Opening Performance: Duke Dance Program’s 7th Biannual Collegium for African Diaspora Dance Conference

11:45 AM: Nasher Museum of Art Sculpture Garden Piazza

The Duke Dance Program opens the 2026 Collegium for African Diaspora Dance (CADD) Conference with a ceremonial processional through the Nasher Sculpture Garden, featuring live drumming and embodied movement. This annual tradition marks the opening of the conference and reflects CADD’s 2026 theme, Black Phoenixing: Dancing Through the Ruins.

As dancers and musicians move collectively through the garden and toward the Rubenstein Arts Center, the processional honors ancestral presence while asking how African diasporic dance legacies endure, transform, and sustain Black creative expression across histories of rupture and survival.

The conference runs Friday, February 20th 12:00PM to Sunday, February 22nd 1:30PM. For a detailed scheduled, visit the CADD website.