Dr. Adesola Akinleye is an interdisciplinary artist-scholar and choreographer. She began her career as a dancer with Dance Theatre of Harlem Workshop Ensemble (USA) later working in UK Companies such as Green Candle, and Carol Straker Dance Company. Over the past twenty years she has created works ranging from films, installation and texts to live performance that is often site-specific and involves a cross-section of the community as well as acting as guest choreographer for university programs and professional company repertoire. Her work is characterized by an interest in glimpsing and voicing peoples lived experiences through creative moving portraiture. A key aspect of her process is the artistry of opening creative practices to everyone from women in low wage employment to ballerinas to performance for young audiences. Akinleye foundered and is co-artistic director of DancingStrong Movement Lab. Working with Dancingstrong Movement Lab co-director, Helen Kindred, their new work Concrete-Water-Flesh, a hybrid physical-web-based live performance piece, seeing performance art as living across geographic location and across time. DancingStrong Movement Lab. also includes triip Lab (turning research ideas into practice) to cultivate a unique multi-generational, multi-disciplinary nurturing and practice-based ensemble space.
Akinleye is an Assistant Professor in the School of the Arts, Dance Division at Texas Woman’s University. She is a Research Fellow with Theatrum Mundi and visiting lecturer at Central School Saint Martins, Spatial Practices Department. She is Visiting Artist 2020–2022 at Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) MIT and Research Affiliate at Art, Culture and Technology (ACT), MIT.
Akinleye has published in the field of dance scholarship as well as cultural and social studies. Her work includes the editing and curation of Narratives in Black British Dance: embodied practices (2018), for which she was shortlisted for One Dance UK’s Impact in Dance Writing Award (2018). Recent publications include editing and curating the anthology (re:)claiming ballet (2021) and Akinleye’s first monograph Dance, Architecture and Engineering (2021).
For her choreographic work, Akinleye has been awarded ADAD Trailblazer, Bonnie Bird, New Choreography Award and One Dance UK Champion Trailblazer. For her work in community dance and education she was awarded Woman of the year in Community Dance by the Town of Islip, New York. She is a Fellow of Fellow of the Higher Academy (FHEA) Royal Society of Arts (RSA). She holds a PhD from Canterbury Christ Church University, MA (distinction) in work-based learning Dance in Community and Education (2007), and an MA in Film (distinction) 2020 from Middlesex University. Akinleye is also a certified Gyrotonic and Gyrokinesis instructor. She currently lives between London and Texas.
Dance = spatial practices = mind-full-body-environment
This work explores Place-making from the perspective of my choreographic dance practice in conversation with architectural and engineering practices. It continues my interest in narrating/understanding Place through starting with somatic experiences. While also asking how agency can be equitable across the entities that come together in the making of that Place.
Choreographing the City, MIT ACT artist residency (2020 to present), Choreographing the City: at/as the city limits, and Navigations, Theatrum Mundi research fellowship (2019 to present), Dance, Architecture and Engineering: dance in Dialogue (Book, 2021)
Dance, young people and creative agency
This artistic-scholarship addresses agency and placemaking for young people in public art experiences, specifically using dance as a non-verbal mode of narration. The research premise, that art-making can be a conduit for community participation and cultural inclusion. It explores agency in identity-making and place-making through young people’s co-curation and co-creation of public art experiences.
Light Steps (2014 to present), ILA project the making of Found (2016 to present), ‘…wind in my hair I feel a part of everywhere…’: creating dance for young audiences narrates Emplacement, (Journal article).
Narrating Spaces
This work developed my PhD methodology of dance being a way to facilitating the expression of people’s lived-experiences in specific places. This seems to acknowledge their presence in communities through recognising their bodily experiences.
Untitled: women’s work (Flint, USA), Undercurrents: Flint Water Dances (Flint, USA) Global Water Dance Deptford (London, UK), Movements, Narratives and Meanings: Border Identities (Enniskillen and Belfast, NI), Her Life In Movement: reflections on embodiment as a methodology (book chapter), Choreographing the Campus at MIT (Cambridge, USA)
PhD: Body, Dance and Environment: An exploration of embodiment and identity. (2011)
Canterbury Christ Church University, Centre for Sport, Physical Education and Activity Research (SPEAR),
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- Photo: F. Christofilopoulou
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- Baptism in three songs, photo: F. Christofilopoulou
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- Photo: C. Warner