Keith Corprew discusses transdisciplinary creative practice, the Fulbright Scholarship, and studying in Senegal
Keith’s introduction to contemporary dance was at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. His friends asked him to learn some choreography and film it with them. “I realised then that I really enjoyed dance,” says Keith. “Morehouse College doesn’t have a dance department, but it has an affiliation that allows us to cross-register at Spelman College. I enrolled there and met my mentor and advisor, T. Lang. She was the one who opened my eyes to what contemporary dance could offer and exposed me to Kyle Abraham, Camille Brown, and even her own work. One of the things that really drew me to contemporary dance was that it’s so fluid and open-ended. Because I was coming into dance ‘late’, it allowed me a chance to interim and bring in all of the different vocabularies that I already had in my body – being a percussionist – while simultaneously introducing new ones.”
After completing his BA in Philosophy and minor in French Studies at Morehouse College, Keith received his Master of Theological Studies with a certificate in Black Church Studies from Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. For the past five years, Keith has worked in Higher Education as a Programme Director and Coordinator of several flagship academic initiatives, including the Howard Thurman Honors Program. The initiative brought together students at Morehouse College and guided them through an academic curriculum built around general education. Keith focused particularly on the co-curriculum programme, which involved thinking about the different themes the students could be guided through intellectually during the year. They were provided with an annual reading and digital media programme. Accompanying this was a reading list and digital content for the students to engage with over the summer. Keith and his team designed a reading retreat, where the students came together and listened to guest speakers, authors, artists, who they then discussed their work with. He also supported Morehouse’s College Magazine, Litteratus, compiling its documents and creating graphic art that complemented the stories and literature that the students were creating. While working with the Martin Luther King Junior Legacy Scholars, Keith aimed to inspire a new generation to think about how they could step into their own as leaders. His work involved facilitating community and encouraging students to think introspectively to guide their forward action out in the world.
Keith first found out about the Fulbright scholarship when studying at Morehouse College, thanks to the national scholarships and fellowships committee. “It came at a time when I was thinking about how I could take my dance practice to the next level and how I could do that in an international context,” he says. “Knowing that Fulbright was one of those pathways and having those specific questions in mind led me to this space here at Trinity Laban in London. I’ve found that the Fulbright scholarship has really helped me to see myself a lot more, to understand myself from the research space that was offered, and to really dive into my practice. Being in London allowed me to see practitioners who I aspire to be like and whose work inspires me. It was a chance for me to not only go inward, but to go outward as well – to see that this is where my practice is and where it can go in the future.”
As a Fulbright Scholar, Keith pursued an MFA in Creative Practice: Transdisciplinary at Trinity Laban. His main project took the form of a transdisciplinary solo performance work, combining movement, voice, speech, song, body percussion, film-making, and letter-writing. ‘To Quell a Storm’ is a journey through chaos and a meditation towards balance. “Because I was on the transdisciplinary course, I was really interested in how I could bring all of my different experiences and roles as an artist together in the same piece and space,” reflects Keith. “I focused specifically on storytelling because I wanted to think about how I could bring the audience into the world, so they weren’t just watching the performance but they actually felt like they were part of it. I used immersive techniques, crowd participation, and call and response to create this world. The performance is based on my experience of navigating race in America, but I also wanted it to connect with much of the unrest and current issues that are happening in the world. This way, people could see someone wrestling with the idea of a storm on a micro-level. They could also think about how we are all impacted by the storms in life, and what it means to move towards getting rid of the storms in the world.” Keith took a reworked version of his master’s thesis performance to Resolution Festival 2025 on Friday 24 January.
As part of his MFA, Keith also created a documentary short film ‘Don’t I Belong’. He tells us about the creative process behind this film. “I was focused on the Black male experience in the UK and how that impacted a sense of belonging,” says Keith. “I did an open call to any Black males in the UK who wanted to participate. In the process, I asked questions around how individuals understood Blackness, whether they saw a connection between their Black male identity and how they belonged in space. Taking these questions as ideas, musicians began to improvise individually and then collectively. I thought about what these ideas look like in movement. I then combined what happened in the music sessions with the movement sessions and the interviews. I looked for the line that connected everything. How could all of these different sessions and individual experiences come together to tell a type of collective story?”
In the summer term of his first year, Keith studied at the Ecole des Sables in Toubab Dialaw, Senegal. The Co-Artistic Director of Ecole des Sables, Alexandra Sutton, is a Trinity Laban alum who’s had a significant impact on the UK dance scene. He enrolled in a programme called Training Diaspora Africa and lived together for two and a half months with dancers and movement artists from across the world who identified as Black. “It really opened my mind up to so many different things that I’m still wrestling with and exploring in my own practice. The programme was so special and it gave me the chance to begin workshopping a solo that I was then able to perform at the Duo Solo Festival in Saint Louis, Senegal, so that was phenomenal.
“I’ve recently done a production with Frân Wen in Wales and the production was called Olion, so that was a cool experience because I got to go in not just as a movement artist but as a performer. We were thinking about how our characters develop and have a narrative arc throughout the performance. It was epic. It was performed in Pontio theatre, but there was also an immersive, site-specific component, and there were multidisciplinary filmed elements as well. The recent international experiences I’ve had have allowed me to dive into this world of transdisciplinary and multidisciplinary art making.”
Drawing on his projects at Trinity Laban and Ecole des Sables, Keith presented at the sixth conference of the Collegium for African Diaspora Dance. “This was a really special experience. For me, it felt like a homecoming,” he says. “When I first started dancing in college, the Collegium was one of the first conferences I went to where I got to see a really global gathering of Black partitioners who were interested in dance. That happened in 2016, so I hadn’t been to the conference since I attended as a student who wondered what their place in the world was. Coming back to present and being able to talk about all the different experiences I had in Senegal, sharing information that was embodied with other people was really special because it felt like I wasn’t just someone looking to be in the community, I actually felt a part of the community. And I had something to offer.”
Upon completing his MFA, Keith has received a mentorship through Sadler’s Wells on one of their artist development programmes. He plans to continue his career in Higher Education and the arts, creating spaces and works for cross-cultural conversations and uplifting the voice of the Black community across the world.