Millicent Johnnie

Assistant Professor

Native of Lafayette, Louisiana received both her BFA and MFA in Dance at the Florida State University. Ms. Johnnie currently teaches on the dance faculty at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX. She served on the dance faculty at Tulane University and Dillard University located in New Orleans, Louisiana after touring as resident choreographer and rehearsal director of the Urban Bush Women in New York City. Johnnie moved to New York City after teaching Hip Hop and Jazz movement several years as a veteran staff member of the Universal Dance Association based in Memphis, Tennessee. Millicent co-founded the Phlava Hip Hop and Jazz Dance Company based in Tallahassee, Florida receiving a Prague International Dance Festival “Best Choreography” award and “First Place International Dance Title” for Hip Hop Choreography entitled Wrath. She has served as a choreographer for the New York City Opera/ Parable of the Sower workshop, U.S. Cultural Ambassadors of Music- Universes Poetry Theatre/ Amerville, The Krannert Performance Arts Center/The Hip Hop Project, Grammy Award Winner Bill Summers/ Los Hombres Caliente and notable directors Peter Sellars, Rhodessa Jones and Chey Yew to name a few.

Millicent’s Choreography has been featured on Cleo Parker-Robinson Dance, The Urban Bush Women, Hubbard Street II, The Alternate Roots Cultural Tour Uprooted: The Katrina Project, ESPN, the Prince William Network, Sunshine Network and has been presented at venues such as the Danspace project Food for Thought (NYC), Dancenow/NYC Dance Harlem and Joyce Soho Series (NYC), Kennedy Center Millennium Stage (Washington D.C.), The Yard at Lincoln Center (NYC), International Association for Blacks in Dance Conference 2000, 2001, 2002 (TX, CA, D.C.),  The Houston Black Dance Festival (TX), The New Orleans Jazz Dance Project (New Orleans, LA).

She has been recognized as a guest artist at the Tougaloo College- Mississippi Hip Hop Youth Festival, University of Tennessee- Knoxville, The Carpet Bag Theatre- Show what you know Festival, Florida State/ Urban Bush Women- Summer Dance Institute, Florida A & M University, Amherst College- Project 2050, University of North Western Louisiana, University of South Carolina at Aiken, University of Central Florida, Barry University, Auburn University, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Jacksonville University and Rollins College.

In 2003, Millicent received funding through Arts International to travel to Brazil in which she trained with Abada Capoeira, Capoeira Brazil, and at the Escola da Dansa in historic Salvador, Bahia. By merging her informal and formal American dance training in Hip Hop with instruction of the Brazilian marital art capoeira, Brazilian folkloric dance and Caribbean influenced movement; Johnnie created a hybrid form of contemporary vocabulary. Coincidently, the following summer Johnnie was given the opportunity to travel to Havana, Cuba through a partnership developed between Florida A & M University and the University of Havana, which enabled her to take a cultural studies approach to looking at social dance forms that developed among black Cuban culture.

Training with artist such as Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Ronald K. Brown, Garth Fagan, Los Munequitos de Matanzas, Richard Gonzales, Reginald Yates, and Yvonne Daniels provoked her interest in the dance origins of Hip Hop and other African American vernacular dance forms. Millicent believes that researching, identifying and clarifying similarities between these forms of dance will allow for continued creation of this hybrid form of movement distinguishing itself uniquely as a part of Hip Hop culture.