The National Center for Choreography - Akron

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The National Center for Choreography - Akron NCCAkron – Research and Development for Dance. Founded in 2015. Research and Development for Dance. The National Center for Choreography - Akron.

What does scholarship in dance look like?Ananya Dance Theatre (St. Paul, MN | ) is an ensemble of transnational feminist...
10/14/2026

What does scholarship in dance look like?

Ananya Dance Theatre (St. Paul, MN | ) is an ensemble of transnational feminist dance artists who create contemporary dance theater, upholding social justice through choreography. For 20+ years, ADT has extended beyond conventions of dance-making and sharing: rigorous dance practices as a methodology of community-organizing and movement-building.

In 2021, as part of Cara Hagan’s Community Commissioning Residency, NCCAkron screened Ananya Chatterjea’s dance film “the blues of my unraveling are laced with the salt of your memory,” choreographed and performed by Ananya with collaborators Sharon Bridgforth (text), Darren Johnson (cinematography, editing), and Renée Copeland (score).

In 2025, ADT and NCCAkron worked together on a Creative Residency to realize “Swapnō Jhnāp: Dream Jumping” during their 20th anniversary season.

In 2025-26, Ananya participated in a short-term Admin Experiment titled Leveraging Revenue. Building on our Creative Admin Research (CAR) Investigative Retreat approach, these experiments are time-limited strategies to try out a new way of working or thinking administratively. Ananya engaged with Thought Partner Malik Burnett (Washington, DC | ) to consider a certification process for their devised contemporary feminist dance form and practice, Yorchhā.

Ananya is also a featured podcast guest on the 7th season of "Inside the Dancer’s Studio” and a part of Brinda Guha’s curated NCCAkron podcast series, How People Move People - As Grandmother Says, Ep 1.

Ananya Dance Theatre will perform PREM | Love: An Occupation, October 10-17 at The Southern Theater in Minneapolis.

💫 As part of our Anniversary, we're sharing stories of artist residencies, collaborations, and research from the past decade—just a glimpse of the 800+ artists from 100 U.S. cities who have shaped our first 10 years.

Photo 3: Gregory Addison: Photo 4: Canaan Mattso
Artists: , ,

10/06/2026

NCCAkron is excited to announce choreographer Cynthia Oliver (Urbana, IL | cynthia oliver) of Cynthia Oliver Co Dance Theatre as the latest recipient of the $50,000 Knight Choreography Prize. Each year the NCCAkron selects a living choreographer or artist collaborative whose body of work is distinguished not only for their artistry but also for their originality of thought and impact. Made possible by Knight Foundation (), this award is designed to support forward-thinking artistic experimentation and career longevity of choreographers in the United States.

“She is a prolific choreographer and has been inspiring students and audiences alike to listen, respond, and engage in the world in which we live, consistently, for decades. For Cynthia, innovation is not just a trending term of the moment but an embodied practice.”
- says Christy Bolingbroke, Executive/Artistic Director of NCCAkron

Link in bio to read the full press release.

📸: Photos 1& 3: Laura Bianchi for Boglias, Photo 2: Julieta Cervantes

Choreographers are versatile, how does this show up in our collaborations?Taja Will (they/them) is a q***r, disabled, La...
09/29/2026

Choreographers are versatile, how does this show up in our collaborations?

Taja Will (they/them) is a q***r, disabled, Latine (Chilean) adoptee, performer, choreographer, somatic therapist and Healing Justice practitioner based in Southside Minneapolis, on ancestral Dakota lands.
After co-hosting a grant writing intern* together in 2019, Taja (a 2018 McKnight Choreography Fellow) was scheduled to have a Creative Residency for their work “Blood Language” in April 2020. In a COVID-19 pandemic pivot, NCCAkron instead collaborated and continued to work with Taja () in many different forms, including virtual guest teaching, as a podcast guest on an episode of Inside the Dancer’s Studio, and in commissioning Taja to design choreographic prompts for our 2020 Residency-in-a-Box.

Taja also created and developed their feature-length film “LÍNEAS de SANGRE,” with filmmaker Sequoia Hauck () during a two-part NCCAkron Satellite Residency the first half of 2021.

In Fall 2021 Taja also co-facilitated a virtual study group for white dance educators, with author and NCCAkron artist alum Hope Mohr (San Francisco, CA | ). The group worked in coalition to interrogate Hope’s “Shifting Cultural Power" — the first book published in the NCCAkron Series in Dance by UA Press — and the questions it raises for practice and pedagogy.

*That 2019 grant writing intern was NCCAkron Program Manager Nakiasha Moore-Dunson (Akron, OH) when she was finishing up her graduate degree.

💫 As part of our Anniversary, we're sharing stories of artist residencies, collaborations, and research from the past decade—just a glimpse of the 800+ artists from 100 U.S. cities who have shaped our first 10 years.

