Joya Powell

Students from the “Dance as Activism” course this spring will perform a new movement piece based on excerpts from Shapiro-Silverberg Distinguished Writer in Residence Mahogany L. Browne‘s poetry collection “Chrome Valley” at Lincoln Center in New York on September 9. Their performance, called “Movement Through The Valley,” received its first showing in the Bessie Schönberg Dance Studio April 14. The “Dance as Activism” course is taught by Assistant Professor of the Practice in Dance and African American Studies Joya Powell. On May 8, the class will share individual projects—solos and duets, and a workshop—in conversation with social issues of their…

Without using words, movement can tell stories and communicate complex emotions. Wesleyan students across different class years presented new group works focusing on a diversity of techniques, methods, and aesthetic approaches in the Winter Dance Concert “11 Short Stories” on December 9 and 10 in the Center for the Arts Theater. Dance makers from the class DANC 250 “Dance Composition: Choreography Workshop,” taught by Assistant Professor of the Practice in Dance Joya Powell, focused this past fall on the process of making a dance in a theatrical setting. Similar to a collection of short stories by different authors, the resulting…

Wesleyan University faculty and students played an important role at Middletown’s 2022 Amistad Journey to Freedom Community Day Celebration in Harbor Park Saturday, October 8. Event planners coordinated with Discovering Amistad to offer age-appropriate tours of the replica vessel, which arrived in Middletown one week earlier. Jesse Nasta ’07, assistant professor of the practice in African American Studies, who wrote his honors thesis on Middletown’s Beman Triangle, was already signed up to participate, leading the 4th Annual Middletown Middle Passage Ceremony. “The Middle Passage and the Middle Passage Ceremony are an origin story of the Beman Triangle and other…

‘Dance as Activism’ Students Create Movements to Poems from Browne’s ‘Chrome Valley’

Students Share Personal Experiences Through Dance

Wesleyan Joins Middletown To Recognize Amistad Journey to Freedom Day