Event
Art in Dialogue: Jeffrey Page: Blues People and the Living Archive
September 8, 2026 4:30PM to 6:00PM
LUAG Main Gallery, Zoellner Arts Center
Join award-winning choreographer, filmmaker, and cultural anthropologist Jeffrey Page for an evening exploring the power of art to carry memory, identity, and cultural resilience. The program will begin with a screening of Page’s documentary Blues People – a powerful short film that links the roots of African-American blues to the vibrant cultural expressions of Mali and illuminates how music and dance have long served as languages of resistance, healing, and connection across the African diaspora.
Following the film, Page will reflect on how artists and communities are responding creatively to the challenges of our time, sharing insights from his work as an artist, scholar, and founder of Movin' Legacy – a nonprofit dedicated to preserving, celebrating, and evolving African and African diasporic dance traditions. Through conversation, Page will explore how movement, storytelling, and cultural traditions preserve history, inspire dialogue, and invite us to consider the question: How do artists help us reimagine the world we want to create?
Space is limited. Please register in advance.
If you have questions, concerns, or any accessibility needs, please email Elise at ejs421@lehigh.edu or call 610-758-6882.
Offered in partnership with the College of Arts and Sciences, Lehigh Global Studies, and Africana Studies
Moderated by Professors Jaimie Bleck and Bruce Whitehouse
Jeffrey L. Page is an Emmy-nominated, MTV Video Music Award-winning director, choreographer, filmmaker, and cultural preservationist whose work treats Black performance as a living archive. His practice is informed by three decades of field research in traditional dance, music, masquerade, and ritual across Mali, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau.
As Founder and CEO of Movin’ Legacy, Page leads The GRIOT Project and developed the C³ Standard, Consent, Context, Credit, an ethical framework for cultural documentation, artistic creation, and exchange. His documentary “Blues People” has screened at AFRIFF in Lagos, Dances With Films: NYC, Greensboro Dance Film Festival, and Beach House Short Film Festival in Lagos.
On Broadway, Page co-directed and choreographed 1776, earning the Douglas and Ethel Watt Critics’ Choice Award, and choreographed Violet. His reimagining of Ain’t Misbehavin’ was named a New York Times Critic’s Pick, and his direction of Cost of Living received the 2025 Young-Howze Theatre Award for Director of the Year. His choreography for Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls)” received the MTV Video Music Award for Best Choreography.
Page is Associate Professor with tenure and Coordinator of Musical Theatre at Howard University’s Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts. He is a Fulbright Specialist, the first African American recipient of Juilliard’s Marcus Institute Opera Directing Fellowship, and a board member of Jacob’s Pillow and the Black Metropolis Research Consortium.
Image: Jeffrey Page Photoshoot - Photographed by Solwazi Afi Olusola
