Zhixuan (Miki) Zhu is an artist, movement explorer and spirituality devotee. Born in a traditional Buddhist family, she was fascinated by the occult since an early age, and her dance is inspired by it. Her thesis project Infinite Infant is a forty-minute live performance situated in a cosmic underworld. Through dual movements, two entangled feminine spirits share and unveil the infinite reincarnations that elevate love.

Leo Ryan is an interdisciplinary movement-based performance and video artist. Their thesis project for public view (twenty-four) is a solo installation performance that explored queer and transcorporealities in the American South by combining movement, video art and speaking segments derived from memory work-based interviews with another queertrans collaborator from Alabama.

Marika Niko is a choreographer, mover and thinker from Japan. They choreograph immersive, multi-sensorial, embodied gatherings and experiences for audiences to explore different ways of relating relationships to space, to time, to other humansand to other non-humans. Her thesis project Meshroom creates a performance environment that forms an intellectual/intentional community around an open dancefloor.

Brooks pursued his M.F.A. to find the most effective ways for him to combine his dual backgrounds in dance and social justice work. For his thesis research, Brooks developed the Moving New Futures workshop, which uses improvisatory movement to help social justice practitioners imagine new possibilities for a just society.

A Summer Dance Intensive with American Dance Festival (ADF) blossomed into self-discovery through modern dance and community.

Orsolina 28, a dance program that brings together artists to not only provide opportunities of practice, but also of mindfulness of movement to the surrounding world.

Training at the Ndere Cultural Centre to learn Ugandan dances and instruments as part of the Development of Music, Dance, and Drama (MDD) Program in Kalangala, Uganda.

Lee Edwards is an interdisciplinary movement artist and storyteller whose primary modes of making are through dance and poetry. Their thesis project Cyclical Navigations: In the In Between conceptualizes storytelling as a practice of embodied memory recollection—one that aids in the navigation of cyclical temporalities in the present, or the “In Between.”

Amari Jones’s research at Duke encompasses racial identity formation processes and the specific roles that the public K-12 educational system plays in these processes. Her Embodied Resonance workshops were an improvisational movement practice where participants danced to Black-produced and voiced podcasts, music, and lectures to investigate and better understand their own Black identities.

Ife Michelle Presswood is a practicing choreographer and performance artist. Her thesis project is the curation of a documentary dance film titled “Through Her Looking Glass: Emancipation of the Black Muse,” which follows Ife and her dance company, Ife Michelle Dance.

Namajala Naomi Milagros Washington Roque is an artist and educator dedicated to learning, integrating, embodying and sharing the medicines of Afro-Atlantic diaspora movement and music through a spiritual framework. Her outward-facing thesis project is a fête, a celebration of selected deities that is open to the public.

Ayan Felix is an MFA in Dance student researching how physical and social improvisational practices interact in spaces that affirm Blackness and gender fluidity. Their research relies on multidisciplinary collaboration to choreograph worlds that blur the line of audience-participant, performance-practice and artist-organizer.

Juliet Irving is a trans-disciplinary movement artist and graphic designer who creates interactive and immersive experiences that emphasize modes of embodiment. Her thesis, I Am. We Are., is a series of immersive, pop-up performance installations situated in forested sites on Duke campus that activate new worlds and ways of being for Black femme to exist within.

Courtney Kristen Liu is a choreographer, teaching artist and performer. Building on a foundation of progressive, feminist and critical pedagogy, her thesis project brings relevant literature into a toolkit for ballet educators with an aim to reduce self-objectification in classrooms.

Alyah Baker, MFA in Dance ’21, is a dance artist and scholar working at the intersection of art and embodied activism. Her thesis project, “Quare Dance: Fashioning a Black, Queer, Fem(me)inist Aesthetic in Ballet,” examines the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in ballet through the lens of Black Queer Women.

Courtney Crumpler, MFA in Dance ‘21, is a movement artist, organizer, researcher, and translator working between Brazil and the United States. Her thesis investigates the roles of embodied knowledge and experience in political protest, organizing, and education.

American Ballet Theatre Studio Company & Stefanie Batten Bland monuMEnts WORLD PREMIERE: SUN, JAN 27, 2019; SUN, JAN 26, 2020; SAT, FEB 15 & SUN, FEB 16, 2020 For two ...

Bijayini Satpathy ABHIPSAA — a seeking WORLD PREMIERE: FRI, DECEMBER 10 – SATURDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2021 Hailed by The New Yorker as “a performer of exquisite grace and technique,” Bijayini ...

Leyla McCalla Breaking the Thermometer to Hide the Fever WORLD PREMIERE: WED, MARCH 4 – FRI, MARCH 6, 2020 Breaking the Thermometer to Hide the Fever is a multidisciplinary performance ...

Urban Bush Women Walking with ‘Trane DUKE PERFORMANCES PREMIERE: FRI, FEB 7 & SAT, FEB 8, 2014 In 2014, Urban Bush Women celebrated thirty years as an unstoppable force in ...

Shen Wei Dance Arts Re- (Part II & III) DUKE PERFORMANCES PREMIERE: MON, JAN 12-SAT, JAN 24, 2009 During his unprecedented two-week residency at Duke in January 2009, the polymathic ...

Malpaso Dance Company, Arturo O’Farrill & the Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble Dreaming of Lions DUKE PERFORMANCES PREMIERE: FRI, FEB 24 & SAT, FEB 25, 2017 Thanks to thawing relations between ...

Ronald K. Brown / Evidence Dance Company, Jasonn Moran & The Bandwagon The Subtle One DUKE PERFORMANCES PREMIERE: FRI, FEB 20 & SAT, FEB 21, 2015 In this collaboration, celebrated ...

Pam Tanowitz Dance & Simone Dinnerstein Goldberg Variations WORLD PREMIERE: FRI, OCT 6 & SAT, OCT 7, 2017 When pianist Simone Dinnerstein and choreographer Pam Tanowitz began discussing an evening-length ...

Donald Byrd & Spectrum Dance Theater The Theater of Needless Talents DUKE PERFORMANCES PREMIERE: THU, FEB 19 & FRI, FEB 20, 2009 For two nights in February 2009, Donald Byrd ...

I attended the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company Summer Intensive located in Ga'ton, Israel, a 4-week program that was led by professional dancers from the host company and other successful companies.

My internship involved both administration—managing class registrations, creating email content, and developing a system to analyze attendance data for grant reporting—and assisting in up to 8 dance classes per week.

I continued my study of Kuchipudi dance under the aegis of legendary dancers Raja, Radha and Kaushalya Reddy in New Delhi, India, expanding my knowledge of the traditional repertoire while also working on new, modern choreographic ventures.

Development of a tactile and responsive instrument for live performance by graduate students in Duke's Computational Media, Arts, and Culture program.