New York Live Arts and was recently featured with The New York Times Critics Pick theater production Gun & Powder. Rea-Fisher has been commissioned by Dance Theater of Harlem, Dallas Black Dance Theater, NYC Department of Transportation, Utah Repertory Theater, The National Gallery of Art in D.C., and has seen her work performed before the Duke and Duchess of Luxembourg. She curates the Bryant Park Picnic Performances Summer Dance Series, providing free access to art for thousands of audience members while exposing upcoming and established artists to a wider audience, and also acts as the Executive Director of the Adirondack Diversity Initiative. Rea-Fisher was the first dance curator for the New York interdisciplinary arts organization The Tank, where she now sits on their Board of Trustees. She subscribes to the servant leadership model and uses disruption through inclusion as a way to influence her company's culture.

Jordyn Davis is a ground-breaking, multi-talented, and award-winning bassist, composer, singer-songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. She is the first African-American woman to receive a Bachelor's Degree in Music Composition from Michigan State University and the first Michigan State student to receive a Bachelor's Degree in Music Composition and Jazz Studies concurrently. Davis has also completed a Masters's Degree in Jazz Studies at Michigan State University and worked as a graduate teaching assistant. She recently relocated to Brooklyn, NY and was named one of two inaugural Jazz Leader Fellowship recipients by the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music. Davis has worked on the Tony-Winning Broadway Musical New York, New York: A new musical and collaborated with Craig Harris & the contemporary dance company Urban Bush Women. Her work spans various musical styles and has been featured on the PBS Limited Series Music for Social Justice. Davis’s music, spanning Jazz, Folk, Indie Rock, and Contemporary Classical, has been commissioned by institutions like the Kennedy Center and the New York Philharmonic. Leading the genre-bending ensemble "Composetheway," Davis is also a dedicated educator, inspiring young musicians through organizations like the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Her work continues to shape the future of contemporary music.