Charles O. Anderson, OSU’s fourth artist laureate, professor of dance, and founder of the Afro contemporary Charles O. Anderson Dance Theater X, discusses being a “kinetic storyteller.” Anderson prefers this term because it understands movement as knowledge production, memory transmission, and meaning-making shaped. His choreography is influenced by Black church and club cultures and emphasizes how bodies carry histories somatically through gesture, rhythm, and proximity. Anderson’s choreography embodies behavior from sources like tension, social anxiety, and everyday observations . and defines “Afro contemporary” as embracing experimental identity beyond “traditional African dance.” Anderson describes Recurrent Unrest, developed amid early Black Lives Matter influences and set to Steve Reich, as a cumulative, polyrhythmic exploration of civil unrest that also included a reparations initiative to bring impacted communities into concert dance; it became a film during the pandemic. He outlines his laureate project Croatoa: Re-Singing America’s Next 250 Years, with statewide community testimony, “wailing wall” artifacts, and inclusive performance, and shares his late start in dance, career path, and current work Re-Singing From the Underspace with Dayton Contemporary Dance Company.
