Making Moves: New York City

Join NCCAkron for Making Moves: New York City, a panel discussion and book launch event for Artists on Creative Administration (AOCA). The conversation features regional arts leaders and national book contributors exploring themes of arts ecosystem building, generating revenue, and building community and audiences for contemporary performance.

Thursday, January 9, 2025

5:30pm – 6:30pm ET

Rare Book Room, Strand Bookstore

828 Broadway, New York, NY 10003

Artists on Creative Administration will be available for purchase from the Strand.

Christy Bolingbroke, Executive/Artistic Director of NCCAkron and Artists on Creative Administration (AOCA) contributing author

Banning Bouldin, Founder of New Dialect and AOCA contributing author

Yanira Castro, Interdisciplinary Artist and AOCA contributing author

Katy Dammers, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Performing Arts at REDCAT and AOCA contributing author

Delphine Lai, Founder of Del Arts Consulting and AOCA contributing author

Tonya Lockyer, Cultural Strategist and AOCA Editor/contributing author

Kate Wallich, Founder of Dance Church® and AOCA contributing author

**in process, additional panelists TBA

Artists on Creative Administration: A Workbook from the National Center for Choreography was 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.

About the Panelists

Christy Bolingbroke (Akron, OH) is the Founding Executive/Artistic Director for the National Center for Choreography - Akron (NCCAkron). As such, she is responsible for setting the curatorial vision and business model to foster research and development opportunities in dance. Previously, she served as the Deputy Director for Advancement at ODC in San Francisco, overseeing curation, performance programming, marketing, and development organization-wide. Prior to ODC, she was the Director of Marketing at the Mark Morris Dance Group in Brooklyn, NY. She earned a BA in Dance from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an MA. in Performance Curation from Wesleyan University. 

Banning Bouldin (Nashville, TN) is a dance artist and community organizer based in Nashville, TN. She received a BFA from the Juilliard School and has performed internationally with Aszure Barton, Cullberg Ballet, Lar Lubovitch, Jacquelyn Buglisi, and Wen Wei Wang. She is a two-time United States Artist Fellowship nominee. Her works have been commissioned by Visceral Dance Chicago, Springboard Danse Montréal, Northwest Dance Project, Whim W'Him, SALT, Groundworks Dance Theater, and Gibney Dance Company. Banning is the founder and director of New Dialect, a southern destination and resource for contemporary dance artists to collaborate and contribute to the larger international dance ecology. 

Yanira Castro (Brooklyn, NY) roots her work in communal construction as a rehearsal for radical democracy. She is an interdisciplinary artist born in Borikén (Puerto Rico), living in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn), and working at the intersection of communal practices, performance, installation, and interactive technology. Yanira forms iterative, multimodal projects that center the complexity of land, citizenship, and governance in works activated and performed by the public. She is the recipient of two New York Dance and Performance (“Bessie”) Awards for Outstanding Production, and various commissions, residencies, and national grant awards. Since 2009, she’s collaborated with a team of artists as a canary torsi. acanarytorsi.org

Katy Dammers (Los Angeles, CA) is the Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Performing Arts at REDCAT, CalArts’ center for the visual and performing arts in Los Angeles. Her curatorial practice presents, organizes, and contextualizes contemporary art in performance commissions, exhibitions, festivals, site-specific installations, and publications. She has held past leadership positions at The Kitchen, FringeArts, and Jacob’s Pillow. Dammers has also worked as a creative administrator, and was the General Manager for choreographers Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener from 2014-2022, in addition to organizing projects with Jennifer Monson, Donna Uchizono, and Tere O’Connor. A writing fellow at the US National Center for Choreography, her essays about dance have been published in The Brooklyn Rail, Motor Dance Journal, and MOLD as well as edited volumes by University of Akron Press and Princeton University Press.

Delphine Lai (Walnut Creek, CA) is a writer, arts advocate, and arts administrator with twenty-five years of nonprofit experience. In 2009, she founded Del Arts Consulting to support the creation of new work, to make the arts more accessible to all, and to further art as a means for social change. Previously, she oversaw the SFMOMA Director’s Circle and Artist’s Circle individual giving programs that raised $2.5 million annually. Delphine studied the creative process at Stanford University, earning a BS in Product Design Engineering and a BA in English with an emphasis on Creative Writing. She is also NCCAkron’s Organizational Dramaturg. 

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.

Kate Wallich (Los Angeles, CA) is a multifaceted artist who lives by her artistic manifesto to bring dance and dancers to the forefront of culture. Named one of Dance Magazine's "25 to Watch," she has made a profound impact in the dance field through numerous commissions, presentations, and residencies at renowned institutions. In 2010, Kate founded Dance Church®, an all-levels movement class that has garnered a devoted following of over 200,000 people taking classes. Dance Church® reached a global audience after expanding online, leading to the launch of an online platform and expansion into new cities. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Pictured (L to R): Cover art for Artists on Creative Administration and the Rare Book Room (photo courtesy of the Strand).