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| Sydnie L. Mosley (photo: Farima Faye/F.F. Visual) |
Sydnie L. Mosley is an artist-activist who is interested in creative work that is both artistically sound and socially aware. Sydnie earned her MFA in Dance with an emphasis on Choreography from the University of Iowa, not long after she received her BA in Dance and Africana Studies from Barnard College at Columbia University. Sydnie’s creative and research interests lie at the intersections of modern dance, movement in the African Diaspora, spirituality, feminism, and literature.
Her choreographic work with her company SLMDances actively engages audiences, and often reflects the experiences of black peoples and women. Her evening length dances The Window Sex Project and BodyBusiness, their creative processes and performance experiences are a model for dance-activism. Her dances have been performed extensively throughout New York City and she was listed by TheRoot.com as one of twenty-five “Up and Coming: Young Minority Artists and Entrepreneurs.”
Sydnie is a recipient of the CUNY Dance Initiative (2016 Artist in Residence), Dancing While Black Artist Fellowship (2015-2016), and The Field Leadership Fund (2015-2017). She produced her most recent evening length work with The Performance Project @ University Settlement (Artist in Residence 2015-2016). She is a 2013 alumna of the Create Change Fellowship with The Laundromat Project, and the Gibney Dance Institute for Community Action Training. In 2011, she became the inaugural Barnard Center for Research on Women Alumnae Fellow.
A versatile dancer, Sydnie performed most recently with INSPIRIT, a dance company, and Brooklyn Ballet. Jennifer Dunning of The New York Times writes of her performance in David Parker’s Nut/Cracked Redux, “I won't soon forget… the woman who stood in the center of a sea of floor-bound bodies, allowing her arms to bloom up and open luxuriously in a gracious, centuries-old convention with radiant pride and pleasure.”
As a dance educator, Sydnie specializes in teaching modern, jazz and West African dance, amongst other styles. She teaches babies (really!), K-12, undergraduates, non-dancers and professionals alike, with the motto: if you can move, you can dance! She designed and teaches Dance in the City, Barnard College's Pre-College Program in dance.
Sydnie’s skills extend beyond the creative. She is an independent scholar who earned honors for her Barnard College senior thesis, “Dancing Black Christianity: Revealing African American and Ghanaian Cultural Identity through Movement in Christian Worship.” She is a new contributing writer to The Dance Enthusiast and has contributed to Dance Magazine. She is also an advocate for dance currently serving on the Dance/NYC Advisory Board, after a four year tenure on the Dance/NYC Junior Committee which represents the interests of dance professionals in New York City ages 21-30. She served as Vice Chair 2014-2015.
Sydnie currently resides in Harlem, New York City. When she isn’t dancing, she is writing, listening to music, and cooking.
Serious Moonlight--hosted by Eva Yaa Asantewaa and produced with Tei Blow--is a production of Gibney Dance Center's Digital Technology Initiative.
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