Dance Studies and Black Popular Culture Scholar

With training background that encompasses the techniques of ballet, Lester Horton, Katherine Dunham, Umfundalai, Martha Graham, jazz and several others, Mullone is a professional dancer who co founded M2 (m squared) and has performed nationally and internationally working with companies such as Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth (CD/FW), Beckles Dancing Company (BDC), M2 (m squared), and Kariamu & Traditions. During her tenure as Associate Professor of Dance at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, she commuted from Louisiana to Texas to work with BDC and CD/FW (as Associate Artistic Director for the latter). She was dance specialist for Louisiana A Plus Schools. Mullone currently sits on the Nominations/Elections committees of National Dance Education Organization (NDEO) and is the American College Dance Association (ACDA) Regional Director for the New England board. She is certified at the Professional level of Umfundalai contemporary African dance technique, a Pilates mat instructor, and a National Water Dance ambassador. Mullone is a researcher with whose interests include deconstructing space and dance in African-American culture, the Black dancing body, Black feminist theory, dance as a decolonizing approach in education, and spirituality in African Diaspora dance. Tina Mullone is an Assistant Professor in the Dance Department at Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, MA. All praises to the ancestors and spirits for continuous guidance in this world.

Dr. Halifu Osumare is Professor Emerita of African American & African Studies at University of California, Davis, and has been a dancer, choreographer, and cultural activist for over forty years. She is recognized for her global hip hop studies books, elucidating why hip-hop culture became a global youth phenomenon—The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop: Power Moves (2007) and The Hiplife in Ghana: West African Indigenization of Hip-Hop (2012), both published by Palgrave Macmillan. As a dancer, she was a soloist with the Rod Rodgers Dance Company of New York in the early 70s, and is a Certified Dunham Technique Instructor. As community activist, she was the founder of CitiCentre Dance Theater in Oakland and created the national dance initiative Black Choreographers Moving Toward the 21^st Century, for experimental Black choreographers in the late 80s and early 90s. Dr. Osumare recently published her autobiography Dancing in Blackness, A Memoir (2018, University Press of Florida) that won the 2019 Selma Jeanne Cohen Prize in Dance Aesthetics and the American Book Award. Dr. Osumare also won the Dance Studies Association 2020 Distinction in Dance Award for lifetime achievement in performance, scholarship and service to dance. Forthcoming in February 2024 is her sequel memoir, Dancing the Afrofuture: Hula, Hip-Hop, and the Dunham Legacy. Like her mentor Katherine Dunham, she has dedicated her life to the intersections of the arts and humanities for a better world.