Photo credit: Ian Douglas
Performance Studies alum Tara Willis (Ph.D. '22) was awarded the NYU University-Wide Outstanding Dissertation Award in the field of Arts and Humanities.
Tara received her Ph.D. in Performance Studies in January 2022. Her dissertation, "Dancing Blackness: Kinetic Theorizations of Race in Contemporary Improvised Choreographies," directly addresses the complexities of what it means to be Black in the contemporary moment through the lens of making dances and dancing while Black. Her research works against racial inequality in dance scholarship, shifting away from linear, white-centered dance historical narratives to emphasize complex entanglements of lineage and influence, interpersonal relationships, and individual and collective agency. The dissertation expands the presence of several underrecognized but pivotal Black, avant-garde dance artists in the archival record of the present and explores how dance and race are mutually, albeit differently, intricate, malleable, and indescribable, centering two contemporary, improvisation-based performances.
Tara is currently Curator in Performance & Public Practice at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and a lecturer in dance at the University of Chicago.
Congratulations Tara!