MAKING MOVES: DMV to Bring Free Dance Conversation to Baltimore's Red Emma's

The National Center for Choreography-Akron (NCCAkron) will present Making Moves: DMV on Thursday, August 6 at Red Emma's Bookstore in Baltimore, MD. Making Moves: DMV is a free event with arts leaders from the region discussing the invisible labor and arts administration processes behind the scenes. This public conversation will include local dance case studies with national relevance that explore themes of labor organizing, adaptive thinking, and the power of community. Speakers include Christy Bolingbroke (Akron, OH), Quynn Johnson (Washington, D.C.) Ryan K. Johnson (Washington, D.C.), taylor knight (College Park, MD/Pittsburgh, PA), Mallory Miller (Washington, D.C.), Tariq Darrell O'Meally (Largo, Maryland), anna thompson (College Park, MD/Pittsburgh, PA) and C. Brian Williams (Washington, D.C.).

NCCAkron is one of only two national centers for choreography in the U.S., a research and development hub for dance. NCCAkron is currently celebrating 10 years of serving as a connector and cultural matchmaker for those looking to experiment with dance. This DMV event is part of a 2026 national tour with events in Boston, MA; Miami, FL; Houston, TX, Memphis, TN, and beyond.

These national Making Moves events continue the conversation set forth by Artists on Creative Administration: A Workbook from the National Center for Choreography, a 2024 book published by The University of Akron Press as part of the NCCAkron Series in Dance. Edited by artist/cultural strategist Tonya Lockyer (Suquamish, WA) this book features essays from and interviews with 30 artists and advocates from the dance and performing arts worlds, sharing first-hand stories of creative administration in action through case studies, interviews, life tools, and experiments.

The event is FREE with RSVP: https://www.nccakron.org/event-details/making-moves-dmv

Making Moves: DMV Speakers

Christy Bolingbroke, Executive/Artistic Director of NCCAkron and Artists on Creative Administration (AOCA) contributor

Quynn Johnson, Sole Defined Co-Founder

Ryan K. Johnson, Sole Defined Co-Founder

taylor knight, slowdanger Co-Founder

Mallory Miller, Arts & Labor Professional

Tariq Darrell O'Meally, Blacklight Founder

anna thompson, slowdanger Co-Founder

C. Brian Williams, Step Afrika! Founder

Copies of Artists on Creative Administration will be available for purchase at the event.

'Since publishing Artists on Creative Administration, the response has shown us that we've begun to surface the often invisible labor of being an artist and arts worker in this country. Navigating a creative life includes many challenges, but it also reveals the power of community, collective action, and the ways artists organize to sustain their work and advocate for more equitable futures. This conversation speaks not only to artists, but to anyone engaged in advocacy, organizing, or building communities of care through their work,' shares Christy Bolingbroke, NCCAkron Executive/Artistic Director.

What is creative administration? The majority of contributing authors for Artists on Creative Administration are alumni from NCCAkron's acclaimed Creative Administrative Research (CAR) program intentionally designed to build a bridge between 20th century working knowledge and the 21st century arts ecosystem. Based on the premise there is no one way to make art, so there is more than one way to manage business and administration, the CAR program interrogates typical 'best practices' to imagine other ways forward with artistic ethos at the center of administrative thinking.

In 2020, The University of Akron Press and NCCAkron established the NCCAkron Series in Dance. Bolingbroke was named series editor. In 2021, NCCAkron also established a digital publishing umbrella NCCMedia, an artist-centered and artist-driven platform for telling stories and elevating the voices of dance artists and genres historically left out of the codified dance canon. Whether digital media or in print, this new approach to arts publishing and advocating for the artform exemplifies NCCAkron's commitment to artist-led storytelling and systems thinking - reflecting on recorded history, documenting untold stories, and creating a humanities archive for future dance audiences, students, and scholars. Artists on Creative Administration: A Workbook from the National Center for Choreography (2024) is the second book in the NCCAkron Series in Dance. The first book in the series, Shifting Cultural Power: Case Studies and Questions in Performance (Hope Mohr), was published in 2021. NCCMedia podcasting includes short-form interviews Inside the Dancer's Studio (Seasons 1-7) and long-form research series How People Move People (Series 1-4).

Don't Miss a Baltimore News Story
Sign up for all the news on the Summer season, discounts & more...