“We Are The New Paradigm is a production house dedicated to exploring and telling stories rooted in our destiny timeline — The New Paradigm.”

Q1: Tell me about yourself

I'm dezi Solèy. I am a prismatic artist dedicated to expressions of the Divine through film, theater and performance. I have been in the Bay for 9 years; I live in this apartment with my grandmother. My father lives in the building next door and they're both from Haiti.

I was born in Alaska. My mom's white — she's a fourth generation Idahoan and I grew up mostly in Idaho but I visited the Bay all my life. I eventually moved here after college and originally was working in prison industrial complex abolition work at the age of 19. I took some Afro-Haitian dance class with Ms. Colette Eloi at Laney College and that was kind of the beginning of my life, because I really moved here to get to know this part of me. 

I ended up joining El Wah Dance Theatre Company, Folkloric Hatian Dance Company, and Jikelele Dance Theatre. I then realized that my work is in the arts — in movement. So I got into the theater scene like four years ago and found my theater homes. But at this point, now I'm moving. 

Q2: Tell me more about your experience living here. You’ve been here for 9 years now and you have seen quite the change…

Yeah I've been living (here) in this apartment since. This is the frontline right now of gentrification. I knew it was real when they redid Madison Street and took out all of our washers and dryers and put ones that had credit cards. 

When I first moved here I was just trying to escape white people but it was hella hard to connect with other women of color — it was pre black girl magic. I'd often walk down the street and say 'Hey', and it just wasn't received. I felt like there was so much pain blocking us from connecting with each other. I'm a queer woman of color and felt the only community I could find at the time was at the club. So I started hosting these moon circles back in 2016. From that came this idea of creating a safe space for women/femmes of color.

So in 2018, I joined Uptima Business Boot camp at Impact Hub, a business program. When I first started, I was coming up with the idea of the Chrysalis Space — a physical space that could be an incubator for artists.  Like some of the most brilliant artists with the most brilliant work at Campo Santo Theatre and Lorraine Hansberry Theatre are homeless in San Francisco.

I wanted to build space for these artists to work out of and have a theater home for folks. I partnered up with Photographer and Videographer Ev Marquee and in the Fall of 2019, together we started the Kaleidoscope series: a monthly event for women/femmes of color that we held at the East Bay Community Space. There we invited different community leaders and artists to perform or share modalities. For example, one of our events was womb healing. We had Yoni Steams led by Yoni Adore (Shanelle Stroman) come in and do an informational and guided session.

Q3: Has your series been affected since COVID-19?

Yes. The last event before we went into lockdown had over 100 people in attendance. With the new restrictions, we thought “ok, we need to pivot.” But so much of the interaction was sitting down and eating bread with someone—looking at them in the eyes and having conversations. We tried one virtual event in May and it just wasn’t the same. 

I ended up going to South Carolina to visit my mother who recently moved to Myrtle Beach. I spent a couple months out there and Ev came out for a couple weeks. We created and shot for two weeks and it was insane; felt like the land was talking to us. 

When we got back to the Bay, shelter in place just got extended for the third time. We were looking at houses to rent together and prices were ranging from 4k a month. Listen, I’ve had a bed in the living room for 9 years. I don't have any walls. Like, this baby is growing up and it’s time to leave the nest and unfortunately, I can't do it here in the Bay. 

The rent here has doubled if not tripled. The timeline completely shifted and we were just like, “okay, what's keeping us here?” Yes, we have this community but no one wants anything to do with physical space and my theater community has zooms planned out for the next year. So we started looking at land within South Carolina — acres and acres of land significantly cheaper. There we could actually build an artists retreat space for folks and the mortgage would be a fourth of what rent would be here. 

The idea would be that this is the pilot and it would get us the funding to come back to the Bay and be able to build here and really everywhere. 

Q5: What development or creation of yours in the Bay are you most proud of? What did you learn from that process?

I feel like I've been gifted the community I always wanted. I've always wanted a group of sisters. I guess the thing that it showed me is it's actually easy but it requires a Safe Space to be able to be vulnerable, it requires a space without the male gaze, a space where you can come in and drop all the fucking walls and just be. The Bay is such a magical place and it's a site of so much transformation and catalization; It’s a space I cannot wait to get back to and pour abundance back into.