Amaniyea Payne

Wednesday, February 26, 2025
Thursday, February 27, 2025
Troy Dance Lab, Lang Performing Arts Center 002

Wednesday, February 26^th
4:30-6:00pm
Discussion and Kassa Dance Tradition (Djembe dance)
KASSA
Country of origin: Guinea, N. E. Region
People of origin: Malinke
In the Malinke language, the word kassa means not only the grain attic but also the grower; it is also the name of a rhythm that accompanies the harvest. At this time, the peasants set off to work in the fields, which are often far removed from the village. They set up a camp where they will stay for as much time as necessary. Girls go with them to prepare their meals. The drummers follow the workers from field to field, playing Kassa as they go. The drums can be heard the whole day long; from time-to-time people dance before them. Once the work is finished, the workers' return to the village for a great feast called kassala don. (Mamadou Kante)
Drummers: Daryl Kwasi Burgee, Mike Pachusko, Steve Jackson

Thursday, February 27^th
6:00pm - 7:30pm
Sunu Dance Traditions (Djembe Dance)
SUNU (Sounou, Sunun)
Country of origin: Northern Mali, bordering Mauritania Kayes region of Mali
Border region between Guinea and Mali
People of origin: Kagoora, descendants of the Bamana Kakolo, Maraka, Bambara
Sunu is a popular rhythm that takes its name from a beautiful young girl named Sunu Mamady, who lived in pre-colonial times in the village of Sagabari. She was much loved in her village and was invited to participate in all celebrations, where her grace and beauty as a dancer were much appreciated. Sunu rhythm was created in her honor by a djembefola troupe in her village and was played and danced to celebrate good harvests. Young girls would demonstrate their grace, beauty and femininity; young boys would demonstrate their strength, vigor and athletic prowess (Karambe Diabate). Today Sunu is considered to be a rhythm of celebration that is played at marriages, baptisms and on traditional feast days (Mamady Keita). It is still a dance performed by both men and women to rejoice after a bountiful harvest (Mamadou Kante).
Drummers: Daryl Kwasi Burgee, Wesley Rast, Steve Jackson

Thursday, February 27
7:30 - 9:00pm
Vernacular Dance traditions featuring the Lindy Hop  

Bio: Amaniyea Payne, Former Artistic Director of Muntu Dance Theatre of Chicago for three decades and Adjunct Faculty at Columbia College School of Dance for three years, is an artistic force in global dance communities around the world. She is recognized for her talents as a dancer, singer, consultant, researcher, director, mentor, producer, choreographer, arts educator, costume designer, and humanitarian. Amaniyea has been the recipient of many awards. Her style of dance evolves from natural rhythmic movements based and influenced by dances and cultures of the African Diasporas. She has studied/trained, performed, and toured globally with prominent companies and well-known music and dance legends, such as Koumpo West African Touring Ensemble, Stevie Wonder, Cab Calloway, Ben Harper, International African-American Ballet, Bunny Wailers, Lindy-hop innovators Norma Miller, Frankie Manning, Momma Lou Parks, Mickey Davidson, and Muntu Dance Theatre of Chicago, to name a few.

Jennifer Binford Johnson

Monday, March 3, 2025
2:45pm - 4:15pm
Troy Dance Lab, Lang Performing Arts Center 002

GYROKINESIS® Workshop
The GYROKINESIS® body conditioning technique simultaneously stretches and strengthens the body with minimal effort, while increasing range of motion and developing coordination.
It incorporates principles from yoga, dance, gymnastics, swimming and tai chi.  A typical GYROKINESIS® class begins with participants practicing self-massage and simple breathing patterns known as "Awakening of the Senses."  Next, participants mobilize the spine through a series of simple and organic movements through the trunk such as arching, curling, bending, twisting and spiraling, all while seated on a stool.  The class moves to the floor, or mat. These same movement patterns are expanded to release the hip, knee, ankles, and so on, in all possible directions: front, back, twisting and turning.  Vigorous movement patterns are executed to enhance trunk stability, strength and endurance.  Class often finishes with a short relaxation period.
The practice of GYROKINESIS® can result in aerobic and cardiovascular stimulation, enhanced neuromuscular awareness, stimulation of the nervous system, increased mobility and articulation of the spine, shoulders, chest and hips.  Participants report feeling calm as well as energized.
GYROTONIC®, and GYROKINESIS® are registered trademarks of Gyrotonic Sale Corp, and are used with their permission.

