MANCC
The Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC, pronounced man-see), is a dance and choreographic research center, housed within the School of Dance in Montgomery Hall at Florida State University (FSU). Since its founding in 2004, MANCC has served as a residency incubator for new and diverse artist voices in dance, and continues to offer its Entrypoints program, which creates points of engagement between MANCC’s nationally significant guest artists and the FSU or larger Tallahassee community. These engagements continue to foster the development of important relationships that can aid in networking, career development, scholarly support, and even post-graduation employment with MANCC artists. MANCC offers these opportunities for students to connect with artists and collaborators through informal showings, interactive discussions, Forum presentations, and in unique courses in the School of Dance including The MANCC Experience, Contemporary Perspectives on Dance, and Dance Dramaturgy.
The mission of the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography is to raise the value of the creative process in dance by:
- providing a model of support for professional choreographic creativity within a Research One university,
- providing choreographers access to a stimulating environment where experimentation, exploration and life-long learning are both valued and encouraged, and
- providing opportunities for the students, staff, and faculty, the community of Tallahassee and the national dance field at large to engage with the creative process in dance.
Current Focus
- Visiting Artists: MANCC offers Choreographic Residencies to choreographers to conduct their own creative research with their collaborators. Artists are encouraged to take advantage of the Center’s dance facilities and other resources, including technology. MANCC also provides documentation via its full time Media Specialist, as well as Research Support through its Research Associate.
- Living Legacy: The Living Legacy program offers American artists of national or global significance a rare form of support – the opportunity, tools and expertise to document and further their own legacy and ideas.
- Embedded Writers Initiative: Funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, this initiative is designed to support the re-imagining of dance writing conventions in order to better respond to and engage with a wider range of ever-evolving contemporary forms.
- Commissioned Writings: In association with the Embedded Writers Initiative, MANCC is supporting publications by MANCC writers and artists connected with work developed at MANCC.
- MANCC Forward Dialogues (MFD): With generous funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, MANCC piloted this emerging artist laboratory in 2017 with renewed funding for 2019 and 2021. The goal of the lab is to support and catalyze the ideas of emergent movement-based artists by providing access to a stimulating environment that encourages experimentation and exploration in a facilitated, process-oriented laboratory setting.
- Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center Initiative Partnership (UBW CCI): CCI utilizes a two-pronged approach that advances the work of individual women choreographers from the African Diaspora while bringing about systemic change in the field of dance. As part of this partnership, UBW Choreographic Fellows conduct pre-residency site visits to MANCC followed by creative residencies, supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
- First Nations Performing Arts: Piloted in 2020, MANCC has forged a partnership with First Nations Performing Arts to ensure annual support for indigenous artists.
- McKnight Partnership: Designed to support Minneapolis-based dance artists, these Choreographer Fellows are funded by The McKnight Foundation and administered by The Cowles Center for Dance & The Performing Arts.
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