Duke Dance terminal degree, MFA in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis provides an exclusive opportunity for graduate student-artists to devise interdisciplinary academic and artistic project works in their respective fields of expertise supported with significant coursework within and outside of Dance. This year, the Dance Program will celebrate five graduating artists, Natalia Cervantes, Indigo Cook, Sadé Jones, emily liptow, and Chania Wilson, who bolstered the cultural, social, ritual, diasporic, and artistic diversity, a strength that Duke is distinguished for. The interdisciplinary research of the class of 2025 spanned a range of scholarly themes including the study of 20th and 21st century avant garde art presented in the form of scores, manifestos, ritual, embodied performance and methods of collective facilitation; a celebration of Black womanhood and the art of storytelling as a symbolic transmitter of culture and societal assets communicated across generations and throughout its diaspora; the experience of Threshold Singing as a supportive healing ritual performed through the unknowns of movement improvisation, change, loss and death; the canon of Black representation and a critique of how Blackness is defined in the modern / postmodern field through the medium of dance, film and archival research; and a LatinX experiential practice of “welding” as a layered investigation of personal and vicarious migrational memories processed through embodied translation. The cohort’s mentorship by core Dance faculty was complemented by faculty in the Departments of Theatre Studies, Music, Art, Art History and Visual Studies, African and African American Studies, and the Center for Documentary Studies, further strengthening the interdisciplinary foundations of the degree program.
On behalf of the Dance faculty and staff, I congratulate the fifth MFA in Dance cohort at Duke for their passionate commitment to their artistry and scholarship and for their accomplishments at Duke and beyond. We stand by, encouraging their ambitious goals and future endeavors.
Interim Director of Graduate Studies, MFA in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis
Professor of the Practice in Dance
Duke University Dance Program
The Master of Fine Arts in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis (MFAEIP) is a two-year, full-time, terminal degree program grounded in Duke’s interdisciplinary approach. This program encourages research that responds to urgent global issues and joins critical conversations both within and beyond the arts.