Bio:
Jennifer performed worldwide as a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company, a soloist for the Pearl Lang Dance Company, Pilobolus Creative Services, Martha@…, Richard Move’s Moveopolus, Brian Sanders JUNK, as well as the Moscow Circus.
Teaching history: From 2001-2016, Jennifer was on faculty as an Associate Professor at the University of the Arts.  She taught Graham Technique, Graham repertory, modern dance, Body Pathways, and GYROKINESIS®.  Currently, Jennifer runs her own private practice in Center City, Philadelphia called Bodypathways, LLC, featuring the GYROTONIC® method.  She works with athletes, dancers, and warriors of all types who are interested in enhancing, healing, strengthening, and simply enjoying their physical experience.  As a freelance teacher, Jennifer teaches Dance and workshops in schools, colleges, universities, and Dance Companies worldwide.

Education: 
She earned her MFA in modern dance from University of Utah in 1993, working with renowned dance kinesiologist and author, Dr. Sally Fitt.  This ignited a deep curiosity in the subjects of optimal performance cross training, dance medicine, sport psychology, movement analysis, and the well being of the moving body.  She is certified to teach GYROKINESIS®, and GYROTONIC®.

Sarah Wilbur, Ph.D.

Wednesday, April 2, 2025
4:30pm - 6:00pm
Lang Performing Arts Studio, Cinema

Funding Bodies:  How well do people who fund the arts serve working artists?
This question has been asked by artists, intermediaries, policymakers, philanthropists, and researchers over the past six decades. To answer it requires historical understanding of the relationship between arts funding mechanisms, institutional policies, and the daily choices that artists make to sustain enabling environments for their work. This interactive lecture inventories models of economic support for US artists from the mid-twentieth century to the present. Attendees are invited to reflect on their experiences navigating economic contracts and opportunities and will join Wilbur in asking historical and humanistic questions about how “money motivates movement,”  in the arts. The lecture draws to a close with a review of new, COVID-era programs that structurally reject past models and challenge outmoded assumptions of the past.

 Bio:
Sarah Wilbur (she/hers) is a cross-sector choreographer and arts labor researcher whose primary goal is to credit arts labor and laborers in all aspects of her professional work. She is the author of Funding Bodies: Five Decades of Dance Making at the National Endowment for the Arts, (2021) the first comprehensive history linking US arts funding trends to dominant patterns of arts practice and organization. She is currently at work on her next book, which accounts economically and ethnographically for the shaping influence of the US health industry on local dance work and work worlds. Sarah co-edits the Arts in Context: Critical Performance Infrastructures book series (U-Texas Press) and co-facilitates the NEH-funded research collaborative "Building Equitable Arts Infrastructures." She is an Associate Professor of the Practice in Dance and Theater Studies at Duke University and Director of Graduate Studies in Dance

Christopher Roman

Tuesday, February 4, 2025
4:30pm - 6:00pm
Boyer Dance Studio, Lang Performing Arts Center 003

Ways in to Choreographic Thinking
This workshop is meant to share some of the tools I have been in dialogue with throughout my career that have led me to my own artistic and creative self-realizations. It is meant to share possibilities, a concentrated few among millions of other possibilities, to ignite one’s own creative imagination toward discovery of new possibilities, invention, co-determination and innovation. 