09/25/2026

Q: How do you navigate a rut, right? Like you know, do you have any exercises or modes of self-care to sort of jumpstart something?”

A: “I’ve come to see it all as a sort of spiritual practice. And a rut for me is not self-theorizing, but I know something else is blocking it. Something’s blocking my soul. It’s not my creative inspiration. It’s like I sit with that because, you know, in some ways it’s. It's the necessary work understanding a priority I always have in my work is to not make it about me. I'm always interested in something bigger than me, but something that I can live in. I, why did that make like, I, I want to find a world that I want to live in. I wanna belong.”

Season Seven: Episode Two of Inside the Dancer’s Studio is out now, hosted by NCCAkron Executive Artistic Director Christy Bolingbroke (Akron, OH | ). In this episode, NCCAkron’s Executive/Artistic Director, Christy Bolingbroke, enters the ‘studio’ with Columbus, Ohio-based choreographer and founding artistic director of dance theatre X, Charles O. Anderson (). Known for his rigorous kinetic storytelling and commitment to dance as a tool for social justice, his work explores Black identity, resistance, and radical imagination.

takes listeners into the process of making dance through interviews with choreographers from across the United States. To explore all podcasts, access transcripts, and subscribe, visit nccakron.org/podcasts or click the link in our bio.

Produced by Lisa Niedermeyer () of Handmade Future Studio, with audio engineering by Rahsaan Cruz, theme music by Floco Torres (), cover art by Micah Kraus (), and transcription by Arushi Singh ().

At NCCAkron, the way community is held feels intentional and authentic and iterative.” – anna thompson, slowdangertaylor...
09/22/2026

At NCCAkron, the way community is held feels intentional and authentic and iterative.” – anna thompson, slowdanger

taylor knight & anna thompson are co- artistic directors of slowdanger, a multidisciplinary performance organism (Pittsburgh, PA/College Park, MD | ).

At a 2023 Technical Residency, slowdanger had the freedom to experiment with technical aspects of their work “SUPERCELL.” They focused on the closing section of what they call a landscape ballet in body, sound and light: a bath for the senses following a chaotic and visceral middle.

During their time in Akron, they also participated in the 21st Century Dance Practices program, a capsule series of classes for UA dance students guest taught by today’s working dance artists. They were also one of the first collaborative duos to give an Inside the Dancer’s Studio podcast interview.

In 2024, slowdanger joined the Creative Administration Research program through an open application, working with Thought Partner Hope Mohr (San Francisco, CA | ) to create more room and possibilities for them to try things in the spirit of ‘positive failure’ as they continue to evolve.

taylor and anna also joined us for Making Moves: DMV in August 2026, a discussion that will be shared on our YouTube channel soon.

💫 As part of our Anniversary, we're sharing stories of artist residencies, collaborations, and research from the past decade—just a glimpse of the 800+ artists from 100 U.S. cities who have shaped our first 10 years.

Photo 1: Mariah Miranda

09/18/2026

Q: “I think one of the sort of misconceptions sometimes from like really young choreographers is that they think like, oh, I just have to like unlock the dance that's in that piece of music…But how you described it is so much more multifaceted, multi-layered, and they an additional dialogue between the body and the music too, and honoring all the, what I think I is, I know is also important to Souls is the multifacetedness of who you are as people.”

A: “We're in this group that is tasked with being together, first of all. Secondly, making music together. You know, creating stories together, bringing ourselves to it. But we also carry a responsibility to not be the all encompassing representation of our form, but to be clear representations of the lineage. We know how we're showing up and we're choosing that. Right? And so I'm really proud of that fact. And, and it's, it's heavy sometimes. So you have to kind of like figure out in terms of your question, what is our choreographic relationship to making music together? It's also what Ariel said about us meeting on the floor with House music or meeting on the floor with nineties music 'cause we're all nineties babies.”

Season Seven Episode One of Inside the Dancer’s Studio is out now, hosted by NCCAkron Executive Artistic Director Christy Bolingbroke (Akron, OH | ). In this episode Christy enters the ‘studio’ with New York based Amanda Castro (), Arielle Rosales (), and Brinda Guha () of Soles of Duende (), a multicultural, all-female trio based in the rhythms of Tap, Flamenco & Kathak dance.

takes listeners into the process of making dance through interviews with choreographers from across the United States. To explore all podcasts, access transcripts, and subscribe, visit nccakron.org/podcasts or click the link in our bio.

🎉 NCCAkron has been awarded a $500,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation in honor of Executive/Artistic Director Christy ...
09/15/2026

🎉 NCCAkron has been awarded a $500,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation in honor of Executive/Artistic Director Christy Bolingbroke’s decade of visionary leadership.

Over the past decade, NCCAkron has served as one of only two national choreographic centers for dance artists in the country. Under her leadership, the organization has grown from one employee to a team of eight staff and contractors, collaborating with 800+ choreographers and arts leaders from 100+ U.S. cities. She has championed a culture that questions conventional best practices, embraces rigorous experimentation, and finds value in productive failure.

