Making Moves: Akron

Join NCCAkron for Making Moves: Akron, a panel discussion and book launch event for Artists on Creative Administration (AOCA), featuring regional arts leaders and national book contributors.

Christy Bolingbroke, Executive/Artistic Director of NCCAkron and AOCA Contributing Author

Tonya Lockyer, Arts Leader/Cultural Strategist and AOCA Editor and Contributing Author

Dominic Moore-Dunson, Akron-based Choreographer and AOCA Contributing Author

David Shimotakahara, Founding Artistic Director of Groundworks Dance Theatre

Jenn Kidd, Executive Director of The Nightlight Cinema

Josy Jones, Center for Applied Theatre and Active Culture / The Chameleon Village Theatre

Katie Beck, Center for Applied Theatre and Active Culture

Tessa Gaffney, Center for Applied Theatre and Active Culture

6:30 - 7:45 PM Panel Discussion 

8:30 - 10:00 PM Film Screening

Artists on Creative Administration will be available for purchase through local bookseller Elizabeth’s Bookshop & Writing Centre and the first 25 event registrants will receive a complimentary copy, sponsored by ArtsNow. You must attend the event to claim your free copy.

Artists on Creative Administration: A Workbook from the National Center for Choreography, will be published September 24, 2024, by The University of Akron Press as part of their NCCAkron Series in Dance. Edited by artist/cultural strategist Tonya Lockyer this book features essays from and interviews with 30 artists and advocates from the dance and performing arts worlds, sharing first-hand stories of creative administration in action through case studies, interviews, life tools, and experiments.

Continuing the celebration of creativity and movement, The Nightlight Cinema will screen Stop Making Sense outside in the Bud & Susie Rogers Garden. Stop Making Sense is an independently produced 1984 concert film featuring a live concert performance by Talking Heads. Bring blankets and picnics to sit and watch, or dance the night away! Film screening is weather-dependent.

ABOUT THE PANELISTS

Christy Bolingbroke (Akron, OH) is the Founding Executive/Artistic Director for the National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron (NCCAkron). She is responsible for setting the curatorial vision and sustainable business model to foster research and development in dance. Previously, she served as the Deputy Director for Advancement at ODC in San Francisco, overseeing curation and performance programming as well as marketing and development organization-wide. A key aspect of her position included managing a unique three-year artist-in-residence program for dance artists, guiding and advising them in all aspects of creative development and administration. Prior to ODC, she was the Director of Marketing at the Mark Morris Dance Group in Brooklyn, NY. She earned a B.A. in Dance from the University of California, Los Angeles; an M.A. in Performance Curation from Wesleyan University; and is a graduate of the Arts Management Fellowship program at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. She currently serves on the Akron Civic Commons Core Team; as a consulting advisor for the Bloomberg Philanthropies Arts Innovation Management initiative; and on the New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project Advisory Panel. In 2017, DANCE Magazine named Bolingbroke among the national list of most influential people in dance today.

Tonya Lockyer (Suquamish, WA), widely praised as “a key cultural changemaker” (Seattle Times), is an award-winning artist and cultural strategist. Her work as a groundbreaking artist, arts leader, and curator has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, Arts International, Princeton University, NPR, The Banff Center, Canada Council, TEDx, and the City of Seattle. As an artist and curator, Lockyer has collaborated with some of the most innovative artistic experimentalists of our time. Lockyer was the founding co-director of the collective VIA, the transformative director of Seattle’s Velocity Dance Center (2011-2018), and the inaugural chair of Seattle’s first arts district. She is an adjunct professor in Arts Leadership (MFA/BA) at Seattle University.

Dominic Moore-Dunson (Akron, OH) is an award-winning dancer, producer, teaching artist, and speaker and the founder of MooreDunson Co. an arts, media, and entertainment company committed to producing “Urban Midwest Storytelling”. As an artist, Dominic is featured in Dance Magazine’s 2023 “25 to Watch”, a 2021 Top 40 finalist for the National Dance Project Grant, a 2019 Jacob’s Pillow Choreography Fellow, and a 2019 Cleveland Arts Prize Winner. Moore-Dunson co-founded the Akron Black Artist Guild, an organization committed to building a network of Black artists in Akron, OH. He is a graduate of National Arts Strategies’ Executive Program for Arts & Culture Strategies at the University of Pennsylvania.

