The University of Texas at Austi
Guest artist Charles O. Anderson is staging ‘Manifesting Destiny,’ part of a larger work in development.
As the UW-Madison Dance Department prepares for its annual faculty concert, it, like other college dance programs, is confronting inequities in the field of dance, higher education, and dance training.
Students “want to be part of the big social movement we are all living through and want to be part of the need to form a more anti-racist world,” says associate professor and department chair Andrea Harris. The field of dance, especially in higher education, is confronting biases, exclusions, and assumptions, Harris continues.
Students have been at the forefront of this reckoning and UW dancers have been “very vocal in letting us know they want a more diverse and inclusive approach to dance.” The curriculum has traditionally been Eurocentric and the department is working to change that.
The residency of guest artist Charles O. Anderson, newly appointed chair of the well-regarded dance department at Ohio State University, has Harris excited and hopeful. “Anderson is very clearly at the vanguard,” she says.
The faculty concert will feature works by Anderson, as well as Kate Corby, Li Chiao-Ping, Collette Stewart, Jin-Wen Yu and Chris Walker.
Anderson’s critically acclaimed style, described as Afro-contemporary, blends storytelling with inflections of dance theater to create work that speaks to the experience of the cultures of the African Diaspora. Anderson is also a leader in anti-racist approaches to dance education. While chair of the University of Texas-Austin’s dance department, Anderson founded a master of fine arts program in dance with an emphasis on social justice that Harris heralds as unique.
Anderson, who arrived on campus the third weekend of January, immediately auditioned dancers for his piece in the upcoming faculty concert and started rehearsing the next day. “My career always somewhat straddled academia and the professional world,” says Anderson, noting “I’ve tried to make noise on both fronts.” He is the founder of the company Charles O. Anderson/dance theatre x. He also consults with a number of dance programs around the country, assisting them with their work centering equity, diversity and inclusion. “Over the past eight years, I have seen some lovely shifts, at least in awareness that it is a possibility.” But, he notes, implementation has varied across the country, due in part to the racial and ethnic demographics of the states where the dance programs are located.
After a whirlwind (and bitterly cold) start at Wisconsin, Anderson reports that “Everyone seemed to be really receptive to the work and movement sensibility.” He is re-staging a section of a new, larger work that he began developing at the American Dance Festival last summer, “Manifesting Destiny.” He cast a core group of dancers who could “get him the furthest, the fastest” but also is open to additional cast members committed to social justice joining the work, which he describes as a collective action.
Maureen Janson Heintz
Work from Li Chiao-Ping will be on the program.
The Faculty Concert runs for two weekends, Feb. 9-11 and Feb. 17-18, at Lathrop Hall’s Margaret H’Doubler Performance Space.
“There is going to be some really strong, groundbreaking and fascinating work from Anderson that is grounded in storytelling and designed to give witness to the human experience,” says Harris. She assures audience members who may find dance intimidating that there will be something everyone can relate to.
