Nailah Bellinger
Nailah Randall-Bellinger has made her career as a dance educator, choreographer and scholar.
She has taught modern and contemporary classes throughout the United States at conventions and universities, including, Harvard University, Cal State Northridge, UCLA, and Goddard College in Vermont. She has performed and lectured in Brazil, Ghana, Haiti, The Czech Republic and Senegal. For over 15 years she was an assistant professor of dance at Dean College in Franklin MA, and faculty member of the Gold’s School in Brockton MA. She has taught for major dance conventions and teacher workshops, including American Dance Awards, Rhee Gold’s Dancelife Teacher Convention and Deborah Mason’s CYDP Master Series. She has also served twice as artist-in-residence at SUNY Buffalo and at Salve University in Rhode Island where she conducted master classes and choreographed original works for the dance companies of both institutions. In 2019 Nailah was commissioned to set an original work on Boston Based dance company, Urbanity. She was also commissioned to choreograph the Boston musical production of Ragtime and to recreate one of her signature works, Chaired Memories, for the production of a collaborative women choreographers concert- “That’s What She Said.”
As a performer she has worked with film director and poet S. Pearl, and performed as a member of Karen McDonald’s New Age Dance Workshop and Jamie Nichols Fast Feet, Inc. both based in Los Angeles. In 1998 Nailah presented her masterwork, Dancing Beloved, which was part of the Gendered Resistance conference, in Oxford, Ohio, at Miami University, where her 7-member ensemble retold Toni Morrison’s novel through movement. Nailah is also a contributing author to the affiliated book Gendered Resistance, published in 2013. She was also a dancer and member of The Boston affiliate, Skeleton Architecture: The future of our Worlds project, performed at the Institute of Contemporary Art.
As an artist and educator, Nailah continues to share her vision and hope for a more equitable world through her company, RootsUprising. Her major work, Ziporah- A Woman’s Work, was performed in 2017 at Harvard University- Architecture school’s Black In Design conference-Designing Resistance, Building Coalitions.
As department Chair at The Cambridge School of Weston, Nailah continues to draw young students into the art of dance through providing a robust dance curriculum which speaks to the ever-evolving creative process, social discourse and human condition of the time. Her mission is as it has always been to use dance as a voice of the whole of humanity.
