E. Moncell Durden

Moncell Durden is an Associate Professor of Practice at the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, performer, educator, choreographer, documentarian, embodied historian, author, and creator of Ethnocorporeology, the study of what the body is doing and what it is saying. He spent ten years performing with Philadelphia Hip Hop company Rennie Harris Puremovement.

Durden specializes in embodied pedagogical practices that reveal cultural and historical context through his research on the Morphology of A.F.R.O. Kinetic Memory. Teaching nationally and internationally, his expertise includes locking, House, Hip Hop, authentic jazz, and American and European social dances from the 1600s to the present.

He is the author of Beginning Hip-Hop Dance (Human Kinetics), with contributions to Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches, Rooted Jazz Dance, Encyclopedia of African Cultural Heritage in North America, and The Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Dance.

His consulting credits include Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, Disney+’s The World According to Jeff Goldblum, The Porter, Camille A. Brown’s Mr. TOL E. RAncE, TED-Ed’s The History of African-American Social Dance, Ma Rainey, and Broadway’s The Hippest Trip. His documentary Everything Remains Raw examines the history of Hip Hop dance. 

To find out more about Moncell and his programs, visit https://www.moncelldurden.com/