Ohio State Dance returned to Denmark in summer 2024 led by Associate Professor Daniel Roberts for a 3-week performance, teaching and cultural exchange program committed to engaging with dance as a creative movement practice with many forms of expression. The group partnered with Gerlev Sports Academy, an institution that has been highly focused on developing and creating excitement about movement and sports since it was founded in 1938. Gerlev has pioneered pedagogical activity in Denmark and contributed to revising the image of creative movement through parkour and dancing with a focus on tolerance, openness, community, and freedom.
A select group of BFA and MFA dance students performed at indoor and outdoor performance spaces. There were opportunities for the students to collaborate and perform with dance students from Gerlev Sports Academy. Students had multiple opportunities to participate in dance masterclasses, observe the Royal Danish Ballet and receive instruction from leaders with the Danish Dance Theatre. Students also visited historical and cultural sites and participated in community engagement activities. The program also included an intensive week of dance training in Copenhagen, one week of dance training in Berlin, Germany and an additional excursion to Odense. This study abroad program is facilitated by Ohio State’s Office of International Affairs and the Department of Dance.
Dr. Nyama McCarthy-Brown, the fifth faculty member in the Department of Dance to win a Ratner Award in April 2023, aims to grow and strengthen connections between Ohio State and students in Ghana in collaboration with Associate Professor Crystal Michelle Perkins. Bolstered by Perkins’ work on the the Archiving Black Performance project, they are creating a sequential dance curriculum that will further help the department develop African diasporic dance skills and equip students with meaningful experiences of curricular development. In her Ratner proposal, McCarthy-Brown said she will work to be a “change agent – changing the way people think about dance through disrupting historically privileged canons of teaching dance technique, unlocking new pathways of learning and creative processing for movement, and embodying and demonstrating a value for other culturally-informed movement practices.” In May of 2023, McCarthy-Brown and Perkins led a group of students on a creative research trip to Brazil and made numerous intersections of their respective research trajectories, many of which were explored on this research trip to Ghana. In June 2024, they brought Ohio State dance education students to the University of Ghana to work with Professor David Quaye and dance students there to support a process of dance preservation through codification of the Agbekor dance.
“In 2021, the Ohio State University Department of Dance joined a small number of dance programs (less than ten out of over 600) across the country that have expanded the primary curriculum to be inclusive of African diasporic dance forms,” says McCarthy-Brown. “Thus, projects that bring students into deeper study of dances of the African diaspora are essential in providing a solid foundation for a new and developing part of the Ohio State Dance curriculum. This research project signals to students, faculty, and the field, that dance research in-country is an integral part of working with dances of the African diaspora. Further, this research will provide us with the opportunity to continue the development of our new and budding African dance curriculum and teaching approach. Perkins, McCarthy-Brown, and select Ohio State Dance students learned the Agbekor dance in Ghana. Students also learned how to develop a sequential curriculum that can move in both vertical and horizontal learning pathways. This experience equipped students with traditional/indigenous African dance skills, engaging the body as archivists, additional archival field research, and tools for curriculum development. This culturally engaging and motivating experience aligns with our research vision and learning trajectory for continued growth; more significantly, it ensures the acquisition of and development of research skills, and high impact learning for students.”
Caption for first 3 photos: Ohio State Dance students on the first week of their trip to Denmark. The students visited Gerlev Sports Academy where they got to meet the students and perform.
Caption for the last 4 photos: Ohio State Dance students and faculty on their research trip to Ghana.
