Alyah Baker

Alyah Baker is a dance artist, scholar, and choreographer working at the intersection of art and embodied activism. She is an assistant professor of dance at UNC Charlotte and the founder of Ballet for Black and Brown Bodies, an education and advocacy platform that engages BIPOC dancers in culturally relevant ballet training. Baker’s research focuses on queer aesthetics, Black feminist praxis, community building, and embodiment. 

From 2021 to 2024, Baker served as an adjunct ballet professor at Duke University, where she also earned an MFA in Dance: Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis (’21), a B.A. in Sociology, and a minor in Dance (’03). While at Duke, she was awarded the 2020-21 Kenan Institute of Ethics Graduate Arts Fellow in Social Choreography and Performance for her pedagogical and choreographic practice. Baker has trained and performed with Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Oakland Ballet, and Carolina Ballet and has danced featured roles in works by George Balanchine, Antony Tudor, Laura Dean, José Limón, and Alonzo King.  

In 2021, Baker founded AB Contemporary Dance, a project-based dance company. The company’s latest project, Quare Dance, was a recipient of the 2023-2024 National Performance Network Creation and Development Fund. Baker has received choreographic commissions from the American Dance Festival, Queering Dance Festival, Oakland Ballet, and has been recognized in local and national media, including Dance Teacher Magazine and the New York Times.