Bio: 
Christopher Roman began his formal training and danced as an apprentice with The School of Cleveland Ballet continuing his training at The School of American Ballet in New York City. He was subsequently invited into the ranks of the Pacific Northwest Ballet and as a soloist and principal with Edward Villella's Miami City Ballet, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, de Montréal, The Pennsylvania Ballet, Ballett Frankfurt and The Forsythe Company, performing a prolific and diverse array of important choreographic works, originating over forty roles and touring extensively worldwide. He has been a guest artist with Complexions Contemporary Ballet and Sasha Waltz and Guests in Berlin. Christopher was co-founder, choreographer and performer for the company 2+ with former Wooster Group video designer Philip Bussmann. William Forsythe’s Bessie Award winning »You Made Me a Monster« was created with Mr. Roman, and he is the 2009 recipient of Germany's highest theater honor Der Deutsche Theaterpreis DER FAUST for Best Performance: Dance in The Forsythe Company's, »I don't believe in outer space«. He is also featured in the Thierry De Mey  film of Forsythe's work, »One Flat Thing, reproduced«. As a ballet master, choreographic assistant and administrator Christopher has staged and assisted the works of William Forsythe internationally, been a teacher of improvisational techniques, a research collaborator for the Ohio State University project Synchronous Objects and the Score Manager and Education Coordinator for the Motion Bank initiative in association with The Forsythe Company. He was the curator and organizer for the MFA in Dance, European Study Program at Hollins University from 2011-2020. Since 2011 Christopher has been guest and adjunct faculty and choreographer in residence for Butler University, The Juilliard School, Hollins University, Princeton University, The Palucca Schule, Harvard University, The Goethe Institute worldwide, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Springboard Danse Montreal among others. Mr. Roman was one of the artists selected to be part of the final Solo Performance Commissioning Project with Deborah Hay for her work »Dynamic« and as one of the twenty artists to perform in Boris Charmatz’s curation of »20 Dancers for the XX Century« at MoMA. In September 2013, Christopher assumed the role of Associate Artistic Director of The Forsythe Company and was on the Board of Trustees for the Forsythe Foundation. In 2015, Christopher became the Artistic Director and Dance Artist with the DANCE ON Ensemble, based in Berlin. Together with the ensemble, he helped create 11 original works with Matteo Fargion, Rabih Mroué, William Forsythe, Kat Valastur, Deborah Hay, Ivo Dimchev, Johannes Wieland, Jan Martens and Ersan Mondtag and the Berliner Ensemble. In recent years he has toured a new evening created with William Forsythe for Sadler’s Wells entitled »A Quiet Evening of Dance« and collaborated with Deborah Hay as dancer and producer of her work Animals on the Beach which premiered at Tanz im August in Berlin as part of her “Re-Perspective”. In 2022 Christopher directed and co-choreographed the world premiere of the opera »Mexico Aura« with the Neuköllner Oper at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin. He was awarded his PhD from Roehampton University in London between the Departments of Dance and Drama, Theatre and Performance. 

Fall 2024 Dance Department Lecture and Workshop Series

Kim Y. Bears-Bailey

Thursday, October 24, 2024 
9:55am - 11:10am
Troy Dance Lab, Lang Performing Arts Center 002

Horton Master Class

Bio: Kim Y. Bears Bailey is the Artistic Director/PHILADANCO, where she performed for twenty years before retiring from the stage. She is a Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) graduate of The University of Arts where she taught for twenty-three years at rank of Associate Professor. Ms. Bears-Bailey joined PHILADANCO in 1981.

A 1992 Bessie Award recipient, (The New York Dance and Performance Award), she represented PHILADANCO at the 1988 American Dance Festival, performing works of Dr. Pearl Primus, and appeared in the movie Beloved. She is one of few artists granted permission to remount the works of many world-renowned choreographers including Talley Beatty, Pearl Primus,
Louis Johnson, and Gene Hill Sagan.

