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Why is the National Center for Choreography–Akron hosting a conversation with dance creators and leaders in Memphis?
“It comes back to, I think, to why there’s a national center for choreography in Akron, Ohio, of all places,” said Christy Bolingbroke, executive and artistic director. “Part of my focus with NCCAkron is to also ... reconcile what it is to be a national center that is not in the perceived center of the performing arts universe, right?
“A lot of people would assume everything’s in New York. So we consciously make an effort in everything that we do to not always go to the coast.”
Making Moves: Memphis takes place at 3 p.m. Saturday, April 25, in the Memphis Listening Lab in Crosstown Concourse. Admission is free, but an RSVP is required.
The audience for the event, Bolingbroke said, is anyone interested in culture, anyone working in the nonprofit sector — arts or otherwise — and related industries. Topics include building an arts ecosystem, adaptive thinking and unseen labor.
The event is part of a tour for NCCAkron’s book “Artists on Creative Administration: A Workbook from the National Center for Choreography,” published in 2024.
“One of the things it came from was our creative admin research program, which is actually in 26 states across the country,” Bolingbroke said. “I’ve learned a lot when I have national funders that say, ‘What have you learned that this New York artist needs to know?’”
The center has learned that different opportunities exist in different places. What works in Memphis may not work in Miami and vice versa.
“So to be able to focus like a hyperlocal lens has been a part of the strategy to take these conversations to other places,” Bolingbroke said. “Hear local stories that then add to the 30 … contributing authors of the book.”
NCCAkron is based at, but independent of, the University of Akron and was founded in 2015. The center conducts dance research, supports the development of new dance work and serves as a “cultural matchmaker” for choreographers.
The other National Center for Choreography, the National Center for Choreography at Florida State University, was founded in 2019. It is in Tallahassee, Florida.
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NCCAkron also has Memphis ties.
Dacquiri Baptiste, vice president and chief operating officer of the Orpheum Theatre, is the NCCAkron board chair-elect. She worked for more than a decade for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. There, she held leadership roles in company management and production.
DeMarcus Akeem Suggs, the director of creative and cultural economy for the City of Memphis, is the NCCAkron board secretary. Suggs has a background in dance and previously worked for NCCAkron.
The Memphis event’s speakers are Bolingbroke; Baptiste; Suggs; Makini, a choreographer who splits time between Durham, North Carolina and Philadelphia; Marcellus Harper and Kevin Thomas, co-founders of Memphis’ Collage Dance Collectieve and Marico “Dr. Rico” Flake, founder of Memphis’ UDIG Dance Academy.
Makini is a certified public accountant, in addition to a dance artist, and contributor to the “Artists on Creative Administration” book.
 Makini (left) is one of the speakers for the Memphis event. Makini is from Durham, North Carolina. (Dale Dong/NCCAkron)
“(He) is interested in and his essay talks about how do artists also place value on their work,” Bolingbroke said. “And how do they quantify that to be able to navigate their business practices.”
Previous stops on the book tour include New York, Seattle, Akron and Nashville. Stops for the tour in 2026 have included Chicago, Houston and Miami. Boston is after Memphis.
Bolingbroke said that her first visit to Memphis was several years ago because Memphis and Akron were both part of the Reimagining Civic Commons cohort.
“This was a nationwide cohort,” she said. “(In Memphis, it included) the Cossitt Library and the (Riverfront), and a lot of the work that was developed there. … And it was epic. We got to bicycle across the Mississippi (River), we got to roast s’mores and take jookin’ lessons there in the park. It felt like a city. But at the same time, it was a community, too, the way that there were gathering spaces.”
Since then, Bolingbroke said she’s been very interested in coming back. Suggs' position was also a reason for excitement.
“... With the creation of, in the (Memphis) mayor’s office, for DeMarcus’ position around a creative economy, I was like, ‘Oh, like, where your tax dollars go, that shows what your city values,” she said. “So that feels primed for Memphis writing the next chapter for arts and culture in this country.”
Bolingbroke said she hopes these talks in different cities will spark conversations that continue even after the events conclude. The talks from each city will be recorded and eventually posted to NCCAkron’s YouTube page for those in other cities.
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