Dance Professor Featured in Multiple Programs

Assistant Professor of Dance Takiyah Nur Amin has presented multiple lectures and programs about African American dance to a variety of different audiences this semester.

On February 13 Dr. Amin presented “BlackDanceMatters” at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American arts + Culture. The lecture explored Black dance and performance traditions from a historical and political perspective.

On February 19 Dr. Amin gave the opening remarks at The 2016 Collegium for African Diaspora Dance (CADD) conference at Duke University. Dr. Amin is the one of the founding members of CADD, a community of scholars and artists that explore African diaspora dance as a method and resource of aesthetic identity.

On March 4 she attended the African American Theology and the Arts symposium, hosted by the Duke Divinity School Office of Black Church Studies to celebrate the intersection of African American theology and the arts. The symposium featured Ailey II, the young company of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Dr. Amin was part of the opening panel discussion titled “A Time to Dance: African American Theology and the Arts.” The panel addressed Black art as a source for theological inquiry and opened discussion on the theological implications of Black dance traditions, with Amin’s presentation on dance in the Black religious imagination.

Dr. Amin also served as a Learning Associate at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, during the spring break week, March 7-10. She participated in a public conversation on contemporary African American Studies and in an African American Literary Theory seminar, speaking about notions of dance as “corporeal orature.”

Dr. Amin teaches dance history and theory. Her research and teaching interests include Black performance and aesthetics, Black feminist thought and activism, 20th-century American concert dance, and pedagogical issues in dance studies. Read more about her work here.