Nicole Stanton is a dance artist, educator and activist currently serving as the Dean of Arts and Humanities as well as an Associate Professor of Dance, and faculty in African American Studies, the College of the Environment, and the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance at Wesleyan University.  She was an Associate Professor at the Ohio State University and has been a visiting artist/professor at Kenyon College, Alfred University, Yale University and Antioch College.  Her choreographic work has been presented at national and international venues such as the Center for Performance Research, 92nd Street Y and Triskelion Arts in NYC, Pro Danza Italia in Italy, the Wexner Center for the Arts and the Martin Luther King Arts Center in Columbus Ohio, as well as The Katherine Hepburn Theater and Wesleyan Center for the Arts in Connecticut. Nicole has been working at the intersection of art making, community organizing and activism for nearly twenty years. She worked with theaters such as the San Francisco Mime Troop, In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre, and San Fransico's Make*A*Circus engaging performance as a liberatory practice that provides a voice for subaltern communities.  As a scholar and educator her work centers on the cultures and histories of the African Diaspora and the ways in which dance in serves as a site of reclamation and resistance. Stanton works in the mediums of choreography, performance, and writing.  Through those forms, she explores intersections between personal, cultural, political and physical experiences with an eye towards celebrating the complexities of black culture and creating platforms that cultivate community.  Her work emphasizes collaborative processes, which has brought her into collaborations with historians, scientists, anthropologists, musicians as well as visual and media artists. She belives that the arts are not a luxury and approaches her role as an artist as one of culture worker.