Join Hill Dance Academy Theatre and the Morgan-Lee Arts Centre artists for an afternoon of art and summer rhythms in the open air! From performances of all ages by the Hill Dance Academy Theatre to art-making for all ages—move with us, create with us, and explore with us to the lively, fun, and breezy rhythms of summer.

Dancing starts at 12:30 p.m. for an interactive dance, for all to participate, followed at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. by performances from the Hill Dance crew. Each performance is about thirty minutes. Morgan-Lee Arts Centre artists and visionaries will be making all day and in between–join throughout the day for creating within multitudes, in the sunshine.

About the Artists

Hill Dance Academy Theatre

In October 2005, Ayisha became the founder, CEO and Artistic Director of Hill Dance Academy Theatre (HDAT). Now 21 years later, Ayisha is an entrepreneur, arts administrator, educator and owner of the Morgan-Lee Arts Centre in Pittsburgh’s historic Hill District community.

In 2005, the mission was to train Black dancers, ages 3 to 18, in Black dance traditions, expand knowledge and contributions of Black Dance, and create emerging professional dance artists who would sustain Black Dance.

The mission has developed into Ayisha’s vision for the Morgan-Lee Arts Centre. The vision, to own a space and place that would be the forever home of Hill Dance Academy Theatre, home of Ju.B.Lation Spirit Filled Feet has been realized with the purchase of the former St. Benedict the Moor, nearly 32 thousand square foot campus.

From 2010 to 2021, HDAT rented space in what today is the campus of the Morgan-Lee Arts Centre. The mission to train Black dancers for the concert stage developed into what Ayisha constantly refers to, and that is the mission is bigger than dance.

Ayisha began to realize that training Black dancers for a career on the concert stage involved a much bigger focus. In Pittsburgh, her challenge was an arts ecosystem that did not support the mission. The world of Black dance, as she envisioned it involves an infrastructure of people that represent, support and are skilled in all areas to elevate Black dance on the concert stage.

Twenty-one years later, the mission needs to expand and the story of HDAT and the journey to now must elevate the historical challenges that sustaining Black arts face in Pittsburgh and throughout the world. The inequities in a workforce to support Black arts at all levels is deep and moral on all levels.

The Morgan-Lee Arts Centre has for 20 years been working at disrupting the current reality that Blacks and others who are deemed invisible, face in creative industries.

The Morgan-Lee Arts Centre houses the vision to create industry careers and opportunities for workforce development in the arts to disrupt the injustices, inequities, intentional gaps, and renewed forces of racial superiority dressed up without the hoods, sycamore trees, and not-so-new ways of locking down opportunities for Blacks and others.