Unviersity of New Haven Arts and Sciences Department Chairs

back to news May 4, 2022

Charles O. Anderson joins Section of Dance every bit new chair

ForCharles O. Anderson, trip the light fantastic toe wasn't always a lifelong passion.

As the kickoff of his family to attend college, anybody was rooting for him to find a fulfilling career path. He attended Cornell University ready on becoming a mechanical engineer — until he watched a concert featuring the Urban Bush Women dance company.

"I was so moved and transfixed by not the movement itself but what they were able to say through movement," Anderson said. "To this day, I will say that dance was my calling."

Anderson will start his new role as chair of the Department of Dance at The Ohio State University on June 1, 2022, pending blessing past the Board of Trustees. He currently serves every bit the associate chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance and head of the dance program at The University of Texas at Austin.

After graduating with a BA in choreography and operation from Cornell, Anderson moved to New York City to pursue a career as a performer and choreographer. He performed with renowned dancers, including Mark Dendy, Sean Curran and Ronald K. Brown, merely needed additional income to stay in the city. He started pedagogy chemical science and physics classes at East Harlem School at Exodus Business firm, where he created an afterschool arts plan and found a passion instruction dance.

Presently after that, he moved to Philadelphia to be an adjunct professor in dance at Temple Academy. With encouragement from his colleagues and students, he completed an MFA in dance. Anderson was promoted to visiting banana professor before moving to Allentown to take a permanent faculty position at Muhlenberg College. In that location, he continued to teach trip the light fantastic in addition to directing the African American studies program. As the only African American faculty member at the pocket-size, liberal arts college, he created an Africana studies minor to diversify the curriculum and to recruit and retain more students of color.

In 2010, he was intrigued when he heard that UT Austin was seeking a dance teacher who specifically had knowledge on the African diaspora. He took the position the following year, taking over as head of the dance program in 2015. Nether Anderson'southward guidance, UT Austin put more than emphasis on moving away from a Eurocentric, western curriculum and found explicit ways of integrating anti-racism and social justice. Adding to the academy'due south endeavour, Anderson rebranded the Section of Theatre and Dance master'south degree into an MFA in dance and social justice in 2017.

Anderson has been aware of Ohio State since his ain college days, which he attributes in part to the respect and prestige the Department of Dance has held among dance students and professionals for decades. He's also been a fan ofBebe Miller, professor emerita and alumna in the Department of Dance, and has run beyond a considerable number of Ohio State alumni as a performer. When his office as head of the dance program at UT Austin gave him the opportunity to meet the department's contempo chairs at conferences, he heard firsthand the effort Ohio Land has fabricated to go a world-form model of inclusive academic excellence.

"What really drew me to the position is the willingness non only of the Department of Dance but of the entire academy to really put their money where their mouth is in terms of multifariousness, disinterestedness and inclusion and anti-racism," Anderson said. "It'due south not symbolic. It'south in the fabric of how the university is moving frontward, and I couldn't be more excited to be a part of that."

When he starts his role every bit chair of the Department of Trip the light fantastic in June, it will be the beginning of a new era. He'll dedicate much of his fourth dimension in those beginning few months to learning everything he perchance can about what the department has built. As he gets adjusted, he'll plow his attention toward increasing the prominence of the department throughout the country and earth while also thinking about how multifariousness, equity, inclusion and anti-racism have a identify in its programs and civilization.

Throughout Anderson's career every bit a performer and educator, he discovered a unique way of incorporating interdisciplinary scholarship within trip the light fantastic and choreography while expressing his truths to speak of larger social contexts.

"The themes of my work are often around race representation and sexuality and identity, but oftentimes they are inspired by literary works or folkloric works," he said. "So almost all of my pieces accept come out of books I've read or stories that I've heard as a kid."

In 2003, Anderson established Dance Theatre X, an Afro-contemporary dance theatre company that creates and performs "pieces that serve as motion-driven testimonies of lived experience," and it will shortly be based in Columbus. Next for Dance Theatre Ten, Anderson wants to adaptThe Tempest by William Shakespeare and would dear to collaborate among the arts at Ohio State. He sees the play as an allegory on imperialism and colonization, which will lend well to the adaption'due south focus on investigating our behavior virtually America.

Beyond thoughts of embracing a new customs of students and faculty, Anderson has recognized more benefits of moving to Ohio.

"I'm non excited about the snow, just I am excited almost being close to the e again," he said. "Almost of my family is from Virginia, and so this feels very much similar a homecoming in some means, especially because I'1000 also going to be and so close to Pennsylvania. 1 of my former dancers,Abby Zbikowski, is on faculty at Ohio State. It'south wonderful to feel similar I'thousand walking into a community rather than having to create a customs. It'southward a first for me."

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Source: https://artsandsciences.osu.edu/news/charles-o-anderson-joins-department-dance-new-chair

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