Welcome! We invite you to move through our site and see all the opportunities NCCAkron creates for artists to engage with one another, their communities, the city of Akron, and the national dance ecosystem.
The National Center for Choreography - Akron (NCCAkron) supports working dance artists as they experiment, engage in the creative process, and advocate for their work and for the field.
Photo credits: Above video contains images courtesy Dale Dong Photography, Mike Crupi, and Jonny Riese
Digital Dance Gallery Exhibition.02
Check out the second exhibition in the NCCAkron Digital Dance Gallery, Practices in the Name of Progress: Dancing Through the 21st Century!
Continuing to build out alternative publications under our NCCMedia umbrella, the Digital Dance Gallery is NCCAkron’s latest experiment. This exhibition shares our research as witness to the thirty-eight artists who came through Akron as part of our 21st Century Dance Practices program.
The exhibition runs May 16 – June 27, 2025, and is best viewed on a laptop or desktop.
Brian Brooks (photo Erin Baiano), Raja Feather Kelly (photo Andy Toad), and slowdanger (photo Anita Buzzy Prentiss)
Stream Season Six of Inside the Dancer's Studio
NCCAkron has launched the sixth season of Inside the Dancer’s Studio, a podcast that brings listeners into the process of creating dance. Through interviews with choreographers from across the United States, Inside the Dancer’s Studio breaks down the mystique of dance-making into engaging, fun, and deeply human conversations about what moves artists to express their truths through creation and performance.
Artists featured in Season 6 include Kara Jenelle (Los Angeles, CA), Body Watani (Minneapolis, MN), Joe Bowie (Evanston, IL), Reggie Wilson (Brooklyn, NY), BAIRA MVMNT PHLOSPHY (Detroit, MI), George Staib (Atlanta, GA), Raphael Xavier (Philadelphia, PA), Bridgman | Packer Dance (Valley Cottage, NY), Hanna Ali (Miami, FL), Dianne McIntyre (Cleveland, OH), Tiffany Rea-Fisher (New York, NY), Donald Byrd (Seattle, WA), Nia-Amina Minor (Seattle, WA), Donna Uchizono (New York, NY), Kristel Baldoz (Queens, NY), and David Roussève (West Hollywood, CA).
Read the press release for more information.
Pictured left to right, top to bottom (photo credit): Packer and Bridgman (courtesy of the artists), KJ (Wes Klain), Roussève (courtesy of the artist), Uchizono (Matthew Murphy), Baldoz (courtesy of the artist), McIntyre (McKinley Wiley), Rea-Fisher (Lisa Keegan), Body Watani (Sabrina Hammoudeh), Staib (courtesy of Dance/USA), Xavier (Monica Chang), Bowie (courtesy of the artist), Ali (courtesy of YoungArts), Byrd (courtesy of Spectrum Dance Theater), Minor (Devin Muñoz), and BAIRA (Effy Grey).
2024 Knight Choreography Prize Recipient
NCCAkron is thrilled to announce Shamel Pitts (Brooklyn, NY) as the 2024 recipient of the $50,000 Knight Choreography Prize. Pitts will receive an unrestricted cash award of $30,000, plus $20,000 in programmatic support over two years, to be co-designed with NCCAkron.
Shamel Pitts shares, “It is incredibly propelling to win a prize that is designed to recognize and uplift a choreographer's art by contributing to their life by way of unrestricted funds! I am grateful to NCCAkron for being an organization that offers such life enhancing support. I look forward to drawing closer to the NCCAkron team and using these funds to continue to invest in my arts collective TRIBE, as well as imagine what my life may now look like as I am being poured into.”
Made possible by Knight Foundation, this award is designed to support choreographers' artistic experimentation and career longevity in the United States.
Shamel Pitts (photo Itai Zwecker)
OUR IMPACT
NCCAkron aims to foster geographic equity and to fulfill our potential as a national center. We commit to supporting a stronger, more visibly connected network focused on research and development across the dance ecosystem.
