Teena Marie Custer is a street/club dance artist based in Pittsburgh, PA. For the last 20 years, Teena Marie has studied, researched, battled and performed nationally and internationally in various street dance communities. She has been involved with street dance crews Venus Fly and Get Down Gang and has won b-girl battles such as Enter the Cypha and UnderGround Movement, and won the “House Cypher” award at Chicago’s Slick City event
Her solo street dance theater work has been presented at various universities, Sadler’s Wells Theater in London, The American Dance Festival, Kelly-Strayhorn Theater, Ford Amphitheater in LA, The August Wilson Center, and the American College Dance Association Gala Concerts. She toured her solo show, “My Good Side” around the country from 2015-2019. She has also created hip hop dance theater works and been a guest artist at for over 35 university dance departments around the U.S.. Her tv and film credits include BET, MTV’s MADE, feature films Leading Ladies, Fathers and Daughters, and short films such as Down for the Count with director Erika Randall and In the Moment: A Drawing Dance: A collaboration with the Kennedy Center, Mo Willems, and Ephrat Asherie Dance
Teena Marie earned a BA in Dance from Slippery Rock University and an MFA in Dance Performance from The Ohio State University. She was on faculty for 15 years at Slippery Rock University in the Department of Dance where she taught street dance styles, contemporary dance, and dance composition. She also taught for six summer seasons on the faculty at the American Dance Festival at Duke University
Teena Marie is currently touring with Bessie nominated Ephrat Asherie Dance in New York City and has been a member since 2012. The company has performed at The Joyce, Guggenheim Works in Process, City Center’s Fall for Dance, Jacob’s Pillow, as well as venues across the country. Teena Marie has toured with Bill “Crutchmaster” Shannon’s show Touch Update, and has also danced with Dance Alloy, Attack Theatre, Erika Randall and Ursula Payne as a contemporary movement artist.
