Dancing Conversation: Generational Exchange

Join NCCAkron for a conversation with 65-year-old and better artists and their early to mid-career artist partners, to reflect on longevity in dance.

Executive/Artistic Director Christy Bolingbroke will host a discussion exploring what the cohort of Dancing Lab: Intergenerational Partners has learned from their dialogues over the past year. Artist pairs include Dianne McIntyre (Cleveland, OH) and Tiffany Rea-Fisher (New York, NY), Donald Byrd (Seattle, WA) and Nia-Amina Minor (Seattle, WA), as well as Donna Uchizono (New York, NY) and Kristel Baldoz (Queens, NY). Merry Petroski, Project Manager of the Creative Aging Institute at the Akron Art Museum, will also join the conversation.

Dancing Conversation: Generational Exchange

Wednesday, April 16, 2025

5:30 - 6:00pm Light Reception6:00 - 7:00pm Conversation

Cummings Center for the History of Psychology, 3rd Floor

73 South College St, Akron, Ohio 44325

FREE – RSVP is required

No dance background is necessary to join this conversation! 

Dancing Conversations are free public events that situate dance within broader topics and provide an opportunity to showcase the aesthetic range, power, and possibilities of dance. All our Dancing Conversations — on dance & music, women & witchcraft, Black male choreographers, queer movements, and more — are available on NCCAkron’s YouTube channel.

About the Artists

Kristel Baldoz is a conceptual artist from Delano, California, working across performance, dance, and ceramics. Her work has been supported by the Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation, New York Live Arts, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange. She was a 2019 EmergeNYC fellow at the Hemispheric Institute and, in 2022, an artist-in-residence at the Chautauqua Institution School of Visual Art and Art Cake. Kristel's works have been featured in Brooklyn Rail and Fjord. As a performer, she has worked with Reggie Wilson, Anh Vo, Wilmer Wilson IV, Kate Watson-Wallace, and Alex Da Corte as well as performed at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, in Joan Jonas' Mirror I & II and Haegue Yang's Handles. She holds an MA from Tisch at New York University and a BA in Dance, Theater, and Performance Studies from UC Berkeley.

Donald Byrd is Artistic Director of the Seattle-based Spectrum Dance Theater, a Tony-nominated (The Color Purple) and Bessie Award winning (The Minstrel Show) choreographer. He has created works for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Dance Theater of Harlem, The Joffrey Ballet among others; and has worked extensively in theater and opera including The New York Public Theater, The 5th Avenue Theater, CenterStage (Baltimore), Seattle Opera, Dutch National Opera, The Atlanta Opera, The Israeli Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and San Francisco Opera. Awards, prizes, and fellowships includes Doris Duke Artist Award, James W. Ray Distinguished Artist Award, Laurate of the Rainier Club (Seattle), Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts (Cornish College of the Arts), Masters of Choreography Award (The Kennedy Center), Fellow at The American Academy of Jerusalem, James Baldwin Fellow of United States Artists, Resident Fellow of The Rockefeller Center Bellagio (Italy), Fellow at the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue (based at Harvard), and the Mayor’s Arts Award for his sustained contributions to the City of Seattle.

Dianne McIntyre, celebrating 53 years as a dancemaker, is a 2022 Dance Magazine Award Honoree and 2023 Martha Hill Dance Awardee.  Known for concert dance work with celebrated music artists, she also choreographs for theatre, film, television, and opera. She has created work for numerous companies including Dance Theatre of Harlem and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater as well as her own companies - most notably, Sounds in Motion. The company/school was a vital institution in Harlem where artists met, collaborated, and were nurtured. McIntyre's film credits include Beloved from Toni Morrison's novel and Miss Evers' Boys (Emmy nomination). Her work has appeared on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and over 35 regional theatres. Other awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Doris Duke Artist Award, a Dance/USA Honor Award, a Duke United States Artists Fellowship, National Black Theatre Teer Pioneer Award, ADF 2008 Balasaraswati/Joy Anne Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching, two AUDELCOs, 3 Bessies/New York Dance and Performance Awards, and two Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts Degrees (from SUNY Purchase and Cleveland State University). Dianne McIntyre also develops dance-driven dramas from her interviews about real-life events, including I Could Stop on a Dime and Get Ten Cents Change (her father's stories) and Open the Door, Virginia! (1950s civil rights). McIntyre’s current work In the Same Tongue fuses dance, live music, poetry, and her history. Mentors include Elaine Gibbs Redmond, Gus Solomons jr, Louise Roberts, Rick Davis, Helen Alkire, and Vera Blaine. She received a BFA in Dance from The Ohio State University.

