Embodied Dialogues IV :: Ancestors in My Feet

A Collaborative Residency and Performance

Now in its fourth year, Embodied Dialogues is a collaborative residency bridging Duke University and UNC-Charlotte through a shared commitment to embodied research, cultural recovery, and ancestral honoring. Co-founded by Duke Professor of Dance, Ava LaVonne Vinesett, and UNC-Charlotte Associate Professor of Dance, Tamara Williams, the project gathers an intergenerational circle of artists and scholar-practitioners dedicated to movement, memory, and transformation.

This year’s event, Ancestors in My Feet, features a powerful performance that brings together Afro-Brazilian artists, the sacred tradition of the Ring Shout, and original choreography rooted in West African and improvised dance.
We dance to recover stories obscured by history, to create space for the fullness of life and spirit carried by enslaved laborers. Our work is a structured improvisation grounded in ancestral legacies, cultural threads, and the protection and wisdom of those who walked before us. In this unbroken circle, we share movement as ritual, as testimony, as an act of resistance and care.
 
Ancestors in My Feet is an intention: a recognition of the thread that connects us to family forebearers, divine spirits, and the freedom dreams they held. Through dance, we nurture memory, encircle one another with protection and joy, and affirm our collective right to be—free to feel, to move, to remember, to be whole.
Duke Dance Program Co-Sponsor(s) Indigo Yard Gals, salt mark studios