Mame Diarra Speis-Biaye is a mother, movement improviser, and maker whose practice emerges from play, risk, duration, and experimentation. Formerly a performer and Co-Artistic Director of the critically acclaimed Urban Bush Women, Speis-Biaye continues to shape the field of dance through performance, pedagogy, and collaboration, creating work that moves with specificity, abandon, and a deep sense of possibility.

She has collaborated with visionary artists including Gesel Mason, makini jumatatu poe, Leslie Parker, Deborah Hay (as part of Some Sweet Day, curated by Ralph Lemon at MoMA), Baba Israel, Ligia Lewis, Marjani Forté-Saunders, and Liz Lerman. A Bessie Award recipient and Alvin Ailey New Directions Choreography Lab fellow, her performances and choreography have been presented at venues including the Kennedy Center, BAM, MASS MoCA, Joyce SoHo, Danspace Project, BAAD!, BRIC, Dance Place, The Kelly Strayhorn Theater, and more.

She is the creator of the Liberated Pelvis, a movement and teaching methodology that explores pelvic mobility as a source of dynamic locomotion and creative potential. She has shared this practice across the US, South America, Senegal, and Europe, and has held teaching appointments at Princeton University and Montclair State University.

In recent years, she has co-choreographed multiple works for Urban Bush Women and collaborated on Cannabis: A Viper Vaudeville (created by Baba Israel, composed by Grace Galu, and directed by Talvin Wilks). Her latest projects include a commissioned piece for the Toni Morrison Project at McCarter Theatre. Speis-Biaye's work invites people to experience movement as a living, responsive, and transformative force.