Nia-Amina Minor is a movement artist, choreographer, curator, and educator originally from Los Angeles. Her work focuses on the body and what it carries, using physical and archival research to explore memory and history. Nia-Amina is co-founder of Black Collectivity, a collaborative project that responds to memory and culture through embodied responses. She has received regional and national commissions for her choreographic work and has a working background as a performer and dramaturg. She was Dance Magazine's 25 Artists to Watch in 2021, and one of Seattle Magazine's Most Influential People in 2025. Nia-Amina holds an MFA from UC Irvine, a BA from Stanford University, and is currently a faculty member at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, WA.

Tiffany Rea-Fisher is Artistic Director of EMERGE125; dance curator for Bryant Park Picnic Performances; Executive Director of Adirondack Diversity Initiative. Recent work includes Gun & Powder, The Public Theater’s 2023 The Tempest, and 2022 Dance Theatre of Harlem's Sounds of Hazel. Commissions by The National Gallery of Art in D.C. and Utah Repertory Dance Theater. Her work has been seen at the Joyce, the Apollo, NY City Center, Works & Process at Guggenheim, and New York Live Arts. Resident choreographer for Classical Theatre of Harlem, including 2022's Twelfth Night, for which The NY Times suggested she should have been nominated for a Tony Award. Rea-Fisher is a COHI member of IABD, Advisory Board Dance/NYC, 7-time AUDELCO award nominee, 2022 Toulmin Fellow, National Dance Project Award winner, Creatives Rebuild New York Awardee, John Brown Spirit Award recipient, Citation for Cultural Contribution from NYC.

Donna Uchizono Company (DUC), under the direction of Artistic Director of Donna Uchizono, has performed throughout the United States, Europe, South America, Australia, and Asia. Uchizono received critical recognition for her innovative movement language and distinct wit, recognized by notable commissions for Mikhail Baryshnikov, Paula Vogel, David Hammons, and Oliver Sacks. In 2011, after decades of critically acclaimed works that toured nationally and internationally, Uchizono was identified by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (NYPL) as a master choreographer whose work requires preservation. A United States Artist Awardee, Guggenheim Fellow, Alpert Awardee, and an NEA, NDP, NPN, and Bessie recipient among others, Uchizono has been distinguished by numerous national awards and grants. Active in community programs, she founded the Artist Advisory Board at Danspace Project, initiated panels on issues in the Dance Field at Dance USA, Danspace Project, and Gibney, served as a panelist for various funding institutions, and served as a mentor for Sugar Salon, DoublePlus at Gibney Dance Center, and DUC’s choreographic mentorship program. With her 2022 distinction as the only American-born choreographer of Asian ancestry in the history of Modern Dance, to have received cumulative esteemed national grants and toured a dance company across the US and the world, Uchizono has been tirelessly reaching out to leaders in the field to address the problem of invisibility and omission faced by Asian American artists. Since 2022, Uchizono has been humbled by the distinction of being the first and only American-born choreographer of Asian ancestry in the history of Modern Dance, who has received cumulative national award recognition and toured an eponymous dance company across the U.S. and internationally. She has been continuously grappling with issues of invisibility/visibility and the subsequent sense of isolation from the lack of American-born of Asian descent dance mentor(s) who share the experience of growing up with the invisibilized scars of racism.

Pictured (clockwise from top left): Dianne McIntyre (photo McKinley Wiley), Donald Byrd (photo courtesy of Spectrum Dance), Donna Uchizono (photo Matthew Murphy), Kristel Baldoz (photo courtesy of the artist), Nia-Amina Minor (photo Devin Muñoz), and Tiffany Rea-Fisher (photo Lisa Keegan)