This support from the Mellon Foundation will ground NCCAkron’s work supporting dance artists and the dance field at large, while the organization continues to imagine its next decade.
Congratulations, Christy, on ten extraordinary years. 💙 Thank you for the ingenuity, dedication, and vision that continue to move this field forward.

Join us in celebrating Christy — drop your congratulations in the comments! 👇

Happy Star Trek Day!When NCCAkron first met with Mitchell Rose to talk about commissioning one of his hyper-matchcutting...
09/08/2026

Happy Star Trek Day!

When NCCAkron first met with Mitchell Rose to talk about commissioning one of his hyper-matchcutting films for our 10th anniversary, he pointed out when he first saw "NCCAkron" he thought of the first USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) on Star Trek. That reference actually resonated with us. As a start-up organization this past decade...delving into discovering and realizing opportunities in creative research and development..."to boldly go where no man has gone before."

Fast-forward nine months later, it is a total coincidence that Mitchell is actually arriving in Akron on Star Trek Day, today, September 8th! In honor of the final frontier of dance we share the fleet that keeps the ship going boldly where dance has never gone before.

Join us for Studio to Screen with “Cinematic Choreography Commander” Mitchell Rose (Asheville, NC | ). This event features a screening of a selection of his dance films alongside a curated conversation with him led by NCCAkron “Chief Starfleet Vision Officer” Christy Bolingbroke at the Nightlight Cinema (Akron, OH | ). Explore how the screen shapes creative process, access, and the economics of producing dance ahead of a new NCCAkron-commissioned project premiering later this year.

Studio to Screen with Mitchell Rose
Thursday, September 10, 2026
6:15–7:30pm
The Nightlight Cinema
30 N High St, Akron, OH 44308

FREE!

Register with link in bio.

How can a longitudinal relationship between an individual artist and an organization shape a career?“NCCAkron removes th...
09/02/2026

How can a longitudinal relationship between an individual artist and an organization shape a career?

“NCCAkron removes the idea that there's a singular pathway in dance or success. They have encouraged me to question what I truly want out of this career and my work, and then helped me investigate further.” – Dominic Moore Dunson (Akron, OH | )

NCCAkron's relationship with Akron-based choreographer Dominic Moore-Dunson has evolved alongside his career, supporting artistic practice and professional development. Through his choreographic aesthetic of Urban Midwest Storytelling, Dominic transforms big ideas into compelling, relatable experiences for audiences.

In 2018, Christy Bolingbroke (Akron, OH | ) connected Dominic with Dianne McIntyre (Cleveland, OH) for creative mentorship and feedback on his first evening-length work, “The Black Card Project.” Dominic also participated in Dancing Lab: BLKmenMOVES (2020–2021), which brought together Black male choreographers from across the U.S. The Lab placed Dominic's choreographic and community organizing work in dialogue with colleagues from Texas, Massachusetts, and North Carolina.

In 2021, while developing “inCOPnegro” during a Creative Residency, Dominic joined the Creative Administration Research think tank. He was matched with Thought Partner Antuan Byers (New York, NY | ) and developed administrative practices to reflect his artistic vision.

Dominic is also a contributing author to “Artists on Creative Administration”; his chapter is “Building an Audience That Cares.”
Throughout NCCAkron's first decade, Dominic has remained a thoughtful and active collaborator, participating in residencies, panels, think tanks, and public programs, embodying our goal to bridge the hyperlocal and national dance worlds.

💫 As part of our Anniversary, we're sharing stories of artist residencies, collaborations, and research from the past decade—just a glimpse of the 800+ artists from 100 U.S. cities who have shaped our first 10 years.

09/01/2026

Happy 901 Day, Memphis! 🎉

In honor of 901 Day, we're looking back on NCCAkron's visit to Memphis this past April. We hosted a conversation at the Memphis Listening Lab exploring what it takes to build a thriving arts ecosystem. Where does creative thinking meet the everyday realities of leading and sustaining arts organizations?

At this event arts leaders share their stories and lived experiences, fostering a dialogue that explores adaptive thinking and creative leadership. Featured speakers included Dacquiri Baptiste (NCCAkron board member | ), Marico “Dr. Rico” Flake (Memphis Jookin’ | ), Marcellus Harper and Kevin Thomas (Collage Dance | ), DeMarcus Akeem Suggs (NCCAkron board member | ), with Artists on Creative Administration contributing authors Christy Bolingbroke (Akron, OH | ) and Makini (Durham, NC | ).

Watch "Making Moves: Memphis" on YouTube, the perfect way to celebrate 901 Day.
https://youtu.be/ab5uwPEBwys?si=DJ-Lsqts1cdCny8p

What insight from the panel stuck with you? Comment below. 👇

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Guzzetta Hall, 228 E Buchtel Avenue #398F
Akron, OH
44325

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