Dr. Adesola Akinleye (she/they) is an artist-scholar whose choreographic work bridges art, technology, and social inquiry. Adesola draws out the connections between movement, identity, and environment, seeing dance as a profound mode of engagement, storytelling, and social action. Adesola is co-artistic director of DancingStrongMovementLab. and an Associate Professor at Texas Woman’s University and a former Fellow at the Center for Art, Science and Technology at MIT, and Theatrum Mundi.
Grounded in Afro-Indigenous perspectives, Adesola explores dance as an embodied method for witnessing, remembering, and listening. Their work engages the relationship between physical Self and environment as a “living archive,” revealing the intricate relationships between movement, identity, and environment: Place. Central to Adesola’s practice is an urgent commitment to kinship across the web of human and non-human, which reflects principles inherent in many Afro-Indigenous worldviews.
Adesola’s publications include the monograph Dance, Architecture and Engineering, and Dancing Place: scores of the city, scores of the shore; commissions include site-specific work at The Hayward Gallery, London. Supported by the NEA, Adesola’s XR project, Space+Digital+Dance, uses augmented reality to craft new, communal experiences that deepen the engagement between digital futures and embodied practice.