She received the Mary Louise Beitzel Award for Distinguished Teaching and the Silver Star Alumni Award from University of the Arts. Ms. Bears-Bailey is a member of the International Association of Blacks in Dance’s Next Generation of Leaders. Ms. Bears-Bailey received the 2017 “Bring it to the Marley” Icon Award and the 2018 “Legacy Award” from DCNS Dance.

Since 2009 Bears-Bailey has choreographed and directed an annual “Dancing with the Stars of Philadelphia” fundraiser event or Let’s See If We Can Help, Inc. Ms. Kim’s likeness is immortalized on an Artists Mural in the heart of downtown Philadelphia.

Aishika Chakraborty

Thursday, October 24, 2024 
11:20am - 12:35pm
Lang Performing Arts Center, Cinema

The Last Night-Dancers: Race, Class and Gender in Calcutta’s Nightlife (1940-1990)
The nighttime economy of the city of Calcutta in the 1940s consisted of European clubs that greeted racially fetishized transnational bodies from faraway lands for nightly entertainment of the ruling classes which also included soldiers and officers of the colony. The talk maps the shifting patterns of dance performance and consumption of the city’s erotic subculture, which started sporting cabaret theatres with local talents recruited from the ranks of refugees, migrants, and squatters. Drawing attention to the cultural politics of the middle-class intelligentsia, my focus privileges the voice of the last night-dancers of Calcutta who thrived with resilience despite the moral policing of a democratic nation.

Bio: Aishika Chakraborty is Professor and Director of the School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, India. Her research straddles gender history, dance history and feminist performance. Her book, Widows of Colonial Bengal: Gender, Morality and Cultural Representation (2023) is the winner of the Hiralal Gupta Research Award for the Best Book by a Woman Historian in the Indian History Congress, 2023. A bi-lingual author, Aishika has authored two books on the changing faces of contemporary dance of Calcutta, Kolkatar Cabaret: Bangali, Younata Ebang Miss Shefali (2020) and Kolkatar Nach: Samakaleen Nagarnritya (2019). Her forthcoming edited volumes are The Dancing Body: Labour, Livelihood and Leisure (with Urmimala Sarkar Munsi, Routledge, 2024) and Gendered Bodies, Social Exclusions: Contemporary Issues in Women’s Studies (with Nandita Banerjee Dhawan, Routledge 2025).

Nyama-McCarthy Brown

Monday , October 28, 2024 
6:00pm - 7:30pm
Troy Dance Lab, Lang Performing Arts Center 002

Teaching and Learning Salsa Dance Workshop
Salsa Rueda de Casino is a type of salsa dance that originated in Cuba in the mid-1950's. It is a circular dance form that connects all dancers in the circle, moves circularly, and uplifts community. Partners work together in a circle and change partners repeatedly. The dance is rooted in West African traditions of syncopated rhythm, call and response, and improvisational adornments to the movements from dancers. Together, dancers move seamlessly to a unifying beat, and communal goal. The dance is celebrated for its ability to bring large groups of people together, across generations, in a spirit of full and unwavering inclusion.  Sharing in this dance from another nation, culture, and community is also an opportunity to build cross cultural connections and understanding.

As a culturally responsive and sustaining educator, the number one question I receive is, "how do you teach students about cultures that you are not connected to without modeling appropriation?" It is an excellent, culturally sensitive and critical question. First, the only way to push beyond a monolithic worldview is if instructors can learn to value, and teach about other cultures. One can teach about other cultures from a position of a learner, and guest. With cultural appreciation and humility, you position yourself as a learner and open a learning experience up to students where the teacher and students learn together. You call in the experts of the form, point to your sources of information and learning in the room and beyond; and teach from a position of dy-expertise. Ideally, you also share a model of this process. I propose to model this teaching strategy using the culturally informed dance, Salsa Rueda de Casino.   

