About NAAADT...

In 2000, Umfundalai dancers, Josephine Heard, Glendola Xllyhema Mills, Ed.D, C. Kemal Nance, PhD, and Cheryl Stevens, PhD started the Organization of Umfundalai Teachers (OUT) to staff annual Umfundalai-based initiatives.  At that time, Umfundalai activities largely included the production of Kariamu & Company: Traditions’ concerts and staffing the Umfundalai Dance Intensives on Temple University’s main campus in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. The newly formed OUT had three goals: (1.) to create opportunities for artists to experience Umfundalai’s movement practice, (2.) to create opportunities for scholars to engage with Umfundalai’s emerging intellectual content (history, aesthetics, pedagogy, etc.), and (3.) to standardize the prerequisite experiences required to be certified in Umfundalai teaching.  Most noteworthy is OUT’s attempt to decentralize, Umfundalai’s progenitor, Kariamu Welsh, D. Arts, as the locus of Umfundalai development.  Unlike its predecessor organization, the Institute of African Dance Research and Performance, OUT sought to release Welsh from some of the administrative leadership of Umfundalai so that she could continue to develop its artistic reach through choreography and its theoretical scaffolding through academic scholarship.