David Shimotakahara (Cleveland, OH), Executive Artistic Director, founded GroundWorks DanceTheater in 1998, determined to challenge the preconceptions about dance. This desire to push boundaries continues in Shimotakahara’s bold initiative: To seek creative input from guest choreographers of the highest caliber and constantly evolve a commitment to working collaboratively both in the studio and with community. Mr. Shimotakahara has served regionally and nationally on dance panels for the Ohio Arts Council, Illinois Arts Council, the Mid Atlantic Arts Alliance, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He was on the Board of DanceUSA from 2014-2018, and as a Trustee with Ohio Citizens for the Arts from  He has been awarded 8 Individual Artist Fellowships for Choreography from the Ohio Arts Council from 1996 to 2016. Mr. Shimotakahara received the 2000 Cleveland Arts Prize for Dance. In 2002 his work with GroundWorks DanceTheater was voted “One of 25 to Watch” by Dance Magazine. In 2007, he received the OhioDance award for Outstanding Contributions to the Advancement of the Dance Artform. Mr. Shimotakahara was a 2008 recipient of the first COSE Arts and Business Innovation awards as the founder of GroundWorks DanceTheater. In 2010 and 2013 Shimotakahara received a Creative Workforce Fellowship, a program of the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, funded by Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

Jenn Kidd (Akron, OH), Executive Director of Akron's nonprofit arthouse cinema The Nightlight, brings over two decades of diverse creative experience to her role. Since taking the helm in 2021, Jenn has revolutionized The Nightlight's operations, achieving record-breaking attendance through enriched programming, expanded memberships, and strategic community partnerships. Under Jenn's visionary leadership, The Nightlight launched a major capital campaign in late 2022 to add a second screen, significantly expanding its physical and programming footprint. Her inclusive approach and commitment to fostering positive spaces have profoundly impacted Akron's cultural landscape, earning her the Arts Alive Rising Arts Leader for Summit County award in 2023 and the Leadership Akron New Executive Leader award in 2022. Beyond The Nightlight, Jenn serves on the boards of Open Tone Music and Rubber City Jazz and Blues Festival, and contributes to the Sojourner Truth Legacy Project committee. Her multifaceted background in wardrobe styling, film set hair styling, photography, and creative consulting infuses her leadership with a unique, people-centric perspective that continues to elevate Akron's arts scene.

Josy Jones (Akron, OH) is a theatre artist and arts administrator whose work focuses on providing a platform to amplify community voices, shifting power structures in the arts, and challenging the theatrical artform, all while honoring the sacredness of art practice. Jones founded the Chameleon Village Theatre Collective in 2015 to use site-specific theatre to activate underutilized space in Macon GA and throughout Northeast Ohio. Her work in the arts has been recognized by 880s Cities through the Emerging Cities Champions Fellowship (2018), through acceptance for publication as a “Promising Practices Case Study” (2022) by the Arts and Creative Placemaking (WE-Making) Repository at the University of Florida’s College of the Arts, through the 2022 Arts Alive Award for Outstanding Artist in Theatre, and through 30 for the Future by the Greater Akron Chamber. She has utilized her skills in playwriting, directing, dramaturgy, creative community building, site-specific work, art administration, performance and more to build community in Northeast Ohio. She currently serves as the Director of Strategic Partnerships at the Center for Applied Theatre and Active Culture (CATAC) and the Associate Producer and Director of Community Building for the BorderLight Theatre Festival!

Katie Beck (Akron, OH) is a creative community builder, director, writer, facilitator, teaching artist, and producer who works to uplift stories and build spaces that highlight and center historically excluded voices. Since establishing Gum-Dip Theatre in 2016, Katie has revolved her work around performances that celebrate, challenge, and reinvent community identity through story circles, workshops, multicultural events, and choose-what-you-pay performances. She creates theatre as a vehicle for practicing different factual and imaginary versions of oneself, for representing the narratives that are often ignored, and for elevating voices and identities that are not included in the mainstream. She also works as Oracle of Synthesis for the Center for Applied Theatre and Active Culture, Drama Director at Theodore Roosevelt High School, and facilitator for the Center for Immersive Leadership. Katie serves as a Commissioner for the City of Akron's Public Art Commission and Bicentennial Commission and Treasurer of Young Playwrights Collective. She is a recipient of an artist residency with Akron Soul Train in 2023, Greater Akron Chamber’s 30 for the Future Award in 2019, and Arts Alive! Outstanding Artist in Theatre Award in 2018. Katie holds a BA in Theatre, Writing, and Community and Justice Studies from Allegheny College in Meadville, PA.

Tessa Gaffney (Akron. OH) is Marketing Mage for the Center for Applied Theatre and Active Culture, a non-hierarchical theatre collective. She is the co-leader of QuTheatr, Akron's only LGBTQIA+ ensemble, for which she is undergoing dramatherapy training to make safer theatre. She just performed her original one-woman show that takes place in a bathroom, "Occupied," at Borderlight Fringe Festival in August 2024.

Pictured (L to R): CAR artist alumni and AOCA contributing author Makini (photo Dale Dong) and Movie Night at the Akron Art Museum (photo Chris Rutan Photography).