Biography
Kelsa Rieger-Haywood is a dance artist, culturally responsive educator and community organizer/curator. Kelsa is Co-Founder/Co-Artistic Director of BraveSoul Movement (since 2016), and a member of the internationally known street-dance crew, Venus Fly (since 2005). Kelsa’s movement training has been through a range of spaces and forms, including underground House and Hip-Hop, capoeira, samba, salsa/batchata, modern techniques and gymnastics. Kelsa has performed and presented work at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, IL), B.Supreme (London, UK), B-girl Be (Minneapolis, MN) J.U.I.C.E. Hip-Hop Dance Festival (Hollywood, CA), Constellation/ Links Hall (Chicago, IL) and Pritzker Pavilion (Chicago, IL). A prominent focus of Robinson’s work is building reciprocal collaboration and meaningful exchange between Hip-Hop and the academy. Kelsa currently serves as Associate Professor of Instruction at The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, Coordinator of Columbia’s Hip-Hop Studies Minor, and Co-Curator of The B-SERIES, a biannual festival celebrating Hip-Hop & street dance culture at the College (since 2013). Kelsa holds a bachelor degree in sociology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a master of urban planning and policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Instructional Areas
Dance technique in Hip-Hop and related Afro-diasporic dance forms (house, popping, locking, breaking), the histories, and sociocultural context of these forms, dance studies, hip-hop studies, dance pedagogy, culturally sustaining pedagogy, community cultural development, social practice dance, dance improvisation and composition
Creative Practice and Research Interests
Afro-diasporic dance and movement practices, chicago house dance history, vernacular dance, Hip-Hop studies, cultural resistance and hegemony, community cultural development and social practice dance, critical race theory, improvisation and performance as liberation, compositional improvisation, cross-cultural, collaborative and dialogical art-making practice, participatory action research, and arts and creative practice as spiritual development
Degrees
B.A., Sociology University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 1999
M.U.P.P., Urban Planning and Policy University of Illinois at Chicago 2003