Ohio State’s inaugural Artist Laureate brings expert knowledge of inclusivity, community-engaged dance to new role

Peter Volpe
Thu, 11 May 2023 01:31:15 +0000
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Associate Professor Nyama McCarthy-Brown was announced as Ohio State’s inaugural artist laureate on April 4. Credit: Nyama McCarthy-Brown

For some, community dance classes may be a hobby, a means of physical fitness, a requirement for school or a wedding ceremony — but for Ohio State’s newly appointed inaugural Artist Laureate and associate professor of community engagement through dance pedagogy, Nyama McCarthy-Brown, community dance is much more.?

Since dancing at a young age at the local recreation center in her home of San Francisco, dancing has been a part of her, and this passion for community dance has helped McCarthy-Brown in her 20-year career as a nationally recognized performer, choreographer and dance educator. Now in her new role, she will “elevate the university’s impact by bringing arts programming to underserved communities across the state,” according to the Ohio State Office of Academic Affairs website.?

“Community dance has always been just part of who I am. It’s not a hobby. It’s not a project. It’s not a side gig,” McCarthy-Brown said. “It’s just part of what I do.”

McCarthy-Brown’s first book, “Dance Pedagogy for a Diverse World: Culturally Relevant Teaching in Research, Theory, and Practice,” was published in 2017, becoming what Ohio State’s Office of Academic Affairs calls “an anchoring text in dance education.” As a professor, McCarthy-Brown works to create an anti-racist dance curriculum.

She has been involved in diversifying the curricula of other prominent dance programs, including the San Francisco Ballet School and Cincinnati Ballet. McCarthy-Brown said the process is rooted in understanding and engaging with communities that may differ from one’s own, and for this reason, dance as a community space is a primary focus of her research.

“We research the lived experience as a people to understand humanity better, and humanity includes the body and how we use the body,” McCarthy-Brown said. “Dance is typically seen and understood in the realm of performance as art; spirituality as a conduit to higher powers and energies, and also social relations; and so we can see dance in community on all of those levels.”

McCarthy-Brown said her research takes a variety of forms but mainly seeks to use dance as a way to give a voice to marginalized, underrepresented and oppressed communities.

“Sometimes it’s about creating a dance that is performed in the community, and sometimes it’s about pulling people from the audience and breaking that fourth wall and having people participate as performers,” McCarthy-Brown said. “Sometimes it’s about looking at the medicinal purposes of collective healing that takes place in dance.”

Quianna Simpson, a master’s student in dance at Ohio State, said her experience learning from McCarthy-Brown has been enlightening.

“There’s a way in which she invites people into the space, and we become collaborators in the educational process, which I think is very different from most classes, classrooms and even dance programs,” Simpson said.

McCarthy-Brown said becoming more sensitive to the issues of different communities and cultures is what drives diversity, equity and inclusion work. She said the process is about developing an awareness and sensitivity to one’s own position and privilege.

“I find community-engaged work is necessary to keep your senses ready and alert to who is marginalized in a room,” McCarthy-Brown said. “Whose voice isn’t being heard here? What culture don’t I know about and therefore have not created space for?”

McCarthy-Brown said the language used when engaging with different communities can set the tone for both sides of an interaction. Just as important for her is true engagement — creating a safe space where people feel seen — which is a large part in the design of her revered curriculum.

“It’s also interesting as an ally, as a person, as somebody who holds space for people,” McCarthy-Brown said. “Do I signal a certain amount of safeness? Do I signal that I am open and receptive? And if I don’t, what might I do differently?”

McCarthy-Brown said the Ohio State community has embraced her strategies for making dance curricula more inclusive. Ohio State dance students are required to take classes in ballet, African and contemporary dance while learning how different styles of dance have been co-opted from other marginalized cultures.

“We talk about race, class and gender in all of our classes — we all do,” McCarthy-Brown said. “Some instructors are more skilled at framing it than others, but now that our students are talking about it, they bring it forward in all of our classes.”

McCarthy-Brown said it is important to come together as a community and decide what the community cares to be sensitive to and address.

“She makes sure that in her lessons, she brings in folks, their ideas and whatever they may be bringing to the classroom,” Simpson said. “Providing space for folks to show up and be seen, whether that’s through their own experiences or their culture.”

In her new role as Artist Laureate, McCarthy-Brown will create a traveling dance production inspired by her book “Skin Colored Pointes: Interviews of Women of Color in Ballet”, according to an Ohio State press release.

As outlined in the press release, the production will bring arts programming to underserved communities across the state and “disrupt ideas of who gets to dance, while inviting audiences to identify and demonstrate expressions of allyship and inclusion through words, movement or technology.”

McCarthy-Brown said she is excited to take a group of students to study and practice dance with students at the University of Ghana at Accra next year to further explore how community-engaged scholarship intertwines with human nature.?

“I believe that all people dance. Dance is human experience — it’s accessible to humans,” McCarthy-Brown said. “So part of my work is bringing people into thinking more about the dancing body — utilizing the dancing body, understanding that there is liberation in the dancing body and that it can actually give us more access to personal agency, confidence and connection with other people.”