Dege Feder and Momar Ndiaye in Conversation on Contemporary African Diasporic Dance

Dege Feder, Multimedia Artist, Haifa, Israel & Momar Ndiaye, Assistant Professor of Dance, The Ohio State University

Feder is a choreographer, dancer and musician. Dege joined “Eskesta” dance troupe in 1999 as a dancer and performed in many international festivals in Germany, France, Columbia, Croatia, South Africa, USA (New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago) and more. In 2013 she became the artistic director and choreographer of the Beta Dance Troupe. With Beta, she has performed in various venues, including in Ethiopia, where she was invited to teach workshops at the Ethiopian National Theater. She performed in 2018 in Jacob’s Pillow festival and taught dance workshops in the USA. Dege is the recipient of several awards, including the Israeli Ministry of Culture Prize for Young Dance Creators. In addition to her artistic work, she teaches dance as a means of empowerment for women and young girls in the Ethiopian-Israeli community.

Ndiaye is a dance artist, videographer, activist, and actor of social-cultural development from Senegal with thirty years of experience—making, performing, teaching, collaborating, and developing initiatives for a sustainable creative industry in West-Africa. He has an established international profile as a choreographer and has danced in the international Company Premier Temp as well as other significant choreographers. He created his Company Cadanses in 2004 to support the promotion of African creativity through mentorship, training, and production. Since 2016, he has been a collaborating dramaturge and artistic coach for the award-winning dance company Abby Z and the New Utility. And more recently has served as faculty at the highly acclaimed American Dance Festival, a leading summer intensive training center for contemporary dance, teaching in their Pre-Professional and Professional programs, and co-directing their International Choreographers in Residence program. Ndiaye received his MFA in Dance from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2017. His prior areas of academic studies and professional activity include a broad-based education in economics, management, marketing, and environmental studies / sustainability advocacy. Currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Dance within the College of Arts and Sciences at The Ohio State University, Ndiaye’s position is partially funded by The Global Arts and Humanity Discovery Theme. As a researcher, Ndiaye is deeply invested in questions of cultural identity and cultural hybridization in the frame of globalization and interculturalism, as they signal a passive colonial continuity, as well as the concept of Négritude and its side effects. His research and teaching are in conversation with the complexities of his existence as an African immigrant who was born and raised in a “former colony of France.” His goal is to foster an inclusive environment for all dance students and continue to actively decenter Western forms as the unspoken neutral cultural canon to which most institutions default.

Presented by the MCRME Project (Global Arts + Humanities Cross-Disciplinary Exchange), Department of Dance, Melton Center for Jewish Studies, and Middle East Studies Center