T. Lang, M.F.A.

T Lang, M.F.A.
Associate Professor, Inaugural Chair
Dance Performance and Choreography, Faculty, Media Expert

Contact Info
404-270-5474
Center of Innovation and Arts Building, Room 404

Tag(s): Dance and Choreography, Beyond the Movement Documentary, Dance Program at Spelman, Blend of Dance and Technology, dance performance, choreography

Biography

Faculty Member Since 2008

T. Lang creates, writes and teaches poetic expressions of dance, which illustrates deep, arousing investigations relevant to issues of identity, history and community. Through the vehicle of contemporary modern dance with emphasis on the interdisciplinarity, Lang’s work communicates perspectives with depth, soul and a movement style that captures the attention of the viewer with its evocative physicality, technical range and emotional viability. Her work is inspired by the desire to invite audiences into personal and subjective experiences of inspiration, family stories, shared history; a fascination with the connections in between; and the desire to investigate them together on the dance floor. After years of choreography, academia, and performance, Lang continues to explore new mediums with emergent technologies, and various modes of collaboration, to immerse audiences in what she hopes are powerful, transformative experiences. T. Lang connects dance, space, technology, and creative collaborators to move audiences into a greater understanding of our past, present and future. 

With commissions from the High Museum of Art, Goat Farm Arts Center, Flux Projects and more, Lang also stays engaged with the next generation of movement artists through her BLACK ENDURANCE Community programming as Artistic Director of her dance company, T. Lang Dance. She is also the Founding Director and owner of Ursa Major: A Presenting Haus from TLD (formerly called,The Movement Lab ATL). T. Lang is an Associate Professor and was the inaugural department chair of Dance Performance and Choreography at Spelman College. Lang builds curricula consistent with her creative research. Thus students enroll in her courses that consider the execution of 21st century embodiment as intellectual, artistic, and civic practice through reflection, research, and performance. Her interdisciplinary courses weigh how economic, social, and political forces have shaped how black bodies set themselves in motion as fugitives, maroons, and citizens. Lang has been recognized by the National Dance Educators Organization (NDEO) as the 2024 Outstanding Dance Educator in Higher Education (Established) Award. T. Lang was the 2022 and 2024 Emory University Arts and Social Justice Fellow, and the 2023 recipient of Princeton University’s Collaboration, Research and Innovation Grant award. In 2024, Lang was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts for the development of Out From the Deep: Unraveling Them Turners, and Spelman College's NSM Faculty Seed Award funded by the U.S. Department of Education Award No. P116Z220174. Recently, Lang was awarded a Black Public Media Fellowship at the Johnny Carson Media Center at University of Nebraska, Lincoln for work in immersive technology. She continues her new developments with movement and creative technology with artist residencies at Georgia Tech, Oglethorpe University and Duke University this fall as she begins creating for her upcoming 2025 work, Thighs of Thunder.

T. Lang Dance

Education

  • M.F.A. in Performance and Choreography Tisch School of the Art, New York University 2003 – 2005

    B.F.A. in Performance and Choreography University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 1996 – 2000  

Courses Taught

  • Choreographic Process III
  • Senior Thesis/ Independent Study
  • Navigating the Business of Dance
  • Movement Invention with Technology
  • Inventing Choreographic Works with Archives
  • Performance Repertory
  • 4 Week Study-Abroad Performance Repertory Diasporic Research for Performance in Marrakesh, Morocco
  • Independent Major Advisor
  • Improvisation 
  • Advanced Contemporary Modern
  • Choreographic Process II
  • Spelman Dance Theatre, Director 2008 - 2018

Research Interests

T. Lang’s Black Soul Codes ™ is a project series archiving Lang’s Ancestral Soul Movements methods in generating choreographic works through the use of motion capture. Motion capture is the process or technique of digitally recording patterns of movement, especially those of her creative productions, for the purpose of animating characters and worlds for augmented and extended reality dreamscapes. As part of the Black Soul Codes project, dancers are chosen from T. Lang’s global network; to learn, perform repertory while archiving her choreographic gestures and prompts into a larger T. Lang Dance database. The series rewards audiences with an opportunity to witness history, literature, sonic composition and movement through an unconventional yet innovative production. This extensive moving archive serves as a historical artifact that is both educational and a repository for dancing communities globally and most lovingly, acknowledging strategically undervalued Black Dance communities. 

Select Performances

T. Lang Dance Work

Select Publications

"Duet As Poetic Gesture: A Movement Toward New Intimacies ”. Isabelle Bucklow and Hannah Woods, Motor Dance Journal. London, UK . Essay. Page 72.

 

News and Notes