Autumn semester is well underway, and I marvel at the range of activities going on in our department. The drumming-dancing in our African classes, the tombé pas de bourée down the hall, and the flying low or the high arch and spiral in the next studio. Books are being written, digital projects are developing, choreography and performances abound (again), and students and faculty are working in and with the Columbus community. Importantly, considerations of diversity, equity, and inclusion are fore fronted in curricular, programmatic and personnel decisions. We continue the Community Conversations that were started in the beleaguered 2020 by our former chair Dr. Nadine George-Graves and the Anti-Racist Working Group of our Dancers in Graduate School organization.
While Dr. George-Graves is no longer at Ohio State University her contributions carry on. Read here about the Anti-Racist Certificate Program, a project that she coordinated last year, helping to raise significant funds for its development. Read here too about how the Dance Notation Bureau Extension is both revealing its gems and continuing to contribute to legacies, through the Archiving Black Performance project and a new course, Embodied Access.
I want to shout out two extraordinary awardees: Dr. Nyama McCarthy-Brown received both the National Dance Education Organization Outstanding Dance Educator in Higher Education award and Dance Teacher Magazine Dance Teacher Award; and Crystal Michelle Perkins received the Princess Grace Choreography Honoraria. The department itself feels blessed and bestowed with gifts: we have two searches this year, one for a chair/faculty and one for a faculty in dance and health; and we welcome visiting artists Suzan Bradford-Kounta, Gamal Brown, Donald Isom, Bebe Miller, Mikey Thomas, United States Artists Fellowship winner Abby Zbikowski, and through the Israel Institute, Alon Karniel.
It is my honor to serve as Interim Chair this year, my last year at Ohio State. It is a privilege to support the extraordinary faculty and staff so that they may create the transformative conditions for the students to succeed.
Susan Van Pelt Petry
Professor, Interim Chair
