UNC Charlotte professor’s new hip-hop conference celebrates cultural impact

Assistant Professor of Dance Ashley Tate recently spoke with The Charlotte Observer about the inspiration behind her upcoming Hip-Hop conference, her experience growing up immersed in a family of artists and how her insatiable curiosity led her to see dance as a tool to understand and preserve history.

Tate has danced and choreographed for most of her life. And the further she has gone with the art form, the more she has turned her focus toward amplifying voices of the past and present. Tate, an assistant professor of dance at UNC Charlotte, specializes in African diaspora movement, especially hip-hop and jazz dance, and how these forms connect to identity and social change. Those topics are front and center this year across several major creative projects she’s leading — including an inaugural hip-hop symposium at the university in October that will explore hip-hop as a cultural phenomenon.

Charlotte has a vibrant hip-hop culture, Tate said, and that’s something she wants to highlight through the symposium being held on the university’s main and uptown campuses from Oct. 17-19. To the Beat Y’all: A Hip Hop Symposium features live performances, scholarly presentations, community conversations and workshops. That includes research presentations on hip-hop, identity and activism, interactive workshops in education and creative practice, and a freestyle dance battle. The conference is not just for academics or dancers. Tate said it’s for anyone who is curious about the origins and role of hip-hop over time and how it continues to be a catalyst for social change, empowerment and identity.

“I just don’t think a lot of people know how powerful hip-hop is,” Tate said. “Hip-hop is … kind of interwoven in our pop culture now. It’s not something you can pick up and put down or consume and throw away.”

Read the full story by Liz Bertrand in The Charlotte Observer. Photo by Matt Kelly.