Dance, Race, and Equity: An Evening with Gerald Watson

Gerald Watson is a professional dancer, teacher, and choreographer. As a leader and activist in the arts, he fights for inclusion and calling for a closer look at practices affecting dancers of color. He has received grants to curate ballets about race and histories of racism. His most recent grant was to recreate his work Saam Psalms a three-part ballet about the diaspora of African people in the United States. This ballet, however, was more than a performance. Saam Psalms is just one example of how Watson uses dance to continue dialogues and reopen meaningful conversations about structural issues in the Nashville and Denver art communities. Watson will offer an understanding of racism in the structures and world of dance, performing arts, and classical ballet. He will also speak to dance as a performance of resistance, activism, and protest, bringing to light a conversation about race and equity in the arts that is underexplored in higher education.

This event is co-sponsored by Roanoke College's English and Communication Studies Department, the Center for Studying Structures of Race, and the Donald L. Jordan Endowment for the Humanities. Registration is not required for this free public event. 

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