Trillium Arts awards Ashley Tate choreographic fellowship
Ashley Tate, assistant professor of dance, is one of three choreographers to receive a 2025-26 North Carolina Choreographic Fellowship from Trillium Arts.
This two-week fellowship in June 2026 will provide Tate and a group of four dancers with financial support, lodging and studio space at the Trillium Arts campus in Mars Hill, North Carolina.
Tate will use the time to further develop a work that she began to choreograph before she came to UNC Charlotte. The piece, titled “Hazel,” was first imagined during her time living in her hometown of St. Louis amid the isolation of the pandemic. She said she was struck by the lack of accessible green space in her historically Black neighborhood, a daily reminder to her of the inequities that shape who has access to safe, healthy environments.
“There were no places to walk, to breathe, to just be outside,” said Tate. “It made environmental racism feel devastatingly close — not theoretical but embodied.”
That experience deepened her interest in environmental justice, a passion further ignited when longtime collaborator Joan Lipkin introduced her to the work of Hazel M. Johnson, a Chicago activist known as the “Mother of the Environmental Justice Movement.”
“This woman is so important,” Tate said. “She confronted environmental harm in her own backyard and turned it into a movement. Her legacy is powerful, and we should all know who she is.”
Tate started creating a dance work inspired by Johnson, with Lipkin serving as dramaturg. An early iteration was performed in St. Louis in 2021.
Trillium Arts President Phil Reynolds, in a press release, stated, “Trillium Arts is honored to support these artists whose diverse works reflect a broad range of dance artistry in North Carolina. The 2025-2026 awardees were selected as Trillium’s NCCF Fellows due to their excellent artistry and because their projects are inspired by vitally important contemporary issues.”
Read the full story at https://coaa.charlotte.edu/2025/08/11/dance-professor-awarded-nc-choreographic-fellowship-by-trillium-arts/.