The National Center for Choreography-Akron to Host Arts Book Event in Chicago

The National Center for Choreography-Akron will soon come to Chicago to host Making Moves: Chicago book event on October 18 at The Goodman Theatre. Making Moves: Chicago is a free panel discussion and book event for Artists on Creative Administration. Panelists will include Christy Bolingbroke (Akron, OH), Raja Feather Kelly (New York, NY), Julia Rhoads (Chicago, IL), and representatives from Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project (Chicago, IL).

NCCAkron is the only currently operating national center for choreography in the U.S., a research and development hub for dance. Artists on Creative Administration: A Workbook from the National Center for Choreography is an arts and creative life book recently published in 2024 by The University of Akron Press. 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.

As part of a national tour with events anticipated in Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN, Detroit, MI, and Los Angeles, CA, NCCAkron will host a panel discussion with book contributors from Chicago and across the U.S. This free event will include contributing authors and case studies exploring themes of arts ecosystem building, adaptive thinking, and applying creative practices to administrative operations. Artists on Creative Administration will be available for purchase at the event.

Event Details

Making Moves: Chicago

Saturday, October 18, 7pm

Walter Lab at The Goodman Theatre

170 N Dearborn Street

Chicago, IL 60601

FREE with RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/making-moves-chicago-tickets-1748330185649?aff=oddtdtcreator

Making Moves: Chicago Panelists

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

Raja Feather Kelly, Choreographer, Director, the feath3r theory, AOCA contributing author
Julia Rhoads, Artistic Director of Lucky Plush Productions

Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project representatives
**additional panelists TBA

"Since publishing Artists on Creative Administration last year, the feedback has been phenomenal. But perhaps most important, we've come to realize the conversation about creative administration is just getting started. At this point in the dialogue, NCCAkron engages with the numerous dance hubs across the U.S. to add their stories and lived experience to this research and make it an ongoing discussion." invites 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 (published September 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 1-6) and long-form research series How People Move People (Series 1-4).

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