Charmian Wells

Charmian Wells received her PhD in dance studies from Temple University as a Presidential Fellow. Her work examines articulations of queerness and diaspora in Black Arts Movement concert dance in New York City (1965-1975). This research emerges from her background dancing with Forces of Nature Dance Theatre (2006-2023). She recently received a Creative Arts and Humanities Grant (TWU) to create an archive of the company for submission to the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at the New York Performing Arts Library.

She has taught in the dance departments of Sarah Lawrence College, Lehman College, Swarthmore College, Marymount Manhattan College, Temple University, Hollins University, and the University of Iowa.

Her writing has been published in Dance Research Journal, Theatre Journal, Critical Correspondence (Movement Research), and The Brooklyn Rail. Charmian’s forthcoming book manuscript is under contract with Oxford University Press.

Scholarly Publications

“Citing Ancestral Source: Abdel R. Salaam’s Black Aesthetic Healing,” Oxford Handbook of Black Dance Studies. Edited by Thomas DeFrantz, Oxford University Press (forthcoming).

“Behind the Screen: Tap Dance, Race, and Invisibility in Hollywood’s GoldenAge,” by Brynn W. Shiovitz. Theatre Journal 75 (4), December 2023.

“Pass Fe White and Homestretch: Joan Miller’s ‘Reads,’ Refusals, and Affirmations,” Arms Akimbo: Black Women Choreographing Social Change, special issue of Dance Research Journal 53(2). August 2021.

“‘Harlem Knows’: Eleo Pomare’s Choreographic Theory of Vitality and Diaspora Citation in Blues for the Jungle.” Dance Research Journal 52(3). December 2020.