Ninoska M’bewe Escobar has a professional background as a performer and choreographer. She trained at The Clark Center for the Performing Arts and Alvin Ailey American Dance Center in New York. She was a principal dancer in the companies of legendary Brazilian capoeirastas Loremil Machado and Jelon Vieira, Newark Dance Theatre, and the Caribbean American Dance Company, among others, and performed with Nigerian Jùjú music trailblazer King Sunny Adé, with Le Ballet National Djoliba, and with Jamaican reggae superstars Third World during their 1980s tours of the U.S.

She performed in the original cast of Fame (1980), in the Brooklyn Academy of Music production of Njinga The Queen King (1993), and in numerous concert stage productions and venues including Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Jacob’s Pillow, and the Santa Fe Dance Festival. She created the dances for Reza Abdoh’s The Law of Remains (1992) and the Nuyorican Poets Café production of Pepe Carril’s Shango de Ima (1994), which won an Audelco award for Outstanding Black Theater Choreography. As a director, she created original works performed at the Joyce Soho, the Theater of the Riverside Church, the Neuberger Museum of Art, and The Knitting Factory in New York, among others.