Al Evangelista

Assistant Professor of Dance Al Evangelista performed in New York City’s The Tank with alum, Nikaio Thomashow ’18. Together, they debuted Echoes, Professor Evangelista’s newest dance theater work incorporating augmented reality, dance, and motion capture to explore themes of history and queerness.

Al Evangelista, assistant professor of dance and comparative American studies, is an artist in residence at Northwestern University’s slippage lab, where he created a new dance-theater performance. The work made its New York City debut at Movement Research at Judson Church. Evangelista was interviewed on the OhioDance podcast A State of Dance, on which he discussed dancing solidarity, queerness, and dance technology.

Assistant Professor of Dance Al Evangelista is one of three dance artists whose work is being supported in 2023 through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron. Evangelista's project, developed in partnership with Daring Dances (Ann Arbor, MI), is part of NCCAkron's Dancing Labs residency program.

Assistant Professor of Dance, Al Evangelista, was one of the curators and contributors for Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies, Chat Vol. 1: Social Choreography in the Digital: where bodies might. The contributions center on forms of digital care, reflecting the range of innovative digital care practices that the pandemic finally made widely available. 

Assistant Professor of Dance Al Evangelista is featured in The Inside Story podcast for his role as an advisory board member for the Institute for Empathic Narrative. The Institute is funded by an American Council of Learned Societies grant and is featured on the ACLS site. 

Assistant Professor of Dance Al Evangelista participated and presented in two panels at the Dance Studies Association annual conference. The two panels titled, “Dancing in the Aftermath of Anti-Asian Hate” and “Acts of Tribute, Practices of Citation: Recognition as Resistance to Cultures of Individualism” took place October 13-16 in Vancouver, BC. On the panels, he discussed upcoming publications including one on dance and bystander intervention training. 

Assistant Professor of Dance Al Evangelista was recently published in a special issue of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre. "The 'Asian American Dramaturgies' special issue of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre edited by ATDS Vice President Dr. Donatella Galella [is] one of the first journal issues in our field dedicated to Asian American theatre."

Assistant Professor of Dance Al Evangelista’s newest creative work, “garden says breathe” was published in you are here: the journal of creative geography. This queer ecologies issue is you are here's twenty-third issue and features “work of thirty-four writers, artists, and intellectuals.”

Assistant Professor of Dance Al Evangelista presented and participated in a panel, “Across the Border Between Theatre and Public History” at the 2022 National Council on Public History Conference held virtually, May 2-6.

Assistant Professor of Dance Al Evangelista recently had his screendance "Dragon Fruit" selected for three film festival premieres. "Dragon Fruit" will make its Midwest premiere at RAD Fest, Pacific Northwest premiere at Disorient, and international premiere at Queerbee.

Assistant Professor of Dance Al Evangelista was interviewed by artist Matthew Cumbie for Dance Place’s “Creative Entry Journalism Series.”

Oberlin College and Conservatory Faculty and Staff Abby Aresty, Larissa Fekete, Abe Reshad, and Al Evangelista presented the multi-year collaboration, “ArtiFACT Project” at the 2021 Engineering and Liberal Education (E&LE) Symposium. As part of the Building Partnerships panel, they discussed Oberlin community partnerships and collaborations, highlighting technological innovations and Covid-19 pivots including digitation, technologies from Cooper Language Learning Lab, dance department films, and technologies from TIMARA. The E&LE Symposium provides a forum for educators and professionals to discuss the role of engineering at a liberal arts college and liberal arts in an engineering education.

Assistant Professor of Dance Al Evangelista debuted "Dragon Fruit," a new performance work as part of The Spill by Excessive Realness. The evening of new works was hosted by Washington, D.C.-based Dance Place's Gaze Festival. 

Assistant Professor of Dance Al Evangelista presented his choreographic work in "Performing Public Histories" at the National Council on Public History Annual Meeting. In this roundtable, scholar-artists examine what the inadequacies and excesses of performance get right about history and what is made knowable about archival materials through embodiment.