Augmenting Dance Education at UA

By Guest Blogger Christy Bolingbroke, Executive & Artistic Director of NCCAkron

Beyond affording an academic environment for artists to explore, the National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron (NCCAkron) partners with The University of Akron to enhance the student experience and embrace dance as an area of study.  UA’s School of Dance, Theatre, and Arts Administration shares part of its own origin story with Ohio Ballet.  Most dance programs across the country were founded by white men and women (mostly women) before the civil rights movement.  So the field of dance education is primed for a major overhaul.  Acknowledging the region’s aesthetic roots, NCCAkron has been curating from a place of absence – working to expand the definition of dance to something broader than ballet or modern dance.  This has included but is not limited to Dancing Labs mining Native Intelligence in Contemporary Dance, examining the South Asian Experimental Dance Artist experience, and connecting Black male-identified choreographers in relatively isolated creative communities through BLKmenMOVES.