Red Clay Dance Company

Founded in 2008, the Red Clay Dance Company is an all-female professional touring company based on the South Side of Chicago. It creates and performs a diverse repertoire of Afro-contemporary dance that fuses traditional West African movement with contemporary dance forms. Red Clay operates programs for youth in Chicago schools, including two teen dance companies, the Red Clay Dance Youth Ensemble and the Two Planks Theater Ensemble.

With this International Connections Fund award, Red Clay collaborates with a contemporary dance company in Kampala, Uganda, in a project combining performance, teaching, and town hall discussions. The company based in Kampala creates and performs contemporary dance influenced by East African dance and culture. The exchange culminates with a new dance performance to be performed by the touring troops of the two dance companies in each country in 2017 and 2018. With very few female professional dancers in Uganda, Red Clay’s collaboration also strives to expose women in Uganda to the opportunity to explore dance as a career. This is the Red Clay Dance Company’s first International Connections Fund award.