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.
September 23, 2024
Doris Duke Artist Ayodele Casel will present her interactive performance Rooted at Duke Arts on September 27 & 28, and will discuss the Triangle’s dance scene with Andrea Woods Valdes, Lormarev Jones, and Nicole Oxendine.
September 5, 2024
Hip-Hop Workshop is an open-level, choreography-based dance class. Please wear sneakers!
August 30, 2024
Modern fusion for beg/intermediate movers - modern with africanist elements intertwined: polyrhythm, polycentrism, and overall african/jazz influence.
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.
Friday, January 31 at 7:30pm
Durham-native and former Alvin Ailey dancer Hope Boykin brings "States of Hope," a powerful and honest work of dance-theater that narrates her own journey as a dancer.
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.
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.
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.
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 ...
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 ...
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.) ...
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.
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 ...
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 ...
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.'”
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 ...
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.” ...
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 ...
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 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 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 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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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.
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.
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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.
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A Summer Dance Intensive with American Dance Festival (ADF) blossomed into self-discovery through modern dance and community.
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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’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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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.
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.”
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.
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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.
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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 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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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.
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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, 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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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.
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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.
Duke Magazine's Scott Huler writers about a new Duke University MFA program that "endorses dance as a politically, socially, and spiritually transformative force in society."
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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Duke Dance instructor Glenna Batson shares a reflection on the role of movement and dance during the coronavirus crisis and the social distancing that comes with it.
"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.
This article was originally published on the Duke Performances blog Duke Performances is partnering with Duke Arts and WXDU on a livestream series hosted by DP on Facebook Live and Instagram Live. This Wednesday, May 13, we’re continuing the ...
Sarah Wilbur, assistant professor of the practice of dance, was teaching seminars on collaborative performance and valuing labor in the arts—just as the arts world entered a period of unforeseen challenges.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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Learn more about professional opportunities with Duke Dance, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, and Duke Performances.
A glimpse inside the first year of the American Ballet Theatre’s (ABT) Studio Company residency at Duke University.
Florian is the managing director of the American Ballet Theatre Studio Company.
Sugarplum fairies return to Duke after a long absence, thanks to Devils en Pointe.
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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Anthropologist+Dancer Anne-Maria Makhulu debuts our Arts+ series on faculty who began their careers—and foundational training—in the arts.
Rising senior Ibanca Anand updates a traditional dance form for an egalitarian age.