Moonshine

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courtesy Stacy Letrice

A close-up of Stacy Letrice.

Stacy Letrice

media release: The University of Wisconsin-Madison Dance Department and Professor Chris Walker are delighted to present Moonshine, Friday, February 27, 2026, at 3:30 p.m. in the Margaret H'Doubler Performance Space, Lathrop Hall, 1050 University Avenue. This free event brings together campus and community artists in performance–an embodiment of the Wisconsin Idea on stage–to celebrate Black excellence and the Black experience with live music, contemporary theater and dance during Black History Month.

Atlanta-based artist Stacy Letrice will be in residence, bringing over two decades of dance expertise in African and Caribbean traditions and dance movement therapy to the Dance Department. Letrice is a dancer, choreographer, mas band leader, and dance/movement therapist with decades of global experience. During her time on campus, Letrice will teach masterclasses to UW-Madison students, and her residency will culminate in a solo performance for Moonshine on Friday.

Assistant professor Omari "Motion" Carter will present his film DON’T PLAY WITH L(KN)IVES, an original hip-hop screendance based on true stories of knife crime in the United Kingdom. The work brings together some of the United Kingdom’s finest hip-hop dancers, spoken word and original music composition, delivering a poignant message to young people of awareness, prevention and hope. Carter is a screendance practitioner, body percussionist and hip-hop dance culture aficionado born and raised in London, England. He teaches Hip Hop Technique and Theory, Screendance Production, and Body Percussion at the Dance Department. His latest research project, Our Vibes: A Vibrotactile Screendance Installation, combines a vibrating viewing platform with a body-percussion dance film. 

Local guest performances will include a large ensemble Hip-Hop performance from Barrio Dance, choreographed by AJ Juarez, work from Papa-Kobina, an award-winning dance artist and educator who has appeared on MTV’s Made, America's Got Talent, and World Of Dance, and Hanah Jon Taylor, owner of Cafe Coda and an internationally known jazz saxophonist & flutist.

UW-Madison students will also perform on Friday. 

MOONSHINE PERFORMANCE

Moonshine
Fri Feb 27, 3:30 p.m. 

Margaret H’Doubler Performance Space, Lathrop Hall

Free & open to the public. A reception in the Virginia Harrison Parlor, Lathrop Hall, will immediately follow the performance.



ABOUT THE CURATOR

Chris Walker is a professor in the Dance Department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Special Advisor to the Provost on the Arts. He is the founding artistic director of the First Wave Hip Hop and Urban Arts Program. A contemporary dance artist and scholar from Jamaica, Walker’s work investigates African Caribbean dance as a lens for environmental activism, social justice, and cultural preservation, bridging creative practice with academic inquiry.

Walker’s choreographic research engages with the cultural technologies and resistance aesthetics of the African diaspora as foundational movement and mythology for his contemporary art. His work spans concert dance, movement dramaturgy for theater, and interdisciplinary collaborations with visual and performance artists for museums, alternative spaces, and film. His internationally presented works—such as Rough Drafts, Facing Home: Love & Redemption, and Seaweed King—blend historical research, contemporary aesthetics, and embodied storytelling to interrogate themes of migration, resilience, and the politics of belonging. His choreographic explorations extend to artivism, using performance to engage communities in urgent dialogues on cultural and environmental sustainability.

In his scholarly research, Walker examines the historical and contemporary intersections of dance, identity, and community. His recent academic contributions include the chapter “Dancing to a Different Beat: The Distinctive Evolution of Dance Education Research in Jamaica,” a collaborative work that explores the historical development of dance education in Jamaica, particularly through institutions like the Edna Manley College and the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission. His other published works—Dance Inna Dancehall, Route to Roots: The Evolution of Jamaica’s National Dance Theatre Company and the School of Dance, Edna Manley College, Facing Home: A Phobia, and Seaweed King: Weaving Loss and Renewal in the Anthropocene (forthcoming)—extend these themes, blending personal and collective narratives of resistance, resilience, and cultural memory.

ABOUT STACY LETRICE

Stacy Letrice is a dancer, choreographer, instructor, mas band leader, and dance/movement therapist with over 20 years of local and global experience . She considers herself a medicine woman of movement who uses African and Caribbean dance forms as healing tools to maintain her happiness and follow her dreams. Like a jukebox, Stacy Letrice’s repertoire and expertise are diverse, wide-ranging, and seemingly without limit. Dance runs deep for Stacy Letrice and is where she feels most at peace and most at home.

The Chicago native began her dance journey at the age of eight after seeing an annual energetic celebration of African and African American dance called, Dance Africa. She first studied African Dance at Muntu Dance Theater of Chicago’s children's classes, which were led by Vaune Blalock. She later continued her journey under the direction of Danny Diallo Hinds at Sundance Productions. Sundance developed her dance background by providing her with training in African drumming, ballet, jazz, tap, hip-hop, Dunham, Caribbean, and West African dance.

ABOUT OMARI CARTER

Omari ‘Motion’ Carter is a screendance practitioner, body percussionist and hip-hop dance culture aficionado born and raised in London, England. Carter performed in the West End and international touring productions of ‘Stomp!’, was the founder and creative director of award-winning screendance production company Motion Dance Collective (MDC), in which he directed, produced, choreographed and performed in over 50 screendance works. He has screened work at over 100 festivals worldwide; including Loikka Dance Film Festival (Helsinki, Finland), Cinedans Dance on Screen festival (Amsterdam, Netherlands), British Urban Film Festival (London, UK), Lightmoves Festival of Screendance (Limerick, Ireland), San Francisco Dance Film Festival (USA), and Wisconsin Film Festival (USA), to name a few.  As a director, videographer, and editor, Carter has created digital-dance and documentary content for Breakin’ Convention Hip Hop Theatre Festival (UK), Parkinson’s UK, Dance Woking (UK), DanceXchange (UK), South East Dance, Akademi (UK), Calmer UK, National Centre for Circus Arts (UK), Jason Mabana Dance (UK), Pagrav Dance Company (UK), and Mouvement Perpétuel (Canada). As an independent choreographer and dancer, he has created works for Google, Britain’s Got Talent, Weetabix, Stanton Warriors, Greenpeace UK, Diabetes UK, and ADAD (Association of Dance from the African Diaspora).Carter is an Assistant Professor in the Dance Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he teaches Hip Hop Technique and Theory, Screendance Production, and Body Percussion. His latest research project ‘Our Vibes: A Vibrotactile Screendance Installation’, combines a vibrating viewing platform with a body-percussion dance film, allowing audiences standing on the platform to feel the sound from the screendance in front of them. 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Moonshine is produced by the UW-Madison Dance Department and made possible with support from the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives, the Black Cultural Center, Barrio Dance, and Cafe Coda. This event was made possible with generous funding from the Anonymous Fund and the Dance Department. The image above is Stacy Letrice, courtesy of the artist.