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Imani Delacruz (Career and Legacy)

Imani Ysabel Delacruz worked across dance, accessibility, creative production, and personal assistance. After chronic injuries and inaccessible professional environments ended her performing career, she moved into accessibility consulting, became Charlie Rivera’s creative and personal assistant, served as accessibility director for the Fifth Bar Collective, and continued teaching dance.

Dance and Choreography

Main article: Imani Delacruz

Dance was central to Imani’s early artistic life. She trained across multiple styles and worked as a professional dancer and choreographer. Her Deafness shaped how she used rhythm, vibration, spatial awareness, visual cues, and ensemble communication without limiting dance to a substitute for spoken expression.

Accumulated injuries and inaccessible working conditions eventually ended her professional performance career. She remained connected to dance through choreography and instruction, including classes designed for Deaf and hard-of-hearing students.

Accessibility Consulting

After leaving professional performance, Imani consulted with music organizations on accessibility. The work drew on Deaf culture, ASL, disability-community experience, production knowledge, and the practical demands of artists and audiences moving through events.

She met Charlie at a disability-community event in the late 2030s while consulting on access. Their initial professional connection developed into friendship and a long-term working partnership.

Work with Charlie Rivera

As Charlie’s creative and personal assistant, Imani managed scheduling, interviews, press requests, show-access protocols, and communication logistics. Her role connected Charlie’s creative work with the access structure required to sustain it.

Imani and Mo Makani divided major areas of support around Charlie. Mo focused on medical and household care coordination, while Imani handled creative, professional, communication, and accessibility logistics. The work overlapped during travel, performances, crises, and other situations in which artistic and medical needs could not be separated cleanly.

Main article: Imani Delacruz and Charlie Rivera

Fifth Bar Collective

Imani later served as accessibility director for the Fifth Bar Collective. She extended the access work developed around Charlie across the larger organization, coordinating structures intended to serve artists, staff, students, audiences, and collaborators with different bodies and communication needs.

Her work treated accessibility as part of artistic and organizational practice rather than an accommodation added after the central decisions had already been made.

Careers Dancers Accessibility Professionals Personal Assistants Educators Imani Delacruz