The Duke Dance Program MFA in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis (MFAEIP) welcomes its fifth cohort to campus this fall. The two-year, full-time, terminal degree program is grounded in Duke’s interdisciplinary approach and encourages research responding to global issues while joining critical conversations both within and beyond the arts.
Sarah Wilbur, director of the MFAEIP program and associate professor in the Dance Program, looks forward to how the cohort’s individual creative endeavors will influence Duke’s campus and the broader Durham community. She explains that each of the highly distinctive projects fortifies Duke’s role as the only terminal M.F.A. degree program in dance among private research universities in the United States.
“The cohort’s research pursuits have invigorated us due to their creativity and breadth of interdisciplinary scope,” Wilbur shares. “Each artist embodies a distinct set of values, cultural perspectives and interests, but also embodies the essence of Duke's dedication to dance as a vehicle of knowledge, a critical mode of experimentation and a framework for elucidating the possibilities of human movement in and far beyond the arts.”
Wilbur notes that the research proposals are wonderfully diverse, while seamlessly intertwining dance and movement concepts with pivotal political issues in the arts, humanities, social or environmental sciences.
“As is the case with our powerful returning M.F.A. Julia Piper, who is deep into environmental justice creative investigations in dance, each member of our fifth cohort aspires to forge new and novel cross-campus connections, marking significant milestones for our burgeoning program,” she says.
Natalia Cervantes has danced since the age of two, studying diverse movement forms that include: locking, contemporary, salsa, improvisation, house, tap, hip-hop, ballet, jazz and rhythmic gymnastics.
She joins the MFAEIP with a B.A. in Psychology and Dance and a minor in Latina/o/x Studies from The American University in Washington, D.C.
As an undergraduate, Cervantes performed and choreographed work with the Department of Dance and was a member of the locking crew, Cinematic, that performed at The Kennedy Center in 2022. The following year, she presented her undergraduate capstone work, “Recuérdame,” at the American College Dance Association Mid-Atlantic South Region Conference.
Cervantes chose the MFAEIP program because of the emphasis it places on collaboration across spaces, contexts, resources and people. At Duke, Cervantes will focus her research on the ways dance functions as a tool for intergenerational healing, specifically within Latinx communities.
“I became curious about identifying, processing and celebrating the resonating legacy of intergenerational experiences archived in the body after reflecting upon my own familial and cultural lineage and interviewing my family members to document our oral history,” she explains.
After graduation, Cervantes wants to gain professional performance experience while continuing to investigate movement research methods for interrupting and enhancing intergenerational experiences and practices. She plans to eventually create movement workshops for Latinx children and families to aid with self-reflection and intergenerational healing.
“Her unwavering commitment to movement as a conduit for intergenerational memory and knowledge dissemination within Latinx communities promises to enrich experimental ethnographic inroads bridging the campus and local cultural groups,” says Wilbur.
Indigo Cook joins the MFAEIP with a B.A. in Music from Westminster University in Utah. While obtaining a degree in percussion performance, Cook also studied with dance faculty Natalie Desch, Sara Pickett and Molly Heller.
Cook has spent the last five years in Salt Lake City, working as a freelance musician and dancer in the experimental and avant-garde fields, while teaching and performing with local groups and managing individual and community-based creative projects. Cook also founded, and currently directs, the Interdisciplinary Arts Collective, a multi-disciplinary performance group.
“Indigo's proficiency in percussion and dance-linked generative interdisciplinary performance is sure to fire up the generative dance and music scene at Duke and in Durham,” Wilbur shares.
Cook’s goals after graduation include continuing to create collaborative work as the director of their own interdisciplinary company. They are also excited by the prospect of being able to teach in a university setting.
Wanting a master’s program that allowed the pursuit of an interdisciplinary field of study, Cook looks forward to the MFAEIP program opening space to deepen their creative practice, while diving into more theory and writing.
At Duke, their research will focus on contemporary performance practices of the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as their applications and translations across disciplines in collaborative, creative processes.
“I’m interested in experimental and generative practices with other people because I believe they can be powerful methods to build language and community,” Cook says.
Brooklyn native Sadé M. Jones holds a B.S. in Psychology from Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York. She began her dance and theatre training in New York City but as an undergraduate, Jones branched off to psychology in a search for a deeper meaning in her movement.
“It was during my time at William Smith that I grew roots in Laban Movement Analysis, a method for describing, visualizing and interpreting human movement,” Jones says.
After earning an M.A. in Social Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin, Jones remained in the city and established the performing arts nonprofit Ashé Arts Austin, a community organization utilizing performance to educate and promote the African diaspora.
“My work aims to curate artistic, mindful and culturally relevant ways for individuals and groups to embody innate wholeness and address otherwise ‘charged’ topics in a heartfelt, yet honest, way,” she says.
