Department of Theatre & Dance Staff

Jill Flanders Crosby is an alumna of WKU’s Department of Theatre & Dance and is one of the first dance minors to graduate from the Department. She taught for forty years at the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) and spearheaded the first and only dance degree in the state of Alaska. She did extensive fieldwork arts and dance-based research in New York City, Ghana and Togo West Africa, Cuba, and the Cook Islands investigating topics from the West African roots of jazz dance and the relationship of traditional religious dance forms as they were relocated across continents through the forced relocation of West African enslaved peoples to Cuba. Her Cook Islands work involved a multi-generational oral history project with dance makers and performers, composers, and other arts-based leaders. Her field work is archived, depending on the subject, at the Cuban Heritage Collection University of Miami Libraries, the Archive of Māori and Pacific Sound, University of Auckland, New Zealand, the State Library of New Zealand Alexander Turnbull collection, Wellington, New Zealand, and the Cook Islands National Archives.  Her Cuban and West African work in particular formed the heart of a multi-media arts-based installation that was presented in Cuba, West Africa, Anchorage and Homer Alaska, and San Francisco. She was an active choreographer and performing dancer until 2023 when she retired from UAA.