People
Aku Kadogo
Dance Artist (Alumni)
Aku Kadogo is an international Theatre Director, Choreographer, Educator and Creative Producer of cultural arts projects. This multi-faceted Artist directs highly energetic, imaginative theatre works and has produced a number of collaborative inter-disciplinary projects. Her eclectic career has spanned across the United States, Australia, Europe and Asia.
People
Bio
Aku Kadogo is an international Theatre Director, Choreographer, Educator and Creative Producer of cultural arts projects. This multi-faceted Artist directs highly energetic, imaginative theatre works and has produced a number of collaborative inter-disciplinary projects. Her eclectic career has spanned across the United States, Australia, Europe and Asia; she is currently the Chair of the Department of Theatre and Performance at Spelman College after having served as Distinguished Visiting Professor in 2014.
Having worked extensively as a Performer, Choreographer, and Director in Australia she has collaborated with artists such as Elena Kats-Chernin, Stephen Page, Robyn Archer, Juno Gemes, Nigel Westlake, Roger Rynd and Colin Offord to name a few.
She served on the Music/Theatre Faculty at Yongin University in Seoul, South Korea where she lectured and directed productions for the university and the wider professional theatre community. Prior to that she was the Director of the Black Theatre Program at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Directing many works from the African American canon, this was an exciting time for her to revisit works such as Langston Hughes' Black Nativity, Ruby Dee's Zora is My Name and August Wilson's Joe Turner has Come and Gone. She also directed newer works such as Djanet Sears' The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God, Will Power's Flow, and In the Red and Brown Water by Tarell Alvin McCraney. She has collaborated on original works with writers Chris Tysh author of Night Scales and Bill Harris' Booker T and Them for Art X Detroit, and with Writer Jessica Care Moore on Salt City: A Techno Choreopoem. She has been an Associate Choreographer on the Tony Award winning show RENT, touring Australia, China and the United States. As a performer she has worked in film, television and stage making her career debut in the original Broadway classic of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange.
Aku devised and directed Ochre & Dust with Anangu storytellers for the Perth and Adelaide International Theatre festivals. She has an ongoing relationship with NAISDA Dance College where she is a regular visiting Guest Artist.