Embodied Dialogues: Legacies of Freedom in African Brazilian Dance
Convened by Professor of Dance, Ava LaVonne Vinesett, this forum centered the significance of dance in making Afro Brazilian thought, creativity, experiences, memories, imagination and existence visible.
Visiting Artist: Tamara Williams
Assistant Professor, UNCC, earned her M.F.A. from Hollins University. Her choreography has been presented internationally in Serbia, Switzerland, Trinidad, Jamaica, Mexico and Brazil. Moving Spirits, Inc. is her contemporary arts organization dedicated to performing, researching, documenting and producing African Diaspora arts.
Williams’ scholarly work includes: Giving Life to Movement: The Silvestre Dance Technique; "Reviving Culture Through Ring Shout," published in The Dancer-Citizen; and The African Diaspora and Civic Responsibility (forthcoming). Her awards include two Faculty Research Grants which support her in-depth study and investigation of Ring Shout Dance Traditions and Òrìṣà dances. Williams was commissioned by the Kaatsbaan International Dance Center to create a new work for Moving Spirits, Inc. in 2018; the new work premiered during her Kaatsbaan UpStream Residency in the New York's Hudson Valley.
She has received several Culture Blocks grants from the Mecklenburg County Arts & Science Council, and the funding supports Moving Spirits' ongoing free African diaspora dance workshops throughout the Charlotte community. She is a College of Arts + Architecture faculty recipient of the 2019-2020 Board of Governors Teaching Award.
In 2021, she became an Arts and Science Council Emerging Creative Fellowship recipient to continue her research in Ring Shout traditions in the low country of the United States. She was commissioned by The National Center for Choreography to create a new dance film for her company, Moving Spirits, Inc. The film, ÌBÀ OBÌNRIN, is an award-winning film which has been screened nationally and internationally since June 2021.
Dance Program