Studio Stories: Reminiscing on Twin Cities Dance with Deneane Richburg - Season 11, Episode 136

Deneane Richburg (Choreographer, Dancer, former Competitive FigureSkater, Founder/Artistic Director of Brownbody) grew up a competitive figureskater—in spaces where she had to check her blackness at the door, as worldskating was dominated by whiteness and rooted in values that subjugated herancestry’s truths; to quote Zora Neale Hurston, she always felt “most coloredwhen [she was] thrown against a sharp white background.” Richburg realizedthe need to carve out space for her ancestral history hence her decision toestablish Brownbody.Since 2013 Brownbody has honored complex narratives of U.S.-based Blackcommunities by disrupting assumptions, and disenfranchising ideologies,around blackness. She received her MFA in dance and choreography fromTemple University in 2007, an MA in Afro-American Studies from UWMadison, and a BA in English and African American Studies from CarletonCollege. Richburg has been choreographing work for both the stage and icesince 2007 most recently completing an evening-length work called “TracingSacred Steps” which brings ring shout onto the ice. Deneane was a recipientof a 2017 McKnight Choreography Fellowship, a 2019 Jerome Hill ArtistFellowship, and a Dance/USA Fellowship to Artists made possible withgenerous funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.