Ngoma Center for Dance Brings Washington, DC to the National Stage at the Teranga Conference at Alvin Ailey Dance Center nYC
Image: PowerPoint slide of Shawn Short’s NYC presentation at Ailey.
June 18th, 2026 – New York City, NY
New connections with the Ailey Extension and Kofago Dance Ensemble as DDT enters its 20th Anniversary Season
Ngoma Center for Dance and its flagship company, Dissonance Dance Theatre (DDT), represented Washington, DC at the second annual Teranga Conference, held June 13–14, 2026, at The Ailey Studios in New York City. Convened under the theme Guardians of Culture: Building Sanctuary through Art and Education, the interdisciplinary gathering brought together artists, educators, scholars, and culture-bearers rooted in the traditions and contemporary realities of the African Diaspora — and became a launching point for new relationships now taking shape between Ngoma Center for Dance, the Ailey Extension, and the New York–based Kofago Dance Ensemble.
Representing the organization was Ngoma Center for Dance Founding Producing Artistic Director Shawn Short, whose conversations with Ailey Extension Director Lisa Johnson-Willingham — a native of Washington, DC — centered on a shared belief that the District’s dance ecosystem is ready to grow. Those exchanges, along with ongoing conversations with Kofago Dance Ensemble and its founder Kevin L. McEwen, are early and exploratory, but they signal a widening network of Black concert dance institutions committed to building opportunity for artists across cities.
Image: Ngoma DDT Founding Director Shawn Short in Presentation at Ailey during the Teranga Conference NYC
The new connections arrive as Dissonance Dance Theatre enters its 20th Anniversary Season. Founded in 2007, DDT is Washington, DC’s Black-led contemporary ballet company, working at the intersection of contemporary, modern, and classical ballet, rooted in the African American concert dance tradition. Over nearly twenty years, the company has built one of the most consequential artistic pipelines of any Black-led dance company on the East Coast — part of Ngoma Center for Dance’s broader mission to ensure that Black concert dance traditions are not only preserved but actively transmitted to the next generation.
As part of the weekend’s exchange, and at Director Johnson-Willingham’s suggestion, Ngoma Center for Dance shared DDT’s current male-dancer audition notice with The Ailey School’s Junior/Pre-Professional team — an early, concrete example of the kind of cross-city collaboration these organizations hope to foster for the future of Black concert dance.
“The highlight of the weekend was hearing a fellow leader name what so many of us feel — that Washington, DC’s dance scene needs to grow, and that we are the ones to grow it. To sit alongside colleagues at Ailey and Kofago and imagine what we might build together is exactly the kind of work this moment calls for. These conversations are just beginning, and we’re approaching them with care and ambition in equal measure.” — Shawn Short, MFA, PGC in Business, Founding Producing Artistic Director, Ngoma Center for Dance & Dissonance Dance Theatre
LEARN MORE
- Dissonance Dance Theatre 20th Anniversary Season trailer: https://vimeo.com/1179741120
- Company D dance film trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw9NxEsCo3c
- The company and its dancers: https://ngcfddt.org/dissonance-dance-theatre-dancers/
- Ngoma Center for Dance: https://ngcfddt.org
For more information or media inquiries, please contact info@ngcfddt.org.
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Ngoma Center for Dance is the home of Dissonance Dance Theatre (founded in 2007) and its award-winning programs based in the Washington, DC area. DDT is named “one of the 11 small-but-mighty dance companies outside of LA and NYC” by Dance Spirit Magazine. Evoking emotional experiences in the audiences we touch, is the only East Coast, nationally recognized, Black-managed contemporary ballet company between NYC and ATL. For more information, visit www.ngcfddt.org