The conference for Let’s Dance International Frontiers 2025 explores the theme of Intersection: Diasporic Dialogues. This annual gathering of artists, activists and practitioners has established a growing reputation as a leading voice and home for Black dance.
Intersection: Diasporic Dialogues is centred in exploring the dance practices of the Diaspora across Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. It initiates a conversation in culture, connections and collaborations forged through diverse socio-political environments with a shared global history. From Cuba and Columbia to Honduras and Haiti, Black presence has led to a diverse range of dance practices including kumina, kalinda, salsa, bachata, tango, son and merengue. However, Black erasure has also led to the appropriation and commercialisation of dance styles, removed from their ancestral connections. How do we connect the threads across the Diaspora to honour the past, present and future of Black dance in all its complexity?
Contributors include:
Melissa Blanco Borelli (USA/Cuba/Colombia)
Melissa Blanco Borelli is a critical dance studies scholar, choreographer and cultural critic. She is an Associate Professor of Theatre and the Director of the Dance Program at Northwestern University. Her research interests include Blackness in Latin America, critical dance studies, performative writing, popular dance on screen, Black performance theory, (Black) feminist (auto)ethnography, historiography, archives, and the digital humanities. She was the Principal Investigator in a UK Arts and Humanities Research Council and Colciencias funded grant project (2018-2021) that focused on embodied performance practices, memory, and archives working with Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities affected by the Colombian armed conflict. She is the author of She is Cuba: A Genealogy of the Mulata Body which won the Dance Studies Association’s De la Torre Bueno Prize® for best book in dance studies in 2016. In 2022, she received the UK’s Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA) Best Edited Collection prize for the special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review “Outing Archives/Archives Outing” co-edited with Professor Royona Mitra (Brunel University) and Professor Bryce Lease (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama).
Anita Gonzalez (USA)
Anita Gonzalez is a Professor of Performing Arts and African American studies at Georgetown University and a Co-founder of their Racial Justice Institute. She was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her edited and authored books include Performance, Dance and Political Economy (Bloomsbury), Black Performance Theory (Duke), Afro-Mexico: Dancing Between Myth and Reality (U-Texas Press) and Jarocho’s Soul (Rowan Littlefield). Gonzalez also directs, devises and writes theatrical works. Her innovative staging of historical and cross-cultural experiences have appeared on PBS national television and at Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, The Working Theatre, Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, New York Live Arts, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, and other national and international venues. Her librettos have been produced by Atlanta Opera (Faces in the Flames, 2023) and Boston Opera Collaborative (Courthouse Bells, 2023). Other musical writings include Zora on My Mind about Black women’s empowerment and entrepreneurship and Ybor City the Musical about Cuban unionism and racial division in 1918. Gonzalez is a Fellow in the American Opera Project’s Composers and the Voice programme, a member of the National Theatre Conference, Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, and the Dramatists Guild.
Diedre Nyota Dawkins and Torens L Johnson (USA)
Diedre Nyota Dawkins is a 2003 New York City Bessie Award winner for outstanding dance performance and a 2016 recipient of the President Obama Lifetime Achievement Award for National and Community Service. She is also the 2020 Evidence Award recipient for Artistic Expression with the theme Sistas Prepared, Positioned and Pivotal for Such a Time as This. She is the Founder and Director of Dance is Healing, a mentorship programme for middle school girls and is currently the Dance Director at ConneXions: A Community Based Arts School and the Founder and Director of Connexions Repertory Company. She served as an adjunct professor in dance at Coppin State University for 10 years and is currently Assistant Professor in Dance at The Johns Hopkins Peabody Conservatory BFA programme. Dawkins spends the summer months mentoring middle school dancers as the Director of AileyCamp Baltimore/Peabody.
Torens L Johnson completed the dance certificate programme at The Ailey School and performed nationally and internationally with Ailey II. He received his BFA from Towson University and served as a dance educator for Anne Arundel County Public Schools, Pasco Academy High School, Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School and Friends School of Baltimore. He taught dance at AileyCamp for many years and in 2021 he became the AileyCamp National Deputy Director. He has worked as a freelance educator and choreographer for Anne Arundel Community College, George Mason University, Morgan State University, and numerous educational institutions. His performing credits include ClancyWorks Dance Company, Stephanie Powell DansEnsemble, Edgeworks Dance Theater, Tony Powell Music and Movement, and Wylliams/Henry Dance Theater. In 2020, Johnson completed his MFA at Wilson College, and he currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Dance at Texas State University.
Cláudia Nwabasili and Roges Doglas (Brazil)
Cláudia Nwabasili and Roges Doglas are the Founders and Directors of Cia Pé no Mundo. The company was founded in the search for Black representation in the contemporary dance scene. Their dance language is based on practical and theoretical research on the dialogue between Afro-Indigenous Brazilian expressions and contemporary dance. With a very diverse dance background, Cláudia Nwabasili and Roges Doglas had the opportunity to study with artists from companies such as Francesca Harper (Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Forsythe Company), Marta Coronado (Cia. Rosas – Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker), Teresa Navarrete (Conservatory of Dance of Seville/Spain), Shelley Senter (Cia Trisha Brown)and Ko Murobushi, amongst others. Together they have toured several countries such as Argentina, Austria, Spain, France, Portugal and Russia. Acting as dancers, they have also worked with Antonio Nóbrega, Ismael Ivo, Ivaldo Bertazzo, Fernando Lee, Maxine Happener, Né Barros, Pablo Sansalvador, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Tati Sanchis and Tino Sehgal, amongst others.
Eduardo Vilaro (Cuba/USA)
Eduardo Vilaro joined Ballet Hispánico as Artistic Director in August 2009, becoming only the second individual to lead the company since its inception in 1970. In 2015, he expanded his role to include that of Chief Executive Officer. A member of the Ballet Hispánico family since 1985, Vilaro initially contributed as a dancer and educator before founding the Luna Negra Dance Theater in Chicago, where he served as Artistic Director for ten years, establishing a significant record of achievement. Vilaro has enriched Ballet Hispánico’s legacy with a bold and eclectic brand of contemporary dance that reflects America’s evolving cultural landscape. In 2024, Vilaro joined the Cultural Diplomacy Leadership Council of the Meridian International Center based in Washington, DC. Additionally, he received an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from his alma mater, Adelphi University, in recognition of his distinguished achievements in learning and the arts.
Melissa M Young (Honduras/USA)
Melissa M Young started her career at Dallas Black Dance Theatre as a dancer for eleven years, then moved up the ranks as Rehearsal Director, Academy Director, Associate Artistic Director, Interim Artistic Director, and was appointed as Artistic Director in September 2018. She was an Assistant to the choreographers, Hope Clarke for The Dallas Opera’s Porgy and Bess and Christopher L. Huggins for Dallas Theater Center’s production of The Wiz. Young is a graduate of the Leadership Arts Institute, Class of 2022, a programme of Business Council for the Arts in Dallas County. She is a member of the International Association of Blacks in Dance. Young has served as an advisory panellist for arts organisations that include the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture, Texas Commission on the Arts and Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, and is a former board member for the Dance Council of North Texas. Additionally, Young serves as a mentor for the 2024 Dance/USA Institute for Leadership Training (DILT), a mentee-driven national dance mentorship and leadership development programme.
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