The National Center For Choreography-Akron Will Host MAKING MOVES: MEMPHIS

The National Center for Choreography-Akron (NCCAkron) will present Making Moves: Memphis on Saturday, April 25 at the Memphis Listening Lab. Making Moves: Memphis is a free event with arts leaders from Memphis and across the U.S discussing the invisible labor and process beyond arts administration. This public conversation will include case studies exploring themes of arts ecosystem building, adaptive thinking, and resource sharing. Speakers will include Dacquiri Baptiste (Memphis, TN), Christy Bolingbroke (Akron, OH), Makini (Durham, NC), Marico "Dr. Rico" Flake (Memphis, TN), Marcellus Harper (Memphis, TN), DeMarcus Akeem Suggs (Memphis, TN), and Kevin Thomas (Memphis, TN).

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 Memphis event is part of a 2026 national tour with events in Boston, MA; Miami, FL; Houston, TX 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.

Event Details

Making Moves: Memphis
Saturday, April 25, 3pm
Memphis Listening Lab
1350 Concourse Ave Suite 269
Memphis, TN 38104

FREE with RSVP: nccakron.org/event-details/making-moves-memphis

Making Moves: Memphis Speakers*

Dacquiri Baptiste, Vice President & COO, Orpheum Theatre

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

Makini, Choreographer and AOCA contributor

Marico "Dr. Rico" Flake, Founder of UDIG Dance Academy

Marcellus Harper, Co-Founder, Collage Dance Collective

DeMarcus Akeem Suggs, Director of Creative & Cultural Economy, City of Memphis

Kevin Thomas, Co-Founder, Collage Dance Collective

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 in this country. Choosing a creative life carries real economic challenges, but also rich ecological possibilities for how artists sustain their work and communities. As a national center outside the perceived center of the arts universe, we have a lot in common with the Memphis arts community, and we're honored to highlight the labor and love of Memphis-based arts workers," 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 1-6) and long-form research series How People Move People (Series 1-4).