Director
Zakiya Atkinson is an educator, artist, and administrator committed to cultivating arts literacy and social change. She is the director of Zaman Dance Theatre Collective and for the past three years has served as the Supervisor of Fine and Performing Arts for Cranford Public School District. Prior, she spent ten years as a dance educator at Memorial High School in West New York, NJ. During her tenure there, Atkinson collaborated to develop a Performing Arts Academy while creating and implementing a dance arts curriculum and program.
Atkinson’s professional credits include stage, television, print, and live events. She has also toured school districts as an arts education performer and was a Philadelphia Eagles Cheerleader (NFL) for four years.
Atkinson has served on the faculties at New York University, William Paterson University, and Bronx Community College. She founded the Essex County MetroWest Dance Festival and Modern Renaissance X, events merging student and professional artists throughout New Jersey and surrounding areas. Atkinson employs the arts in community spaces as a tool for transformation and has facilitated community based programs locally and internationally. She has been the recipient of an NEA Learning & Leadership grant and fellowships with Body Politic Laboratory at Gibney (NYC), Bates Dance Festival, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Atkinson has also presented her research and practice at arts, education, and social justice conferences.
Atkinson received a B.A. in Communications and Theatre from Temple University, MA in Dance Education from New York University, and a Certificate in Holocaust & Genocide Education from Saint Elizabeth University. She holds K-12 Dance and Supervisory Certifications in the State of New Jersey.
Atkinson is a doctoral candidate in the Dance Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University and is currently conducting a research study, Towards Community Dance Educator Preparedness: Facilitating Experiences that are Inclusive, Culturally Responsive, and Transformative for Diverse Communities and Groups. Atkinson’s research interests also include critical and transformative pedagogies, arts integration, and the impact of sociocultural factors on arts education and community practice.
"My teaching and leadership in arts education has been informed by my commitment to increase equitable access to arts education; critical and transformative pedagogies; and my understanding of exclusionary practices and frameworks in the arts. I strive to create environments that are inclusive, culturally sustaining, and transformative. This occurs when we honor and integrate the lived experiences of our students and encourage them to have agency in their learning process."
Zakiya Atkinson
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Join my virtual sessions on 1/21/23
Investigating Community Dance Practice: Notes from the Field
2:00pm-2:30pm EST
Moving Towards Empathy:
Reflecting on the Refugee Crisis
4:45pm-5:45pm EST
Join me for a session of Presentation & Practice- Creating Transformative Communities Through Dance
Meet me at NDEO 2022 for my presentation of Investigating Community Dance Practice: Notes from the Field
-Zakiya Atkinson
Session Description:
Dance has always been a practice for the people which makes community dance a practice most authentic and reflective of the ways in which societies have used their bodies to embody, reflect on and respond to varied occurrences in life. This presentation conveys the outcomes of a study entitled Investigating Community Dance Practice. The study used interviews and a focus group to collect data about the preparation, pedagogical approaches, and lived experiences of community dance educators working in diverse settings.
I will share my findings and how they correlate to literature in the field around community dance education. I will also present the emergence of variances in community dance educator preparedness, the positionality of community dance education in the field, and the application of critical and transformative pedagogies. This research is a segue to continued research towards preparing community dance educators to facilitate dance and movement-based experiences with diverse communities and groups.
Presentation Highlights
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Community Dance Education Workshop: Moving Towards Liberation. New York University Steinhardt, Dance Education Program (2022)
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Arts Are Education: Dance Focused Town Hall Webinar (Panelist). National Dance Education Organization (2021)
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Sustaining a K-12 Dance Program in Changing Times (Presenter). National Dance Education Organization Conference (2021). Telling Our Stories: The Essentiality of Dance In Changing Times.
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So, You Want Another Degree: Grad School and Beyond (Panelist). Telling Our Stories: National Dance Education Organization Conference (2021). Telling Our Stories: The Essentiality of Dance In Changing Times.
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Dance Education in a Changing United States: K-12 Dance Education for Every Child (Panelist) : Dance/ NYC 2019 Symposium: Dance in a Changing United States, Hunter College. New York, New York
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Cross-Curricular Connectivity: A Creative Approach to the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights (Presenter). Teaching the World Forum 2016, Rutgers University: GSE. New Brunswick, New Jersey
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New Strategies for Holocaust Education/ (Presenter): Collaborative Conference on Holocaust Education: Looking to the Future (2016). College of Saint Elizabeth. Morristown, New Jersey
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See the Need and Meet it: Artistry, Community, Leadership and Diversity in High School Dance (Presenter). National Dance Education Organization Conference (2016). Speaking With Our Feet: Advocating, Analyzing, and Advancing Dance Education. Arlington, Virginia
