Dance

Open Studio with Ayodele Casel and the Company of Rooted

Open Studio with Ayodele Casel and the Company of Rooted

September 24, 2024

Calling all dancers of all forms, musicians, spoken word poets, vocalists to bring a short piece of original composition to share with artist Ayodele Casel as she builds Duke-specific elements of her piece Rooted to be performed in the von der heyden theater at the Rubenstein Arts Center, September 27 and 28.

Hip Hop

Hip Hop

September 5, 2024

Hip-Hop Workshop is an open-level, choreography-based dance class. Please wear sneakers!

Modern Fusion Dance

Modern Fusion Dance

August 30, 2024

Modern fusion for beg/intermediate movers - modern with africanist elements intertwined: polyrhythm, polycentrism, and overall african/jazz influence.

Last Ward: Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre

Last Ward: Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre

November 15 - November 16

A New York Times Critics’ Pick, Last Ward is a work of dance theatre that follows one man’s journey towards death in a hospital room. This highly visual evening length performance is performed in Arabic with English supertitles.

Racine Nago

Racine Nago

Wednesday, October 30 at 7:30pm

Racine Nago's powerfully expressive music features call-and-response vocals and intricate percussion to create crosscurrents of rhythm that move the body and nourish the soul.

Ayodele Casel: Rooted

Ayodele Casel: Rooted

September 27, 2024 - September 28, 2024

Catch "top-shelf tap dancer" Ayodele Casel perform "Rooted," a piece exploring shared roots and artistic intersections between tap, movement, spoken word, and jazz.

Bird-Watching: Pik-Kei Wong

Bird-Watching: Pik-Kei Wong

October 25 - October 26

Originally from Hong-Kong, Scotland-based choreographer Pik-Kei Wong explores gender, bodily-autonomy, and women’s desire in the US Premiere of Bird-Watching. Reservations will open this fall for this free event.

Soul Stretch

Soul Stretch

April 16, 2024

About the Workshop Soul Sweat + Stretch will feature fun, easy to learn moves to get your body moving and heart rate up, set to a playlist of classic RnB ...

Ballet for all Bodies

Ballet for all Bodies

May 6, 2024

About the Workshop Ballet Barre For All Bodies re-imagines the dance class as a radically inclusive and supportive environment for a diverse range of movers. In the workshop, we will ...

Dabke with Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre

Dabke with Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre

April 8, 2024

About the Workshop Dabke is a Levantine folkloric dance traditionally used in cultural moments of celebration and resistance. YSDT Dabke classes blend contemporary dance and theater with traditional Dabke tools (rhythm, footwork, unison movement etc.) ...

MFA in Dance Class of 2024

This year, join us in celebrating Julia Piper who will graduate with Duke’s one-of-a-kind graduate degree in dance! The Duke M.F.A. in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis (MFAEIP) supports artists whose creative research connects movement-based knowledge to critical discourses within and beyond the arts.

ChoreoLab

ChoreoLab

April 20, 2024

The Duke University Dance Program presented its spring dance concert, ChoreoLab 2024, featuring choreographic works from our faculty and students. Faculty choreographers: Kristin Duncan, modern; Jingqiu Guan, film; Iyun Ashani ...

ChoreoLab

ChoreoLab

April 19, 2024

The Duke University Dance Program presented its spring dance concert, ChoreoLab 2024, featuring choreographic works from our faculty and students. Faculty choreographers: Kristin Duncan, modern; Jingqiu Guan, film; Iyun Ashani ...

A Q&A with co-founder of Meshroom Marika Niko

Marika Niko, co-founder of Meshroom, taking place on Thursday, September 21, shares about the project and its mission to create a space for communal exploration and reflection. Marika says, "between the cozy seating areas and the numerous multisensorial happenings in the space, things are organically and constantly affecting and connecting with each other in micro/macroscopic ways; one is part of the 'mesh.'”

11th Organ II

11th Organ II

April 11, 2024 - April 12, 2024

Presented by “There is always a dark precursor that no one sees, and then the lightning bolt that illuminates, and there is the world.” Performed in the round, the second ...

DIANNE McINTYRE Group: In the Same Tongue

DIANNE McINTYRE Group: In the Same Tongue

February 16, 2024 - February 17, 2024

Presented by “In modern dance, the names of its persevering practitioners are like cherished objects. Dianne McIntyre is one such . . . one of dance’s most important African-American artists.” ...

Lost Dog: Juliet & Romeo

Lost Dog: Juliet & Romeo

January 25, 2024 - January 26, 2024

Presented by “A brilliant piece of dance theatre that’s honest and insightful about long-term relationships – and very funny” Lost Dog’s show reveals the real story of Romeo and Juliet. It ...

Zhixhuan (Miki) Zhu, MFA in Dance ’23: Infinite Infant

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.

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Leo Ryan, MFA in Dance ’23: for public view (twenty-four)

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.

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Marika Niko, MFA in Dance ’23: Meshroom

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.

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Brooks Emanuel, MFA in Dance ’23: Moving New Futures

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.

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MFA in Dance Class of 2023

Join us in celebrating the third cohort to earn Duke’s one-of-a-kind terminal graduate degree in dance practice! The Duke M.F.A. in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis (MFAEIP) supports artists whose creative research connects movement-based knowledge to critical discourses within and beyond the arts.

Lee Edwards, MFA in Dance ’22: Cyclical Navigations: In the In Between

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.”

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Amari Jones, MFA in Dance ’22: Embodied Resonance

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.

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MFA in Dance Class of 2022

Join us in celebrating the second graduating cohort of Duke’s MFA in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis (MFA/EIP). The MFA/EIP is a one-of-a-kind terminal degree program in dance focused on how artists work today and how dance contributes to crucial issues and conversations across arts and non-arts discourses.

Artists as Researchers: Dancing Through STEAM

Three Duke alumnae share how they split their time at Duke between rigorous science courses and a steadfast passion for dance. “When I got to college, it wasn’t really a question of whether or not I would continue to dance as I pursued a career in medicine,” Gabby Cooper '20 said. “It was how I could make both of them work.”

Ayan Felix MFA in Dance ‘21: Dance Performance As a Social Movement

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.

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Juliet Irving MFA in Dance ‘21: I Am. We Are.

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.

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MFA in Dance Class of 2021

We celebrate the inaugural cohort of Duke’s MFA in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis, a program dedicated to embodied knowledge and practice-led movement discourses.

Alyah Baker MFA in Dance ‘21: “Quare Dance”

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.

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Blurring the Lines: Collective Resonance During COVID-19

Courtney Liu '13, MFA in Dance '21, shares "Blurring the Lines" created with undergraduate students in Intermediate Ballet. "Creative projects are still being made and it is more important than ever to share, engage with, and celebrate each other's work," shares Emma Geiger, MFA EDA '22, who collaborated on filming and editing.

Barbara Dickinson: “Why Dance?”

"Dance reminds you and teaches you the infinite nuances of life.  Excitement and joy in life is not limited to the big bangs, the major earthquakes; it is also the light brush of grief or the gentle awareness of beauty.  Dance can teach, or reteach, us what that means," says Barbara Dickinson, Emerita Dance Faculty.

Two Events Making Duke the Center of Black Dance

The upcoming Afro-Feminist Performance Routes symposium and the Collegium for African Diasporic Dance highlight the contributions of Black dance, allowing artists, dancers, students, faculty, and the wider Durham community to share in critical inquiry and inspiration.

Synthball

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

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