Irishia Hubbard Romaine is an interdisciplinary artist who works primarily with the embodied Black female experience. Her artistic practice is rooted in her cultural identity as a Black female, choreographer, and filmmaker from the South. She is the inaugural recipient of the Donald McKayle Legacy scholarship and holds a Short-Term Fellowship at New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture dedicated to supporting her proposed project, Reimagining Screendance: Reclamation of Black Aesthetics in Dance Film History.
Irishia’s research in screendance examines the unwritten history of Black moving image arts by analyzing Africanist Aesthetics in American dance, photography, and film. Themes of visibility, ancestral veneration, and Black liberation appear in her works as a means of retelling and reclaiming history. Irishia uses found footage of Black performers on screen to kinesthetically empathize with her ancestors. She views her filmmaking as a form of unearthing lost histories and challenging the aesthetic value systems of the arts.
In 2022, Irishia received the Hicks Choreographer Fellowship from Jacob's Pillow, mentored by Dianne McIntyre and Risa Steinberg. Her choreography has been showcased in performance festivals, including BlakTinx Dance Festival, HHII Dance Festival, ArtBark International, Parachute, and others.
Irishia's films have achieved international acclaim, premiering at festivals such as Cinevox, ADF Movie By Movers, Auro Apaar, Black Lives Rising, Mignolo International Screendance Festival, Muestra Movimiento Audiovisual, Dancecinema, Desassossego Short Dance Film Festival and many more. Her film, Red Line, was selected for Dance Camera West's 2022 Mentorship Program and received an honorable mention at the Desassossego Short Dance Film Festival. It has been screened across diverse locations, including India, Spain, Mexico, California, Oregon, Washington D.C., North Carolina, Texas, Michigan, and the United Kingdom.
Irishia holds an MFA in Modern Dance and a Screendance certification from the University of Utah, where she received the Ellen Bromberg Dance Media Award, the College of Fine Arts Creative Research Award, and a University Teaching Assistantship (UTA). Her other role includes professional stager for the Donald McKayle Legacy and Visibility Program Director for Dance Camera West.