Ngoma Center for Dance Supports DanceAfrica DC 2026, Funding Artist Fees in the Spirit of Community
Image: DanceAfricaDC (C) Dance Place
June 7th, 2026 – Washington, DC
In the spirit of community and creative impact, Ngoma Center for Dance contributes $1,000 toward artist fees for the 38th annual celebration
Ngoma Center for Dance has contributed $1,000 to Coyaba Dance Theatre to help cover artist fees for DanceAfrica DC 2026, the 38th annual festival presented by Coyaba Dance Theatre and Dance Place. Though DanceAfrica DC is a signature Dance Place event, Ngoma Center for Dance stepped forward — in the spirit of community and creative impact — to help ensure that Washington, DC artists could be fairly compensated and that the celebration could go on.
Held June 1–7, 2026 under the theme Past, Present, Future, DanceAfrica DC is one of the District’s most beloved cultural traditions — a week of master classes, indoor and outdoor performances, and a vibrant African marketplace rooted in the dance, drumming, and living traditions of the African Diaspora. The 2026 festival was curated and guided by the iconic Griot Mama Sylvia Soumah, Artistic Director of Coyaba Dance Theatre, the festival’s Griot, and now a Co-Presenter of DanceAfrica DC, who has served the DC-metro community through West African dance for more than 40 years.
Image: DanceAfricaDC (C) Dance Place
Ngoma Center for Dance’s gift reflects a belief that a healthy dance ecosystem grows when its institutions support one another. As Dissonance Dance Theatre (DDT) — Ngoma Center for Dance’s flagship company — enters its 20th Anniversary Season, the organization continues to invest not only in its own stages but in the wider community of DC artists and the legacy organizations that make the District’s cultural life possible.
“DanceAfrica DC is a treasure, and the artists who pour themselves into it deserve to be paid for their work. This contribution isn’t about one company or one event — it’s about all of us who believe Washington, DC’s dance community rises together. When we can help a fellow institution honor its artists and keep a 38-year tradition alive, we show up. That’s what community looks like.” — Shawn Short, MFA, PGC in Business, Founding Producing Artistic Director, Ngoma Center for Dance & Dissonance Dance Theatre
LEARN MORE
- DanceAfrica DC 2026: https://www.danceplace.org/danceafrica-2026/
- Ngoma Center for Dance: https://ngcfddt.org
- Dissonance Dance Theatre 20th Anniversary Season trailer: https://vimeo.com/1179741120
- The company and its dancers: https://ngcfddt.org/dissonance-dance-theatre-dancers/
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