Theatre & Dance Department Welcomes Noel Price-Bracey to Dance Faculty
New assistant professor will teach advanced jazz courses, choreograph work for dance concerts.By: Scott Snyder Monday, August 19, 2024 04:09 PM
Muhlenberg College’s Department of Theatre & Dance welcomes Noel Price-Bracey to the dance faculty as a tenure-track assistant professor of dance. Price-Bracey will teach classes in advanced jazz dance and will choreograph work for the stage, including this year’s In Motion concert in February.
“I’m sold on this place,” Price-Bracey says. “The response from the students was so enthusiastic, and the department has been so easy to walk into. I love that the entire college community really values the arts. It’s something I wanted to be a part of.”
Price-Bracey is a contemporary artist, advocate and educator whose attention to social change has led her to create, collaborate and perform across the United States, including in Kalamazoo, Michigan; Detroit; Chicago; Seattle; and Portland, Oregon, as well as internationally, in Canada and Italy. In 2014, she established PRICEarts LLC, a multidisciplinary arts organization with a mission to empower communities to find freedom through creative expression.
“I may be in the front of the room, but I’m not the only person with important embodied knowledge. I stopped believing that a long time ago.”
— Noel Price-Bracey,
assistant professor of dance
Price-Bracey received the SeattleDances Dance Crush Award in 2019 for her commitment to advocating for mental wellness through dance. With her teaching, Price-Bracey explores the dynamic tension between Western learning modalities and communal pedagogical practices. Price-Bracey earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in dance in 2024 from the University of Washington, Seattle, where her research addressed embodied performance, protest and reenactments of the Black Arts and Black Power Movement through to modern social movements.
“I’m looking forward to sharing the multiplicities within jazz dance,” Price-Bracey says. “I want to bring the students along on the journey expressed and trekked by many great jazz artists past and present.”
Price-Bracey brings a highly collaborative approach to both choreography and the classroom. She believes in the importance of community-building and collective thought in educational environments. “I have my experiences, and I know I’m ready to learn,” she says. “I may be in the front of the room, but I’m not the only person with important embodied knowledge. I stopped believing that a long time ago.”
As a choreographer, Price-Bracey makes socially conscious, collaborative work, often exploring themes of mental wellness. She has made works inspired and informed by the Black Lives Matter movement and the rash of deaths of Black Americans at the hands of police officers beginning in 2014. “Collaborators and I are constantly questioning, challenging and placing present or historical events before people who weren’t necessarily aware of them,” she says. “I’m really excited to dive back into these socially conscious works with students at Muhlenberg. I know they have the capacity to go there.”
Price-Bracey says her work for this year’s In Motion concert will engage dancers in an exploratory and highly collaborative process. “What has been exciting about creating lately for me is the choice to let go. The intention is to come into the space and dialogue with the students about what’s on their minds and what’s in their hearts.”
Price-Bracey comes to Muhlenberg originally from Detroit, by way of the Seattle area and the Pacific Northwest, along with her husband, Julian Bracey, and their two-year-old son.
“I feel proud,” she says. “I’m a first-generation graduate of all the things: college and grad school. It’s a perspective I look forward to sharing with students at Muhlenberg. Knowing that I’m standing on the shoulders of my ancestors and my elders that are still present — that feels like a communal and a familial win.”
“I’m looking forward to getting started,” she says. “I’m eager to come home.”
About the Muhlenberg College Theatre & Dance Department
Muhlenberg offers Bachelor of Arts degrees in theatre and dance. The Princeton Review ranked Muhlenberg’s theatre program in the top twelve in the nation for eight years in a row, and Fiske Guide to Colleges lists both the theatre and dance programs among the top small college programs in the United States. Muhlenberg is one of only eight colleges to be listed in Fiske for both theatre and dance.
About Muhlenberg College
Founded in 1848, Muhlenberg is a highly selective, private liberal arts college offering baccalaureate and graduate programs. With an enrollment of nearly 2,000 students, Muhlenberg College is dedicated to shaping creative, compassionate, collaborative leaders through rigorous academic programs in the arts, humanities, natural sciences and social sciences; selected preprofessional programs, including accounting, business, education and public health; and progressive workforce-focused post-baccalaureate certificates and master’s degrees. Located in Allentown, Pennsylvania, approximately 90 miles west of New York City, Muhlenberg is a member of the Centennial Conference, competing in 23 varsity sports. Muhlenberg is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
