Dr. Ayo Walker is an Assistant Professor in Theatre and Dance at Austin Peay State University where she continues to develop her academic research in the cultural biases inherent in the development of dance as an academic discipline in the U.S. and its ongoing peripheral inclusion of Black dance histories and all marked dance histories. As a Performance Studies practitioner with an emphasis in African American and African studies, her practice as research engages with the cultural racism that results in our society valuing different dance genres hierarchically. As an anti-racist educator utilizing culturally relevant and critical dance pedagogies, her pedagogy is committed to substantiating the techniques, vernaculars, and genealogies and embodiment of historically marginalized and othered dance aesthetics in higher education dance spaces. Specializing in Black dance aesthetics, her choreography and pedagogy is rooted in the "aesthetic of the cool" and the "get down" qualities evident in Africanist and Black dance aesthetics. Employing social justice choreography representative of anti-essentialist movement that is at once exposing and undoing stereotypical assumptions historically signifying the Black body politic, her works challenge what performing Blackness is and isn't. Her works have been commissioned by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, PUSHfest, National Dance Education Organization (NDEO), Sacramento/Black Art of Dance (S/BAD), and Rhythmically Speaking, The Cohort 2020/21. When Ayo is not producing her own works with her project-based/pick up dance company, Ayo & Company, she collaborates/performs with Raissa Simpson's San Francisco based PUSH Dance Company.

Tutoring students of all ages in reading and writing has been my passion and personal mission since I began teaching more than 15 years ago. I take great pleasure in seeing my students learn to value their own education and begin to take pride in their improvement and educational development. My mission as an educator is to enhance students development of social and metacognitive skills by capitalizing on positive attitudes toward intellectual activities emphasizing creativity, expression of subjective and objective feelings as well as forming productive and satisfying relationships with others based on respect, cooperation and consideration. My ultimate goal as an educator includes connecting with each individual student at their level.