Join the Department of Performing and Media Arts for Professional Directions: Setting Your Own Stage: The Choreography of Organizing a Life in the Arts with Antuan Byers, Founder/Director of Black Dance Change Makers and Vice President of Dancers at the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA) on Thursday, Oct. 30 at 5:30 PM on Zoom. The event will be hosted by PMA Assistant Professor of the Practice Danielle Russo and is free and open to the public.
Join on Zoom: TBA
Antuan Byers has never stayed in one lane. He learned to choreograph a life, through improvisation, rehearsal, and performance. Dance teaches him purpose and stamina; Entrepreneurship teaches him to resource the vision, prototype paths, and build structures that sustain the work; Organizing teaches him to turn care into power and people into a plan.
This conversation braids those lessons into a workable future, where rooms become communities that set the terms and protect our time, bodies, and voices. We’ll move from solo hustle to shared strategy, turning questions into demands, relationships into leverage, and vision into action. Come ready to imagine your next move, and leave ready to make it with your people.
Antuan Byers (he/him) is a dancer and organizer using movement to build power and possibility for Black communities. He is the Founder and Director of Black Dance Change Makers and serves as Vice President of Dancers at the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA), where he co-founded the AGMA Black Caucus. He is Operations Director at Darkness RISING Project and a Thought Partner with the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron (NCCAkron), and he serves on The Metropolitan Opera’s Artistic Advisory Committee and Art Bath’s Advisory Board. In recognition of his leadership, he was invited to Washington, D.C. to speak on equity in the arts alongside U.S. Secretary of Labor Julie Su and has been named to Urban Arts Magazine’s “40 Under 40” and as an Artist Advocate with New Yorkers for Culture & Arts (NY4CA). An Ailey/Fordham BFA graduate, he performs primarily with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet and konverjdans; he has also danced with Ailey II, Washington National Opera, and Mark Morris Dance Group. Learn more about his work.
The Professional Directions series brings industry experts to campus to speak about their career journeys as screenwriters, playwrights, editors, producers, directors, theatre critics, dramaturgs, and more.
Photo credit: Nick Suarez
