How Marymount Manhattan's Newest Required Course - Embodied Africanist Aesthetics - Is Swiftly Making an Impact on Its Dance Majors - Marymount Manhattan College News

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Latin jazz, taught by Sekou McMiller, is part of the Embodied Africanist Aesthetics course.

Photo by Kristine Maria Gonzalez
Butoh class with Ximena Garnica and Asahara Masanori from Leimay.

Photo by Kristine Maria Gonzalez
Students learn the West African Sinte, taught by Andrea Markus, as part of the Embodied Africanist Aesthetics course.

Photo by Kristine Maria Gonzalez
Kathak class with Parul Shah.

Photo by Kristine Maria Gonzalez
Dance Magazine

Check out Dance Magazine’s new article, “How Marymount Manhattan’s Newest Required Course - Embodied Africanist Aesthetics - Is Swiftly making an Impact on Its Dance Majors.”

“Marymount Manhattan Dance Department’s Embodied Africanist Aesthetic course, which launched last year, is co-taught by a group of five faculty members; each section includes a mix of hip hop, Latin jazz and Afro-Caribbean forms, and includes live drummers, giving students a chance to learn about polyrhythms. “We really felt that as an institution, we needed to update our curriculum,” says department chair Nancy Lushington. “We were looking for ways to diversify our training, and we felt that the Africanist aesthetic needed to be as important as teaching ballet five days a week.” In an ever-changing dance world where artists are asked to be more versatile than ever, Marymount is one of the first dance programs to forge new ground, not only better preparing students for what’s to come, but showing them through practice that all dance forms hold equal weight.”