When Black Women Dream: Dance at Spelman College

Rainy C. Demerson

Spelman College, a historically Black women’s college in Atlanta, Georgia, established a Department of Dance Performance and Choreography in 2017. For this second installment in a series of articles devoted to decolonial and anti-colonial approaches in dance, Spelman professor Rainy C. Demerson interviewed faculty members of this pioneering department, which has developed an educational model designed to operate outside oppressive frameworks by foregrounding collaboration, critical thinking and creativity.

As racist and sexist policies are increasing daily in America, a safe space for Black women to manifest their dreams is as necessary now as when Spelman College was founded in 1881, just sixteen years after slavery’s abolition in the United States. At this historically Black women’s college in Atlanta, Georgia, Black feminist praxis guides the dance department’s mission and pedagogy, which include a variety of traditions and experimental methodologies.

T. Lang was the department’s first Chair and primary architect of its current curriculum as dance moved from the Drama department into its own. One of her first initiatives was to place a strong emphasis on what she calls “the Africanist tradition of improvisation, which she describes as fundamentally “about learning by questioning, by undoing, and revealing.”

Her approach involved requiring multiple courses in improvisation and choreography, encouraging students to develop both creative and critical thinking skills, which goes beyond learning movement techniques and can incorporate emerging technology. For Lang, “technology creates sovereignty… I can rearrange history… I can conduct the present, and I can speak to the future all in one moment.” 

Informed by this approach, one of Lang’s former students Lyrric Jackson, now a faculty member in Spelman’s dance department and also a computer scientist, says she takes “an explorer’s mindset.” By this she means teaching dance students to amplify their curiosity, and “their ability to change the way they think through observation of the world around them.”

This led to a pedagogical approach that oscillates between the micro and macrocosms of being so that the dancing body is cognizant of emotion, blood-flow, technical form, and social positionality all at once. Her interdisciplinary approach evolves from the question, “what does it mean for Black women’s bodies to feel free and have autonomy inside of a world that’s trying to tell us what to do with our body and how to utilize it?”

A world dreamed into being by Black women presents particular and radical potential. “There are many learning environments where you have to start by explaining or defending black women and femme experiences,” Julie Johnson notes, “And so to not have that be a starting point here means that you can engage with a wide diversity within Black identities and immediately jump into the richness around embodying that.”

“It’s not just about dismantling, but about asking ‘what are the ways in which the creative, artistic, and intellectual strategies help us dream new possibilities ” Julie Johnson

Dr. Johnson’s courses involve a historical analysis of Black dance and embodied community-building strategies to critique systems of oppression and mobilize the body as a vehicle for change. “It’s not just about dismantling,” she explains, “but about asking ‘what are the ways in which the creative, artistic, and intellectual strategies help us dream new possibilities, help us imagine what liberation could look like?”

Acknowledging the diversity of Black American life also means understanding that the meaning of liberation evolves across generations. Omelika Kuumba, whose mother and grandmother attended Spelman, recalled a time in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s when Black people in her community “weren’t trying to be connected to Africa.” Teaching African dance in an accredited college “makes me super excited,” she beams. In this department, students are sometimes introduced to movements that have been denigrated in their familial or social spaces. 

Kuumba recounted that, “one student talked about how she really appreciated being in a class where she was able to move her hips because in the church that she was a part of, that wasn’t acceptable.” She aims for her students to be “able to relax in how our bodies are built,” which “gives a sense of space, safety, and comfort– that ability to explore.” Studying traditional African forms also creates a foundation for the development of new experimental approaches to dance that honor movement styles that go beyond Western concert dance lineages.

Exploration is a key concept in the work of Kathleen Wessel. Wanting to “rethink what dance education and entrepreneurship and creative agency and collaborative models” could look like, she describes her enthusiasm for the department’s curriculum as a “noble cause.” Her approach to teaching dance writing parallels her approach to teaching improvisation: “you gotta stay flexible and responsive to what’s happening in the room.” S

he described her own process of reframing improvisation, which she calls a “liberatory practice,” from African rather than modern dance lineages. “If you don’t impart that,” she insists, “you’re missing a whole lot about why this practice is so important…it’s breaking down self-consciousness and opening up your toolbox in ways that connect to all kinds of things.”

A liberatory praxis is not only relevant to improvisation, it’s also embodied in jazz classes taught by Cici Kelley. Kelley is a commercial dancer who joined the department as an adjunct, became a student, then continued as a Senior Lecturer and Interim Chair. Her classes incorporate movement analysis and identification of Africanist aesthetics in choreography that students stylize.

For her, Black feminist theory develops dancers who can advocate for their needs and creative visions within a competitive and sometimes exploitative dance industry. “It’s truly unique to have courses in theory and practice that truly center the Black feminist voice,” she says, “because it’s a different reality when you have all of this wealth of knowledge and you can go into these spaces and you can correct whatever the narrative.”

By exploring, questioning, dismantling, and rebuilding, Spelman dance students are creating dance on their own terms. Liberation is not only a dream, but an embodied praxis crafted with each breath. Dance Performance and Choreography graduates are equipped to not only enter the field of dance, but to create a society that recognizes the profound potential for Black women’s excellence and innovation to create a more just world.

Dr. Rainy Demerson is an Associate Professor of Dance Performance and Choreography at Spelman College. As a dance artist and scholar invested in global intersectional feminism and decolonial embodiments, she has produced her work in The US, Senegal, and Barbados, and presented it in festivals across the United States, Mexico, Trinidad, and South Africa. Her research has been published in many reputable journals and anthologies, and she is currently Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal Dance Chronicle.

Decolonizing dance (1): Filling in the gaps in history from France and Belgium
Marie Pons, CN D Magazine, 2026
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