In February, Dance Place hosted a “hair show,” billed as a journey about Black hair and its symbolism of Black resilience, art, culture, and pride. City Paper receives at least 100 inquiries about upcoming dance performances a year—and this one, “Color Me (Curly) Hair,” is one of the most original we’ve seen. The event brought together fashion designers and dancers, hair stylists and models, and it sold out.
The visionary behind it all was Anastasia Johnson, who co-produced the show. She’s been in Dance Place’s orbit since 2018, teaching classes and running the after-school and summer programs. In February, Dance Place named Johnson the organization’s new education director, and she’s using her experience as dancer, teacher, choreographer, and administrator to shape her new role.
A Richmond native, Johnson started as a camp counselor in the organization’s Creative Arts Summer Camp in 2018. The camp offers six weeks of all-day programming for kids ages 5 to 19.
“The person I was working under, she was in charge of the after-school program throughout the year, and she was about to move,” Johnson says. “She kind of gave me the heads up, like, ‘Hey, I’m about to leave. You should apply to my job.’”
Johnson got the role, and that became her pattern: As co-workers left, she took on their responsibilities, learning their crafts and the ins and outs of each role. In the fall of 2018, Johnson started managing the after-school program, which teaches kids both art and life skills. By summertime, Johnson got tapped to direct the summer camp—“and then I just kind of went up from there,” she says.
Becoming education director, then, feels like a natural progression. She doesn’t expect life to feel too different, even as her role changes. For instance, she still plans to lead her Monday night Black Fusion dance class, where she teaches Black dance forms like majorette, jazz, step, and hip-hop. But now she’s adding to her purview.
“I’m just shifting to, ‘How can I be a presence to them overall? Can I go sit in on different people’s classes throughout all of our adult teachers?’” Johnson says. “That’s a goal of mine to observe other classes that I might not have done so before.”
She is also starting to look at the systems undergirding Dance Place, the sometimes unsexy work that makes the art possible.
“I definitely am a ‘let-me-organize-this-the-way-I-want-to, color-coordinate-the-way-I-want-to type of person,” says Johnson. “Instead of working off a system somebody else made, I get to kind of redo things to help my brain work better.”
Johnson and all of Dance Place’s staff will have their hands full this year. The nonprofit just received a $38,000 award from the National Endowment for the Arts to support three of its adult-focused programs: DanceAfrica DC 2024, the 2024 Dance & Disability Residency, and the 2024 District Choreographer’s Dance Festival.
Johnson may not operate in these programs day-to-day, but they’re critical, in particular, for her work with Dance Place’s children, youth, and teenagers. Having healthy, well-funded programs can give students a vision for their own careers—much like Johnson herself, who stepped into roles her supervisors once filled.
In the meantime, Johnson plans to stay present and visible, even as her role requires a higher-level focus.
“I want people to know that I’m there. I don’t want to just be in the background of, ‘now I’m the director, I’m going to go into my office,’” she says. “People saw me before, and I don’t want to disappear and just erase my presence from the organization.”
Dance Place has one hell of a spring lineup from Amber Lucia Chabus and haus of bambi to sci-fi immersive dance theater and a trilogy exploring the rights of life, liberty, and happiness. See more at danceplace.org.