The Department of Theatre and Dance welcomes post-doctoral research associate Ninoska M’bewe Escobar, Ph.D.

Ninoska M’bewe Escobar, Ph.D. specializes in Black diasporic theatre, dance, and performance. Her work focuses on the body in society through its experiences, narratives, and creative production. From 2016-2021 she was affiliated with the Five College Dance Department in western Massachusetts where she taught African American theatre history, African American and world dance history, and West African dance at Amherst College, Smith College, and Mt. Holyoke College. She was a Consortium for Faculty Diversity Scholar in Theatre Arts and African American Studies at Amherst College and in 2018 organized the dance symposium African American Dance: Form, Function, and Style! The symposium explored the history and practice of African American dance through public talks, master dance classes, performances, and films, with a keynote address presented by preeminent dance scholar Dr. Yvonne Daniel. She co-directed the Ailey/Pre-Professional Performing Arts School Program in New York and directed AileyCamp in New York and Miami. She was a lead facilitator of the humanities curriculum Revelations: An Interdisciplinary Approach, which utilizes Alvin Ailey’s signature ballet Revelations to engage students in examining societal issues impacting their lives and communities.

She has a professional background as a performer and choreographer and has taught widely, including The Ailey School and Clark Center for the Performing Arts in New York, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, Earl Mosley Institute of the Arts in Connecticut, and the Caribbean American Dance Company/Model Cities Center for the Cultural Arts in Miami, among others. She was a principal dancer in the companies of legendary Brazilian capoeiristas Loremil Machado and Jelon Vieira and performed with Nigerian Jùjú music trailblazer King Sunny Adé, with Le Ballet National Djoliba, and with Jamaican reggae superstars, Third World during their 1980s tours of the U.S. Her film and theater work includes performing in the original cast of MGM’s Fame (1980), the Brooklyn Academy of Music Nextwave Festival production of Njinga the Queen King (1993), and in numerous concert stage productions and venues including Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Jacob’s Pillow, and the Santa Fe Dance Festival. As a choreographer, she created the dances for Reza Abdoh’s The Law of Remains (1992) and the Nuyorican Poets Café production of Pepe Carril’s Shango de Ima (1994), which won an Audelco Award for Outstanding Black Theater Choreography. As a director, she developed original works for the performance groups Life Force Dance and M’word!, presented at the Joyce Soho, the Theater of the Riverside Church, the Neuberger Museum of Art, and The Knitting Factory in New York, among others.

Dr. Escobar is documenting the work and legacy of Caribbean American dance pioneer Pearl Primus (1919-1994), a seminal figure in the development of American modern dance, the solo dance form, and the use of dance to promote social justice. As a post-doctoral research associate in the Department of Theatre and Dance, she will examine the recent reconstruction of the rarely seen dance work, Michael Row The Boat Ashore, created by Primus in 1979 as she reflected upon the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, by Paul Dennis, Regisseur and former dancer with the Limón Dance Company. She will lecture and teach select courses in technique, theory, and history and looks forward to engaging with students and others to explore how dance and performance creates meaning in life and the self.