Julie B. Johnson

Julie B. Johnson, PhD, is a dance artist and educator whose work centers on participatory dance and embodied memory mapping to amplify the histories, lived experiences, and bodily knowledge of Black women as a strategy towards collective liberation for all. She does this work joyfully with community partners through her creative practice, Moving Our Stories, and at Spelman College where she serves as an Assistant Professor of the Department of Dance Performance & Choreography. She brings this work to the publishing realm as a Co-Founder/Consulting Editor of The Dancer-Citizen, an online open-access scholarly dance journal exploring the work of socially engaged artists.

Johnson is a 2022-23 Dance/USA Artist Fellow; 2020-23 Partners for Change Artist through Alternate ROOTS and The Surdna Foundation; a 2021 Hambidge Center Distinguished Fellow; and a 2019 Black Spatial Relics Fellow. Since 2019, Julie has focused on the intersections of dance and abolitionist feminism through community-oriented endeavors such as Idle Crimes & Heavy Work, For the Record… Dances to Stop Cop City, and The Georgia Incarceration Performance Project. She earned a PhD in Dance Studies at Temple University’s Boyer College of Music and Dance, researching meanings and experiences of ‘community’ in Philadelphia-based West African Dance classes.

Part of Fall 2024 Mellon Symposium