Tanesha Payne
Senior Program Manager- Community Arts , Interdisciplinary School for Engagement
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Bio
Tanesha Payne is a San Antonio-based movement artist, choreographer, educator, and arts administrator. She serves as Sr. Program Manager for UTSA Arts and is the Founder and Artistic Director of sumRset Movement, a nonprofit contemporary dance organization committed to expanding where, how, and with whom dance happens.
Rooted in contemporary dance and improvisation, Tanesha’s practice spans performance, education, community engagement, and creative facilitation. Her work often moves beyond traditional stages into schools, cultural institutions, public spaces, and community settings, inviting people to experience art as active participants rather than solely as observers. Across these spaces, she creates conditions for people to encounter ideas through their bodies, creativity, and one another.
Her curatorial practice includes Moved by Heritage: Dance Cultures of San Antonio’s Global Community, which explores globally rooted dance traditions living and thriving in San Antonio and the cultural knowledge carried through movement.
Tanesha has served as an Artist-in-Residence with UTSA’s Democratizing Racial Justice initiative, supported by the Mellon Foundation, and as an Artist at Work Fellow. She is a certified Wolf Trap Teaching Artist and Jacob’s Pillow Curriculum in Motion Institute practitioner. Across her artistic and educational work, she is particularly interested in movement as a tool for connection, belonging, embodied learning, and collective experience.
Research Interests
- Community-Engaged Arts Practice
- Movement as Creative Inquiry
- Embodied and Participatory Learning
- Performance, Participation, and Witnessing
- Arts, Health, and Well-Being
- Creative Justice and Liberatory Pedagogy
- Cultural Heritage and Embodied Knowledge
- Collective Movement and Social Connection
Degrees
- M.F.A in Choreography, Jacksonville University (2022)
- B.F.A. in Dance Studies, Texas State University (2019)
