Professor Emerita, Dance
About
Robin Wilson is best known as a founding member of the New York dance company Urban Bush Women. She performed in New York for more than a decade with such choreographers as Dianne McIntyre, Kevin Wynn, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. A member of Ann Arbor Dance Works, Wilson has performed at the New Orleans Dance Festival and the BAAD!Ass Women Festival in New York. Wilson has taught workshops at Washington University, University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, New York State Summer School for the Arts, Michigan Youth Arts Festival, Urban Bush Women’s Summer Leadership Institute, and in Suriname and Costa Rica. Her choreography has been commissioned by the Washington University Dance Theater, Metro Theatre Company, People Dancing, Happendance Company, Kentucky Arts Council, Bluegrass Black Arts Consortium, and the Harlem Dance Foundation. She traveled to Ghana with the Michigan Gospel Chorale in 2008 where her choreography was performed at the Ghanaian National Theater. Wilson has been an adjudicator for regional conferences and served on the National Board of Directors for the American College Dance Festival Association. She was a Kentucky Artist-in-Residence and was on the faculty of the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts before joining U-M. She holds an MFA in choreography from Temple University where she was a University Fellow. Wilson has received grant support from various academic and corporate sponsors and arts councils and was awarded the 1999 Maggie Allesee Award for New Choreography. She directs and performs with several liturgical dance ensembles and offers movement workshops for non-profit organizations and schools. She has organized student service projects in New Orleans and was a 2008 Global Intercultural Experience for Undergraduates Fellow. Wilson has presented papers at the Society of Dance History Scholars and the Congress for Research in Dance and has written a chapter on African diaspora dance for the Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History. She continues to research this topic throughout the Caribbean and the Americas.
