Dr. Iquail Shaheed was born and raised in Mantua, the West Philadelphia neighborhood that remains the creative and spiritual home base for everything he builds. 

 

He found his way to dance through the neighborhood's own recreation center stages and elementary school talent shows, and by eighth grade had set his sights on a career in the arts, landing at The Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts, where he immersed himself in Horton, Graham, jazz, and ballet alongside some of the city's most rigorous dance training. While a student at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, he began commuting to New York three nights a week to rehearse with the Fred Benjamin Dance Company; soon after, he began dancing full-time with Ronald K. Brown’s EVIDENCE, A Dance Company and then Broadway’s The Lion King.

 

In 2007, Dr. Shaheed founded DANCE IQUAIL! in NYC, and in 2015, he moved the company back home to Mantua, premiering new work, Pushers, at the Painted Bride Arts Center. The company has toured around the world, performing and creating work in New York, California, Rwanda and Mauritius in East Africa, Jamaica, and beyond. Beyond performance, the work has continued to expand into the neighborhood itself: a 2020 community rally and protest grew into Celebrate Mantua, an annual outdoor dance festival, and its programs for formerly incarcerated artists earned a $100,000 Art for Justice Fund award. The dance and drill team he started in partnership with the Mantua Haverford Community Center under the executive direction of Richard Purdie at age 14 lives on as Mantua’s Most Majestic, a community program for up to 100 Mantua youth. 

 

Dr. Shaheed’s hunger for technical craft and lifelong learning carried him into teaching and to earn an advanced degree. He joined the faculty of The Ailey School's Horton Department in 2006 and taught in Australia's NAISDA Dance College in 2013. In 2022, he earned a PhD in dance from Texas Woman's University, making him the first Black man to earn a doctorate from the nation's oldest dance PhD program. His vision for The Mantua Enterprise for Community, Culture, and Artistry (MECCA) upholds this passion for learning, including workforce readiness, training programs for creative entrepreneurs and arts workers, and youth development through arts education.

 

"My vision has always been to develop something greater than a 'Black dance company,'" Shaheed says, "to deflect labels and create something that reflects the multitude of peoples and communities we represent." Today, as Executive Artistic Director of MECCA, he's building Mantua's own enterprise for community, culture, and artistry — rooted in the same neighborhood where he first learned to move.