The National Center For Choreography-Akron Receives $90,000 From The National Endowment For The Arts

The National Center for Choregraphy-Akron has announced that it has been approved by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for two Grants for Arts Projects awards totaling $90,000. These grants will support NCCAkron's Dancing Lab: Immersive Spaces & Alternate Places ($30,000) as well as upcoming programming including Dancing Lab: Cypher; Dancing Lab: Intergenerational Partners; and a Creative Administration Research Learning Journey in Nashville, TN ($60,000). These awards are among 1,135 Grants for Arts Projects totaling more than $37 million as part of the NEA's second round of fiscal year 2024 grants.

NCCAkron Executive/Artistic Director Christy Bolingbroke shares, "This collection of program activity is particularly anchored in the Center's role as a national convener - to both reflect on the work thus far and to imagine where the dance field goes from here. Less product-focused, these opportunities aim at knowledge sharing and collective research including 25+ artists as well as those of us at NCCAkron as creative investigators. We are so grateful for this significant support from the National Endowment for the Arts."

"Projects like the National Center for Choreography-Akron's Dancing Labs and Creative Administration Research Learning Journeys exemplify the creativity and care with which communities are telling their stories, creating connection, and responding to challenges and opportunities in their communities-all through the arts," said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. "So many aspects of our communities such as cultural vitality, health and wellbeing, infrastructure, and the economy are advanced and improved through investments in art and design, and the National Endowment for the Arts is committed to ensuring people across the country benefit."

Project Descriptions

The National Center for Choreography-Akron is a research hub for dance. NCCAkron Dancing Labs bring dance artists, industry stakeholders, and thought partners from across the U.S. together to create a learning community and investigate shared questions. These National Endowment for the Arts awards support the following upcoming Dancing Labs:

Leading Dancing Lab: Cypher Amy O'Neal (Los Angeles, CA) will create a national iteration of her program "The Hybrid Lab: Conversations in Merging Dance Cultures." The Dancing Lab discussions and activities focus on artists who specialize in the movement languages of contemporary dance and Black social dance, specifically battle culture, hip hop, house dance, and street dance forms that emerged in the late 20th century. O'Neal's previous Hybrid Labs focused on specific communities (Los Angeles, Washington DC, and Seattle). This Dancing Lab will bring together artists from across the country who are practitioners and choreographers of Black social dance within the experimental performance, theater, and concert dance realms. Invited artists include Ephrat Asherie (New York, NY), Michele Byrd-McPhee (Jersey City, NJ), Tatiana Desardouin (Elizabeth, NY), d. Sabela grimes (Los Angeles, CA), Nicole Klaymoon (Berkeley, CA), dani tirrell (Seattle, WA / Washington DC), and Raphael Xavier (Philadelphia, PA).

Through Dancing Lab: Intergenerational Partners, NCCAkron responds to prolific choreographers (ages 65+) who have expressed interest in working with younger artists who have developed a strong artistic voice and new approaches to dance. NCCAkron will pair choreographers ages 65+ with choreographers ages 30-45 for creative exchange. In the home environment of each artist, the pairs will engage in conversations and shared studio time, exchanging working knowledge and new choreographic tools for both generations. All artists will then gather in Akron, OH, to further the creative exchange that will support their individual artistic journeys. The participating choreographers are Dianne McIntyre (Cleveland, OH), Donald Byrd (Seattle, WA), and Donna Uchizono (New York, NY). All of whom will help NCCAkron identify and select three choreographers (ages 30-45). Artists will be paired based on common inquiries in dancemaking, choreographic structure, and artistic/administrative practices.

Dancing Lab: Immersive Spaces & Alternate Places will bring select U.S. dance artists together and create a learning community over several months and three cities to explore immersive digital exhibitions and reflect on whether these experiences are the next frontier for dance performance. Can immersive spaces become the next normalized practice for choreographers to "tour" their work? Artists Raphael Xavier (Philadelphia, PA) and Bridgman|Packer Dance (Valley Cottage, NY) have already been curated for their past work in video and incorporating multimedia practices. Working in partnership with YoungArts, a third artist will be identified via an open application among their alumni to name a YoungArts Knight Technology Fellow to round out the cohort. In-person convenings will incorporate guest technologists, site visits, and administrative support coordinated by NCCAkron.

As an extension of NCCAkron's Creative Administration Research (CAR) program, NCCAkron will meet current CAR Artists and invited alumni in Nashville, TN, for an inaugural Learning Journey. The CAR program supports Artist Teams investigating alternate, artist-centered business practices for the dance field. Learning Journeys provide opportunities for Artist Teams to witness CAR case studies first-hand and learn about new business ideas that are gaining traction across the country. CAR Alumni Banning Bouldin and her work within the CAR program since 2021 reflected on the dance ecosystem she and New Dialect have built from their home base in Nashville. This Learning Journey will continue that reflection and include movement invitations, breakout discussions, and public events bringing a national context to understand further the work happening on the ground in Nashville. This extension of the CAR program coincides with the publication of the book Artists on Creative Administration: A Workbook from the National Center for Choreography (Tonya Lockyer, editor), to be published September 24, 2024.

For more information on other projects included in the NEA's grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.

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