About
Photo by Andrew Bowen
Nyah Banks is a dancer, choreographer, and creative originally from Owings Mills, Maryland, where she began her training in the performing arts at a young age. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Contemporary Dance with a minor in Arts Entrepreneurship from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in 2023. Nyah is also a certified Pilates Mat instructor, which informs her deep understanding of body mechanics, alignment, and functional movement—tools she brings into both her teaching and choreographic work.
Throughout her training and professional journey, Nyah has had the opportunity to work closely with esteemed choreographers including Juel D. Lane, Grady Bowman, Darrell Moultrie, Ashley Lindsey, Igal Perry, and more. These experiences have shaped her dynamic movement style and sharpened her voice as both a performer and creator.
Nyah’s passion for dance extends beyond the stage. She has contributed to various dance films and interdisciplinary projects that merge movement with film, text, and visual design. These explorations sparked her love for choreography and movement direction, where she discovered the power of storytelling through the body.
Currently, Nyah is a performing artist with Full Circle Dance Company, where she continues to expand her professional performance experience. Alongside performing, she is committed to developing original work that explores identity, emotion, and the complexity of human connection. Nyah aims to create movement that resonates—deeply felt and deeply seen.
Photo by Andrew Bowen
Self-Choreographed Solo
Artist Statement
Assertiveness is a quality I’ve only recently embraced—one that has surfaced through my evolving identity as a choreographer. For years, I approached dance with quiet hesitation, unsure of how much space I was allowed to take up. But the act of creating movement has slowly brought me closer to myself. It has helped me understand who I am, not just as an artist, but as a person with a distinct voice and perspective. Choreography, for me, is no longer just about shaping movement—it’s about shaping meaning.
My process always begins with people. I build genuine relationships with my dancers, seeing them first as individuals before artists. Trust is central. While I often have a clear sense of the direction I want a piece to take, I allow the collaborative process to guide its emotional landscape. It’s in the shared moments—the dialogue, the trial and error, the vulnerability—that the work finds its authenticity.
Much of my choreography is grounded in personal experience. I’m drawn to the tension of everyday life: the way relationships shift, how identity is negotiated, and the quiet truths we carry but rarely name. My relationship with dance has never been simple—it has been marked by both love and disillusionment. As a student, I often found myself in spaces where I felt like an outsider, where the movement vocabulary didn’t reflect my history, my body, or my voice. I spent years wondering if what I created was truly mine or a filtered version of something I was told to aspire to.
That disconnect, while painful, pushed me toward clarity. It made me more attuned to nuance—how small gestures can carry deep emotional weight, how contradictions live within us. This awareness has become a cornerstone of my artistic practice. I create to investigate the layered nature of being: the messiness, the contradiction, the quiet defiance of existing on your own terms.
I choreograph to empower—to offer visibility and voice not just to myself, but to others who rarely see themselves reflected in the mainstream dance world. My work is an invitation to take up space unapologetically. I believe movement should be liberating—both for those who perform it and those who witness it. My choreography is meant to open something in the body and in the viewer’s imagination: a release, a recognition, a sense of possibility. I dance to speak the unspoken. I move to claim presence.
Ultimately, my choreography is a form of self-definition. It is both a way to reflect truth and amplify what deserves to be heard.