This featured preview is part of a publicity exchange with the NC Dance Festival. For more information about CVNC’s publicity exchange program, follow this link.
Each year, the NC Dance Festival, a program coordinated by Greensboro-based Dance Project, brings professional modern and contemporary dance choreography to audiences and students across the state. The Festival provides up-close and personal experiences with dance through performances, classes, conversations, and more.
During the 23-24 season, the NC Dance Festival will feature nationally-celebrated Wideman Davis Dance company, for a 4-day residency in Greensboro from September 27-30. Wideman Davis Dance, based in Columbia, SC and directed by Tanya Wideman-Davis and Thaddeus Davis, is committed to revealing social and political issues through an African-American perspective, making work that is inspired by and engaged with current issues including race, class, gender, and location. During their residency in
Greensboro, which has been supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Wideman Davis Dance will engage multiple community groups in workshops around themes of history, memory, family legacy, migration, and how art and culture are threaded through every aspect of our lives. To culminate the visit, the NC Dance Festival will screen the short film, “We Dance,” followed by a lively conversation between Wideman Davis Dance and the audience.
In “We Dance,” through stunning visuals and vivid poetry, Tanya Wideman-Davis and Thaddeus Davis take us from Chicago to Montgomery, from New York to the point where their lives meet and become one. Along the way, they honor and signify on Black American art, poetry, and literature. They offer commentary on the importance of movement and migration to Black American identity, lived experience, and consciousness. And they show how all of our stories are kept, in the places we’ve been, and in the food we eat, and in the dreams that we so steadfastly chase.
The extended residency with Wideman Davis Dance is the first of its kind for the Dance Project, and Artistic Director Anne Morris is excited not just about the programming, but what the deeper involvement with the community can foster. Of Wideman Davis Dance, she says their work challenges artists to “think very broadly about how their dance work connects with the community, what it means to be a good citizen,” as well as “what is art and who gets to define that.” The workshop and film screening are part of a conversation larger than the one already happening in the North Carolina dance community, and Morris invites artists of all disciplines to participate! The film itself, she explains, “is very accessible to people without any dance experience,” and added that the talkback is meant to be incredibly collaborative and open.
Support for this residency is provided in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Cemala Foundation, Creative Greensboro, Ecolab Foundation, and our season sponsor Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist. UNC-Greensboro’s Interdisciplinary Art and Social Practice Program and NC A&T University College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences are providing funding and support for University workshops, and The African American Atelier is a sponsor for the Film Screening + Conversation. More information on Wideman Davis Dance is available on their website.
Wideman Davis Dance will hold workshops for students at UNC-Greensboro and NC A&T University, as well as for local senior citizens and creative artists from multiple disciplines. Tickets are available for the public activities.
Sept 28: Dance Technique Class
6-7:30pm, Greensboro Cultural Center Studio 323
Ages 13+, for intermediate/advanced dancers
Tickets: $18
Get tickets here
Tanya Wideman-Davis and Thaddeus Davis will lead an intermediate/advanced level dance technique class for students ages 13+. The class addresses the dancing body with a linear and curved movement vocabulary that challenges physicality and rhythmic dynamics.
Sept 29: Artist Workshop
6:30-8pm, Greensboro Cultural Center, Room 203
Tickets: $20
Get tickets here
Wideman Davis Dance invites local professional artists of all disciplines to engage in conversation and explore how their art practices connect to their communities. Thaddeus Davis and Tanya Wideman-Davis use their experience as two dance artists working and creating in southern Black communities to guide participants into greater understanding of how to live into your values through your artistic practice, and hone the skills you have to connect with your community. Through this workshop, artists will clarify what they believe and what kind of contribution they want to make in the world.
Sept 30: Film Screening + Conversation
4-5:30pm, Greensboro Cultural Center, African American Atelier Gallery
Tickets: $10 students/$15 general
Get tickets here
Join us for a public screening of the award-winning film, “We Dance,” followed by an interactive, community conversation with the artists of Wideman Davis Dance, on the themes of family, legacy, migration, memory, and more.
This residency engagement launches the 23-24 NC Dance Festival Fall season, which includes additional performances in Greensboro and Charlotte, as well as an artist residency program in Greensboro and Durham, and is characterized by collaboration and partnership.
- Oct 6-7: Charlotte show at Goodyear Arts featuring 4 NC choreographers – this year, the event runs for an additional night!
- Oct 27: Free performance for School Groups in Greensboro
- Nov 11: Creative Collaboration Exchange in partnership with TAB Arts Center
About Dance Project: For more than 30 years, Dance Project, Inc. has been inspiring, educating, and entertaining Greensboro and the state through the NC Dance Festival, our School (a community studio in the Greensboro Cultural Center), and our community engagement and performance programs. Founded and directed by Jan Van Dyke until her death in July 2015, Dance Project is now directed by Anne Morris and Lauren Joyner. Our mission is to cultivate the field of modern dance in NC, nurturing a community of artists, audiences, and students by providing opportunities for training, performance, collaboration, and employment. Our vision is to build a stronger community through dance. We believe that communities that have strong arts programs are stronger communities, and that dance training/experience helps to create smart, creative, empathetic, and involved citizens and community members.