After Phoenix choreographer and dancer Liliana Gomez learned about the BlakTina Dance Festival launched in Los Angeles back in 2013, she partnered with founder Licia Perea to create a BlakTina Dance Festival here in Phoenix, eager to highlight the contributions of black and Latinx creatives on the local arts scene. Now called the BlakTinx Dance Festival, the event brings together diverse movement artists and audiences for contemporary dance works that explore shared humanity, human emotion, and sociocultural issues related to women's rights, the immigrant experience, systemic racism, and more. The festival incorporates poetry, film, and other creative expression, breaking down walls between art forms as it punctuates the power of movement to effect change.