Biography
Kelsa 鈥淜-Soul鈥 Rieger-Haywood is Associate Professor of Instruction in the School of Theatre and Dance at 糖心vlog官方入口app, where she teaches dance technique, dance studies, pedagogy, improvisation, community cultural development, and live arts production. She serves as Academic Access and Excellence Fellow, Coordinator of the Hip-Hop Studies Minor, and Co-Curator of The B-Series, a biannual festival celebrating Hip-Hop and street dance culture.
Kelsa is a dance artist, choreographer, producer, culturally responsive educator, community organizer, and curator. She creates and performs work individually and with her project-based company BraveSoul Movement (co-founded with her husband and creative partner Daniel 鈥淏RAVEMONK鈥 Haywood), and is affiliated with Venus Fly, a pioneering all-female street dance crew. She has presented work nationally and internationally at venues including danceGATHERING (Lagos, Nigeria), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), B.Supreme (London), B-Girl Be (Minneapolis), J.U.I.C.E. Festival (Hollywood), Constellation/Links Hall (Chicago), and the Pritzker Pavilion (Chicago). Her practice is rooted in underground street dance, Hip-Hop, and House cultures, and equally informed by her commitment to social justice and community organizing. Kelsa produces concerts, festivals, and forums of all sizes, grounding her work in anti-racist practice and accountability to the communities from which these forms emerge.
She holds a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an M.A. in Urban Planning and Policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Instructional Areas
Hip-Hop and street dance techniques, dance studies, hip-hop studies, critical and culturally sustaining pedagogy, dance pedagogy, community cultural development, dance improvisation/freestyle, live arts production
Creative Practice and Research Interests
Afro-diasporic dance and movement practices, chicago house dance history, community cultural development, social change theory and community organizing, improvisation and performance as liberatory and community-building practices, cross-cultural, collaborative and dialogical art-making practices
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