Nyama McCarthy-Brown is a Salcera (someone who loves salsa dancing). She studied salsa dancing in social settings for over a decade, and learned Salsa Rueda de Casino in Atlanta, Georgia in the early 2000s with master instructor, Julian Mejia. She is not an expert of the Cuban-based form, but a practitioner. 

Nyama-McCarthy Brown: Associate Professor of Community Engagement, The Ohio State University

Co-Sponsors: Swarthmore College President's Fund for Racial Justice, Education Studies Department, and Latin American and Latino Studies Program

Nyama McCarthy-Brown, Yinet Fernandez, Caridad Martinez

Tuesday, October 29, 2024 
4:30pm - 6:00pm
Lang Performing Arts Center, Cinema

Navigating Cultural Tides of Ballet: A Conversation with Latina Ballet Dancers in the United States
Dr. Nyama McCarthy-Brown is a culturally sustaining pedagogue deeply committed to dance education.  She is currently on faculty at The Ohio State University, as an Associate Professor of Community Engagement through Dance Pedagogy, where she recently served as the inaugural Artist Laureate 2024. Nyama teaches dance education and contemporary dance with Africanist underpinnings grounded the celebration of all movers. She is an established scholar, with articles in numerous academic publications. In 2017, her book, Dance Pedagogy for a Diverse World: Culturally Relevant Teaching in Research, Theory, and Practice was released. Her second book, Skin Colored Pointes: Interviews with Women of Color in Ballet was published this past spring, featuring the unsung stories of thirteen dance artists. Dr. McCarthy-Brown is an active consultant and workshop facilitator for diversifying dance curriculum for organizations such as: San Francisco Ballet School; Joffrey Ballet; Colorado Ballet; BalletMet; Dance Educators Coalition, Minnesota; Rutgers University Dance Department; University of Buffalo; Ohio Dance and Dance Education

Yinet Fernandez Arbolaez was born in Havana, Cuba. She started her dance studies at Alejo Carpentier National School of Ballet in Cuba. She was fortunate to have mentors like Marta Iris Fernandez, Ramona de Saa, and Caridad Martinez among other great teachers.  In 2008, she graduated and went to the National Ballet of Cuba for six years, where she danced ballets like Swan Lake, Don Quixote, Giselle, Coppelia, and Romeo and Juliet.  In 2016, she moved to the United States and started in 2017 at the Dance Theater of Harlem, where she has danced roles like Le Corsair pas de deux, Allegro Brilliant, This Bitter Earth, and Blake works IV.

Caridad Martinez graduated from the Escuela Nacional de Arte in Havana, Cuba. She studied with Fernando & Alicia Alonso, Joaquin Banegas, Azary Plisetski, Ramona de Saa, Karemia Moreno, and Jose Pares. As principal dancer of the National Ballet of Cuba she performed in the most important theaters in Europe, North and South Americas and Asia, with a repertory that included Coppelia, Las Fille Mal Gardeé, La Sylphide, Pas de Quatre, Don Quixote, Les Corsaires, Apollo,  Papillon and Times Out of Mind.  After leaving the National Ballet of Cuba, Martinez created and led The Havana Ballet Theater through a theater creative concept that transformed the performing arts in Cuba during the 80s. She also went on to choreograph for the Hispanic Heritage Awards, and for the acclaimed Julian Schnabel film Before Night Falls. Martinez was also Director of the Cuban Ballet School in Veracruz, Mexico and was distinguished with the honorary membership of the Dance Educators of Mexico and Dance Educators of America.  She has received numerous awards for her dance and theater choreographies, including an award from The Association of Writers and Artists in Cuba for two consecutive years, Cuban Cultural Center of New York, Veracruz State Government and BBB Montana, Honorary mention Varna International Competition and Tokio Olympic Competition.  Martinez currently serves as faculty member of JKO school of American Ballet Theater, the Alvin Ailey, American Dance Theater Ailey/Fordham and Certificate programs, Peridance Center, she has coached of Classical works for Dance Theater of Harlem, serves on the board of Ballet Beyond Borders, is a Member of the International Dance Council and is working on an oral history project about her life and career under the auspices of the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU with Elizabeth Schwall.

