Choreographers

During college, he began to explore his choreographic mind, methods, and theories. His dance works have been presented at OhioDance Festival at Ohio University, Athens, Ohio (2015), Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, Harford, Connecticut (2015 - 2017), Battery Dance Festival, New York, New York (2017), West Fest Dance Festival at Martha Graham Dance Studio, New York, New York (2017), American College Dance Association, Kent, Ohio (2017), Project Jericho, Springfield, Ohio (2018) and his recent creation “Abandoned Tales” was selected to showcase at the 31st Annual International Conference and Festival of Blacks in Dance, Dayton, Ohio (2019).

As a choreographer, Dancy works evokes emotions and aims to connect audiences by guiding them through genuine and visceral movement, inspired by familiar life and human obstacles. For Dancy, the creation process starts with remembered experiences. Those memories serve as an archive to activate the creating thought. Though the work is abstract, the viewer is encouraged to develop their own interpretation and find personal life connections visually, physically, and spiritually.

In 2014, she received the Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council and the Josie Award, which recognizes exceptional performance in the art of dance. Ms. Perkins holds an MFA in Dance from The Ohio State University, and a BFA in Dance Performance from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. She is a member of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters inaugural class of Leadership Fellows and a member of the Ohio Dance Board of Trustees. 

As a choreographer, performer, and researcher she has traveled both nationally and internationally, including to Ougadougou, Burkina Faso where she began The Beautiful Archive Project, an audio archive centered on the perception of black female embodiment in contemporary dance performance. The cornerstone of her choreographic research, the collection operates as the foundation for Boxing Up Beautiful, an intermedia performance investigation of those same ideals.

Ms. Perkins has collaborated with the Dayton Philharmonic, Blackbird String Quartet, The University of Dayton’s Department of Music, and the Khalid Moss Jazz Trio. The latter created an original composition for her ensemble work entitled Unrested and Unfaithful, which sits in DCDC’s permanent repertoire. The Descent of this Water: Rain (2014), an embodied reflection on the process of migration for people of color in the American south, was commissioned by the Dublin Arts Council as a site-specific collaborative community project. Ms. Perkins has created dance works and taught master classes for Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, Cutno Dance, SMAG Dance Collective, and Stivers School for the Arts Dance Ensemble. She has been a guest artist for the New Orleans Ballet Association/NOLA, the Augusta Ballet Company, Compton Dance Theatre, and The Moving Architects. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Dance at The Ohio State University, where she teaches contemporary movement practice.

In addition to her choreographic and artistic leadership, Ms. Blunden- Diggs is the Executive Director of Jeraldyne’s School of the Dance, the cornerstone to Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, and she works closely with DCDC’s pre-professional company, DCDC₂. She has created works for the company, which have become part of the company’s artistic blueprint. Her notable works include Configurations, Kaleidoscope, Fragments, In My Father’s House and Traffic. Her first piece Variations in Blue, composed when she was 17, was submitted as an entry in the Young Choreographers Showcase and selected for inclusion in the National Choreographic Plan. She has contributed an impressive body of work including No Room, No Place, No Where for which she received a Monticello Award in 1982. In May 2002, she adjudicated the Regional Dance America Northeast Competitions.

Ms. Blunden-Diggs was Co-Director/Choreographer for The Human Race Theatre’s production of Crowns, as well as Director/Choreographer for Central State University’s original production of In The Pursuit of Wind among others. She created ballets for and worked with students at University of Dayton, Sinclair Community College, Wright State University, Central State University, South Dayton Dance Theatre, and Stivers School for the Arts. She served on the Board of Directors for The International Association of Blacks in Dance from 2000-2006 and again from 2015 to present.

She has received numerous awards and accolades. Among them are honors from Regional Dance America, Monticello Choreographic Fellowships in 1979 and 1980, and two Individual Fellowship Awards from the Ohio Arts Council in 1981 and 1984. The Fisk University Alumni Association honored her with an Excellence in Artistry Award, and she was awarded a Montgomery County Arts and Cultural District Master Fellowship for artistic excellence and community outreach initiatives in 2000. In 2014, she received the Image of Hope Youth Advocacy Award for her contributions to improving the lives of youth in the Greater Dayton area.

Ms. Blunden-Diggs is an adjunct professor at the University of Dayton in the Theatre, Dance, and Performance Technology Program serves on the Seedling Foundation Board for Stivers School for the Arts, and serves as Secretary for the National Board of Trustees of Dance/USA since 2020.

Countess has danced professionally with DCDC and with ClancyWorks Dance Company based in Washington, D.C. She has had the opportunity to perform internationally in Kazakhstan, China, and Russia (including having performed in two sold-out performances at the world-famous Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, Russia). She has performed works by Ulysses Dove, Donald McKayle, Ray Mercer, Dwight Rhoden, Ronald K. Brown, Crystal Michelle, Debbie Blunden-Diggs, Kevin Ward, Abby Zbikowski, Adrienne Clancy, and many more. Countess will be entering her sixth season dancing with the professional company and her eighth year with the organization.

Countess has been a teaching artist for eight years. She has experience in teaching dance through arts in education to K-12 students and has taught recreational and masterclasses in modern, ballet, and contemporary. Countess has had the opportunity to teach regionally, nationally, and internationally. She has also choreographed works on a multitude of students from ages eight to post-college graduates and professionals. Regionally, Countess has set work for DCDC₂ and the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company; nationally, she has set work in the Washington, D.C. area for ClancyWorks Dance Company, West Potomac High School in Virginia, and has produced and directed a dance concert entitled “Memories of Walking in Memphis” for the University of Memphis’ Black History Month Program; Internationally, she co-choreographed a piece for an international dance company entitled Kazyna Dance Company (based out of Shymkent, Kazakhstan) in May 2018.