Ashley L. Tate

Ashley L. Tate is a director, choreographer, educator, and performer from Saint Louis, Missouri.  She is an assistant professor of dance at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, an affiliate faculty member with the UNC Charlotte Department of Africana Studies, and founder and artistic director of Ashleyliane Dance Company (ADC). Tate earned her BS degree in Computer Information Science from Texas Christian University and received her MFA in Dance from Washington University in St. Louis, where she was a recipient of the Spencer T & Ann W. Olin Fellowship for Women in Graduate Study.  Her current research focus is centered around the use of dance as a vehicle for community advocacy and a tool for social change. She has been invited to present her research at several conferences and conventions, including the European Hip Hop Studies Network 2024 Conference in Cork, Ireland.  

Her work has been featured in showcases at the Peridance Capezio Center, TADA! Theater, and Baruch Performing Arts Center in New York City, as well as the Black Choreographers Festival in Baltimore, Maryland, the Choreographer’s Carnival in Chicago, Illinois, and Versatility Dance Festival in Boulder, Colorado, and Santa Monica, California.  She is also the co-producer of Dance the Vote, a non-partisan grassroots arts-based voter registration initiative founded by Joan Lipkin. In April 2023, she became a key participant in the nationally recognized No Tears Project, a multidisciplinary festival founded by Oxford American Magazine in 2017 to honor Civil Rights history.