Co-Sponsors: Swarthmore College President's Fund for Racial Justice, Education Studies Department, and Latin American and Latino Studies Program

Elba Cena

Wednesday, October 30, 2024 
11:30am - 1:00pm
Boyer Dance Studio, Lang Performing Arts Center

“Por Tangos”
Join me for an exciting flamenco workshop designed for students of all levels! Whether you’re a complete beginner or have experience with flamenco, this workshop will introduce you to the vibrant and rhythmic world of Tangos, one of flamenco’s most accessible and lively forms.
What to Expect: In this class, we will start by exploring the basics of  "tiempo" (keeping time) and "contra tiempo" (syncopation), two essential elements in flamenco rhythm. Understanding these concepts will help you feel more grounded in the music and guide your movement with precision.
Palmas & Remates: You’ll also learn palmas (handclapping) techniques, which will be a key part
of the workshop, as palmas not only accompany dancers but also reinforce the compás (rhythmic structure) of Tangos. We’ll then move on to learning remates (footwork accents or finishes), where you’ll get to experiment with dynamic movements that punctuate your dancing.
Building a Sequence: By the end of the workshop, you’ll have learned a short Tangos choreography. The sequence will be built step-by-step in a way that allows everyone, regardless of level, to understand and enjoy. You’ll leave with a solid feel for the rhythm of Tangos and the confidence to piece it together in a fluid and fun way.
This will be a hands-on, interactive class where the students will experience the joy of flamenco
in a supportive and welcoming environment. Come ready to enjoy, stomp, and immerse
yourself in the passion of Flamenco.

Bio:
Hometown: Veracruz, México
Elba has been living in Philadelphia teaching at the School of Philadelphia Ballet since 2021 as a faculty member focused on Spanish Dance and Flamenco. Additionally, she is an Artistic Faculty member and Company Manager of Pasion y Arte Conservatory in Overbrook.

Originally from Veracruz, México, Elba Cena is a dance educator, choreographer, and highly accomplished dancer. She has been endorsed as a qualified teacher by Institution “Amor De Dios”, a highly esteemed and oldest institution in Madrid, where Spanish dance and Flamenco have been taught since 1953.

She and her mother founded the renowned school “Danzas Españolas Elba Cena” over 30 years ago, teaching Flamenco and Spanish Dance where their technique has been recognized at the National Center for the Arts in Mexico City.

She has studied with many renowned artists, including Cristobal Reyes (her primary Flamenco teacher), Olga Marcioni “La China”, Manuel Reyes, Merche Esmeralda, José Molina and Manuel Linan, Ana López (teacher of the Conservatorio real de Madrid Mariemma), Elba Hevia y Vaca, among others.

Elba has been recognized numerous times for her artistic direction, her solo dancing, and her dance company and school´s productions over the past 17 years. She has made several appearances with renowned symphony and philharmonic orchestras in Mexico and taking flamenco, to important stages within large productions such as the show Esencia y Consecuencia for 15 years, and the staging of Viva Lara accompanying great artists of international stature.

A recent twist in Elba’s career saw her collaborate with the British Junior Ice Skating Champions Phebe Bekker and James Hernandez. She choreographed flamenco elements into their program, where they won a silver medal at the Junior Prix in Ostrava 2022, first place at the British Championships and recently, third place at World Junior Championship in Calgary with their Flamenco program.

Elba is passionate about connecting and sharing dance with all of her students, regardless of where they are in their careers.

Fall 2023 Dance Department Lecture and Workshop Series

Miro Magloire

Monday September 11 at 4:30pm
Troy Dance Lab, LPAC 002