2025 Master of Fine Arts in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis (MFAEIP) Graduate
Chania Wilson, thought-provoking and pensive, passionate and curious, gave us a thesis project that released her inner experiences, created community, and moved the six vivacious dancers to an aesthetic of endurance and palpable desire. In her collaborative project, There is a ladder: Reckoning the Contemporary Black Woman Perspective in Post/Modern Dance, Chania worked out identity, vulnerability, anger, physical exertion, and play to embody what she refers to as liberatory archival practices that preserve, innovate, and integrate a Black choreographic voice into an offering that expands fixed notions of Black womanhood. As a danced autoethnography, Chania developed a process and choreography to claim people as her people. Pulling dance history and her personal archive into the present through the lens of a contemporary woman’s sensibilities and experiences, the group work commits full physicality, musicality, and gesture to weave layers of the visual installation, poetry, photographs, graphics, text, and video into a cohesive expression. Stay curious! is the message. With risk, tenderness, and movement intricacies, she finds a home among the continuum of dance creatives ascending and descending the ladder while navigating resistance and neutrality to give shape and voice to embodied boldness and self-assurance.
—Dr. Andrea E. Woods Valdés
Director of the Duke University Dance Program
Associate Professor of the Practice of Dance
I consider myself a choreographer and dance filmmaker whose work integrates modern techniques such as Safety Release, Horton, and Humphrey with influences from jazz, Black social dance, and Africanist aesthetics. My teaching incorporates Brain Dance and Bartenieff Fundamentals, emphasizing choice and individuality while adhering to modern movement aesthetics. Collaboration is central to my choreographic process, fostering a collective exploration of movement.
As a Black artist, identity deeply informs my work. I am continually exploring how my Blackness shapes my art and life, recognizing it as both a source of power and a lens through which my art is often received. Yet, I grapple with questions about perception: Can I be recognized both as a Black artist and simply as an artist? Must my work center the Black experience to be understood or valued?
Through African American studies and archival research, I aim to expand representations of Black identity in America, exploring themes beyond violence and trauma to include the mundane, ordinary, and extraordinary. I am also interested in the role of abstraction in Black postmodern choreography. Even as I aim to create apolitical works, my Blackness and intersectional identity inherently politicize my art. This tension intrigues me, as it highlights the interplay between intention and perception in artistic creation.
Teaching is another passion of mine, where I approach dance through an intersectional lens that integrates modern, Afro-diasporic, and historical influences. For me, dance reflects life and culture, serving as a visceral response to human experiences. In teaching technique, I prioritize authenticity, encouraging dancers to fully commit to movement—to push, fall, yield, and respond honestly. I view dance as something that is performed but not performative, valuing the live, authentic response that defines the art form and draws me to it.
Chania Wilson, a Raleigh, NC native, is a choreographer, educator, and artist pursuing an MFA in Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis at Duke University, graduating in 2025. A University of North Carolina Greensboro alumna, she holds a BFA in Choreography and Performance with a minor in Arts Administration. As co-director of Enloe High School’s dance department, she founded the Ignite Dance Intensive, earning the United Arts Community Spotlight Award in 2024 through her company, Nine Movement Collective. Chania’s choreography has been featured in residencies like the NC Dance Festival and Tobacco Road Dance Productions, and her films showcased at ADF Movies by Movers and GSO Dance Film Festival. Focused on Black performance theory and embodied archival practices, she combines modern, contemporary, and jazz techniques to reflect her culture. A proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Chania remains dedicated to community service and advancing the arts in public schools and beyond.
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.
