Adesola Akinleye
Assistant Professor of Dance
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Adesola Akinleye, PhD, (they/them) is an interdisciplinary dancer and choreographer artist-scholar. They began their 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 20 years, Akinleye has created dance works ranging from dance films, installation and texts to live performance that is often site-specific and involves a cross-section of the community. Akinleye draws on non-Western, Indigenous and Africanist worldviews to explore how body-mind-environment contribute to an intra-connected ontology.
Akinleye’s work is characterized by an interest in glimpsing and voicing people's lived experiences through creative moving portraiture. A key aspect of Akinleye’s process is the artistry of exchanging creative processes between people, from women in low-wage employment to ballerinas to performances for young audiences to city makers. Akinleye has published in the field of dance as well as cultural and social studies; including editing and curating the anthology Narratives in Black British Dance: Embodied Practices, Palgrave Macmillan, which was shortlisted for One Dance UK’s Impact in Dance Writing Award (2018). Akinleye’s publications include editing and curating the anthology (re:)claiming ballet (2021), Intellect books, and the monographs Dance, Architecture and Engineering (Dance in Dialogue) (2021), Bloomsbury Publishers and Navigations: Scoring the Moment (2022), Theatrum Mundi Publications. In 2023. Akinleye contributed the chapters "Keeping Movement at the Center as We Dance into Interdisciplinary Research" to Dance Research Methodologies: Ethics, Orientations, and Practices, edited by R Candelario and M Henley; as well as "The Distance of Education" in Futures of Performance: The Responsibilities of Performing Arts in Higher Education edited by Karen Schupp.
Akinleye founded and is co-artistic director of DancingStrong Movement Lab. (DSML) cultivating unique multi-generational, multi-disciplinary nurturing and practice-based ensemble spaces. Working with co-director Dr Helen Kindred, DSML’s current focus is the work Concrete-Water-Flesh, the development of hybrid physical-web-based live performance. This work attempts to live simultaneously across geographic locations and across time. Adesola was a research fellow with Theatrum Mundi and a guest lecturer at Central School Saint Martins, Spatial Practices Department, and Irie! Dance Theatre. Akinleye was a visiting artist 2020–2022 at the Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) MIT and Research Affiliate at Art, Culture and Technology (ACT), MIT.
Akinleye’s choreographic work has been awarded the ADAD Trailblazer, Bonnie Bird, New Choreography Award, and One Dance UK Champion Trailblazer. Adesola’s most recent commission was from the Hayward Gallery, London, to create a site-specific performance for Jyll Bradley, The Hop, an outdoor installation at the Gallery from 2022 to 2023. For community dance and educational work, Akinleye was awarded Woman of the Year in Community Dance by the Town of Islip, New York. Akinleye is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and, Royal Society of Arts (RSA). Akinleye holds a PhD from Canterbury Christ Church University, an MA (distinction) in work-based learning Dance in Community and education (2007) and an MA (distinction) in Film 2020 from Middlesex University. Adesola is also a certified Gyrotonic® and Gyrokinesis® instructor. Akinleye is an assistant professor in the Division of Dance and the coordinator for the PhD program.
Page last updated 4:53 PM, August 28, 2023