She also returned to her foundations in somatic, ritual theatre and the Jazz aesthetic, which she’s utilized in workshops and trainings, movement direction and choreography commissioned by PBS, SXSW, Facebook, Texas Health & Human Services, Magna Carda, Riders Against the Storm and more.
“Her proficiency in dance and social psychology is only fortified by her acclaimed career as an educator and dance-theater creator in Houston,” adds Wilbur.
While at Duke, her core research will explore the ways in which she can create alchemy through dance and psychology and heal people through performance. Jones chose the MFAEIP because it recognizes and cultivates transitional spaces, and she plans to use her degree to utilize movement as a tool for change.
“Through the process of performance, I hope to demonstrate the healing and empowering effects of psychology through dance and culture,” she explains, “and Duke is uniquely designed to assist me in developing an artistic pedagogy while testing its influence on communities.”
As a child, Emily Liptow trained in ballet, contemporary, flamenco and Ukrainian folk dance. Since graduating from The Ohio State University with a B.S. in Industrial and Systems Engineering and a minor in Dance, her movement practice has transitioned to improvisation, capoeira, tai chi and contemplative movement in nature.
“After undergrad, my work has been varied, interdisciplinary and rooted in community and education,” she says. “My curiosity and diverse skillset led me to experiences working alongside communities of artists, engineers, entrepreneurs, commercial truck drivers, yogis and nuns.”
Following graduation, Liptow worked for two years with AmeriCorps, focusing on education and inclusive culture-building in STEM fields, but she’s recently gravitated toward working with elders. Prior to starting the MFAEIP, Liptow was a caregiver for her grandfather, taught senior yoga and served as a technology consultant for an aging community of Catholic sisters.
“Through it all, I’ve been engaged as an independent movement artist, producing my own work and creating platforms for artists to share,” she says. “I’ve created and performed interdisciplinary work at Borderlight Fringe Festival, Maelstrom Collaborative Arts and Cleveland Public Theatre.”
As someone with a science degree and a wide-ranging depth of experiences, Liptow felt welcomed by the MFAEIP program and feels it will give her the tools to create intergenerational community dance through mentorship and coursework around theology, health care and interdisciplinary performance.
Interested in the embodiment of falling apart, decay and disintegration, her research explores the stories, metaphors, symbols and mythologies around change and death — both present day and across history and culture.
“I am curious how we can expand narratives and binary thinking around these phenomena by exploring processes of compost, cycles and transformation.”
Liptow want to utilize her degree to teach and develop programs for intergenerational movement that can be shared in a variety of spaces including elder care facilities, hospices, schools, community centers and churches.
“Emily's contemplative investigations that link contact improvisation to complex social processes of rituals, aging and mortality throw dance’s power to both animate and archive human sensation into sharp relief,” Wilbur shares.
North Carolina-native Chania Wilson joins Duke with a B.F.A. in Dance with a concentration in performance and choreography and a minor in Arts Administration from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Wilson has been focused on finding the connectivity and intercorrelation within the genres she’s studied. Through her teaching, she’s gained an interest in dance pedagogy and language, as well as an understanding of how historical impacts play into the language used in teaching these styles.
Wilson returned to her alma mater to teach jazz and modern, and her dance film “the second hand” was featured at the 2022 Greensboro Dance Film Festival. Wilson currently dances for the Blackbox Dance Theatre, where she also serves on the Board of Directors. She is one of nine selected Artists in Residence for the 2023 North Carolina Dance Festival season.
While at Duke, Wilson is interested in exploring dance language in pedagogy and developing dance films from an archival standpoint.
“But right now, the focus of my research will be connecting African American lineage to my movement practice,” she explains. “I’m a modern–based dancer and want to enhance my perspective with historical and archival evidence.”
Wilson chose the MFAEIP at Duke because of the emphasis the program places on interdisciplinary studies.
“I’ve always learned about dance through multiple lenses but hadn’t found a program, until Duke, that encourages and creates opportunities for students to research in this way,” she says.
Wilson recognizes that the MFAEIP continues to evolve how dance can be studied, while creating cohorts of dance artists with wide varieties of interests.
“I’m eager to spend time providing more context to my movement, teaching and language — and learning from my cohort.”
While Wilson’s plans after graduation focus on higher education, she wants to continue choreographing, teaching, composing dance films and developing the Black modern dance perspective in North Carolina.
“Her passionate pursuit of Black aesthetics in and through live performance and screendance is already rocking the Triangle area in ways that a Duke graduate education will only amplify further,” says Wilbur.
The 2024 MFAEIP application cycle is open and runs through December 15, 2023. For more information, please visit the MFA website
