Professor Christopher-Rasheem McMillan of the University of Iowa has been selected by the New York University Center for Ballet and the Arts for its prestigious Resident Fellowship.

According to the center's website, "The fellowship provides space, a stipend, and the time to pursue rigorous work. Fellows also gain new colleagues and a broad community of scholars and artists, two communities that do not often meet."

As a scholar and artist himself, McMillan is a perfect fit for the fellowship. He is an assistant professor with a joint appointment in the UI Departments of Dance and Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies. His work uses choreography and movement, video, performance, photography, and oral storytelling to explore themes of race, memory, queer desire, religion, and personal and public mythology. He earned an MFA in experimental choreography from the Laban Conservatoire in London, and a PhD in theology and religious studies from King’s College, London.

McMillan is grateful for the fellowship.

"It's an honor to be named a Resident Fellow at the CBA," he said, "and I look forward to the opportunity to focus on my work and take advantage of the center's amazing resources."

During his fellowship, McMillan will work on a piece titled “Sacred.”

"I seek to understand both the meaning of the religious body in performance and the arrangements of the religious bodies in space as central parts of both lived experience and enactments of spiritual practices," McMillan said.  

McMillan joined the Iowa faculty in 2017, after serving as the Grant Wood Visiting Professor in Interdisciplinary Performance—Dance during the 2016-2017 academic year. During the 2020-2021 academic year, he completed a fellowship at the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale University.