The arts is my job. The dancers that are in that dance studio right now this is their job.
THIS IS NOT A HOBBY.
- Vershawn Sanders Ward, Founding Artistic Director & CEO
Vershawn Sanders-Ward is an ARTIVIST. She is an award-winning choreographer, arts leader, scholar, and educator. Sanders-Ward is the Founding Artistic Director and CEO of Chicago-based Red Clay Dance Company and is currently a candidate for Dunham Technique Certification. She holds an MFA in Dance from New York University and is the first recipient of a BFA in Dance from Columbia College Chicago (Gates Millennium Scholar.). Sanders-Ward is a 2022 Dance/USA Artist Fellow, a Chicago Dancemakers Forum Awardee, a Harvard Business School Club of Chicago Scholar, a Dance/USA Leadership Fellow, a 3Arts awardee, and received a Choreography Award from Harlem Stage NYC in 2009. She is a 3-time recipient of NewCity Magazine’s “Players 50, People Who Really Perform for Chicago” and in 2023 was inducted into NewCity’s “Hall of Fame”.
Her choreography has been presented in Chicago, Minneapolis, New York, San Francisco, The Yard at Martha’s Vineyard, and internationally in Toronto, Dakar, and Kampala. Vershawn is currently on faculty at Loyola University Chicago in the Fine and Performing Arts Department and has received choreographic commissions from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Loyola University, Columbia College Chicago, Northwestern University, Knox College, AS220, and the National Theatre in Uganda.
Her most recent project, Rest.Rise.Move.Nourish.Heal was selected for a 2021 National Dance Project Award from NEFA with additional support from the NEA.
As an arts advocate, she serves on the Board of Trustees for Dance/USA and is the Vice-President of the Board of Directors for the Black Arts & Cultural Alliance of Chicago. Vershawn was selected to attend the inaugural Obama Foundation Summit for Emerging Global Leaders and has had the pleasure of gracing the cover of the Chicago Reader and DEMO Magazine.
I am an Artivist.
My artistic vision is deeply rooted in my identity as a Black/African Diaspora woman and the responsibility to be a vessel through which my culture is amplified and evolves.
My artistry serves as an entry point for my collaborators and those that witness my work to examine and dialogue about cultural and socio-economic inequities.
My embodied practice is an Afro-Contemporary aesthetic, which is informed by Dunham Technique, Chicago House, and West African dance, specifically from Guinea and Senegal.
Vershawn Sanders Ward is available for artistic commissions and public speaking engagements.
Please use our bookings form for inquiries.