Charlotte Dance Professor Creates Work, Curates Festival for London Museum

Associate Professor of Dance Kim Jones recently curated a dance festival for the National Maritime Museum in London to celebrate the reopening of the Ocean Court, the museum’s largest indoor space. The festival, entitled “Rhythm! A Dance Celebration of the Ocean,” took place at the museum on July 12 and included two works choreographed by Jones.

Using her connections to Kingston University, London, where Jones was formerly the UNC Charlotte Resident Director, and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, where she has previously taught, Jones assembled a total of 40 dancers to perform throughout the day.

The centerpiece of the redesigned museum space is a massive floor map of the ocean — “the world according to fish,” said curator Aimee Mook in an article for Royal Museums Greenwich — that illustrates that the Earth’s waters are an interconnected system. Inspired by that image, Jones curated a dance festival “that creatively interpreted connections across oceans and nations,” said Sarah Lockwood, Head of Engagement for the Royal Museums Greenwich.

“Using a contemporary dance movement language with local and international performers, Kim inspired communities to come together to honor the ocean and celebrate community wellbeing, cultural connection, ocean conservation and togetherness,” Lockwood said.

The marine map also inspired the choreography in two dance works that Jones created for the festival.

In “Vitruvian Human: The Living Map,” eight dancers moved across the map, “tracing unseen currents and shared inheritances,” Jones wrote in a program note (see picture above). “This work becomes a living cartography, a vibrant celebration of life, resilience, and the often-unrecognized achievements of people.” The ensemble included two dancers with UNC Charlotte connections: dance alumna Maria Borrowman ’24 and Shakira Karaboue, who was an exchange student to UNC Charlotte from Kingston University.

Funded with a Faculty Research Grant, the duet “Echoes Beneath the Surface” reflected the ocean’s rhythms, “its tides, currents, and the unseen forces that shape its flow,” Jones said. “Through shifting weight, suspended phrases and fluid partnering, the dancers trace imagined paths across water — routes marked by movement, memory and quiet resilience.” It featured dancers Laurel Dalley Smith, a current member of the Martha Graham Dance Company, and Lorenzo Pagano, a former Graham company member and a current member of Jones’s company, Movement Migration.

Jones is a régisseur for the Martha Graham Resource Center and danced with the Graham company from 2001 to 2006.  In 2017, she founded Movement Migration, a company of intergenerational and international professional dance artists. She is frequently called upon to instruct and choreograph internationally and last fall taught and choreographed at the Graham for Europe organization in Paris.