Renowned creatives mix art and research in Chapel Hill

Crowd gathers outside Memorial Hall at night for a Carolina Performing Arts event, with banners reading — CPA's artist residencies give participants the opportunity to engage in research alongside a variety of on-campus resources. (Photo courtesy of Kent Corley Photography)

Research extends across all parts of UNC-Chapel Hill, including the arts community.

Through its artists-in-residence program, Carolina Performing Arts provides renowned artists with opportunities for research and development. Through these residencies, artists add depth and vitality to projects and show how research takes many forms.

“Research doesn’t always look like what people picture when they hear that word, especially when it’s done by performing artists,” said Amy Kolling, CPA’s senior director of artistic and production. “At CPA, it might be a choreographer being trained by the Southern Oral History Program to collect histories from tap dance elders or a puppeteer learning how archaeologists catalog plastic at dig sites.”

Here’s a look at past and present CPA artists-in-residence who have combined rigorous research with breathtaking art.

Robin Frohardt

Frohardt’s research led her to share the effects of single-use plastic both in her art and other areas of her life. (Johnny Andrews/UNC-Chapel Hill)

As part of CPA’s Discovery Through Iterative Learning program — a fellowship that brought artists to Carolina for multiple semesters — Frohardt, an artist, puppeteer and director, began her residency in 2018. Her work culminated in the installation and performance of “The Plastic Bag Store.”

This immersive multimedia experience was a full recreation of a grocery store with all items made entirely from single-use plastic items donated by community members, providing a critical lens through which to examine the effects of single-use plastic.

Frohardt teamed up with Carolina faculty, particularly in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences’ archaeology department, where she learned how to catalog single-use plastics alongside the show’s creation. She later used that knowledge to create an Instagram account that invited the public to contribute to the cataloging of the single-use plastic items in our everyday lives, which supported the efforts of archaeologists.

“Robin’s residency brought her into conversation with faculty from archaeology, public health, public policy and Romance languages — disciplines that wouldn’t otherwise intersect in a single project,” Kolling said. “That range was essential in helping Robin imagine how future generations might interpret the plastic artifacts we leave behind.”

“The Plastic Bag Store” was named one of The New York Times’ best theatrical productions in 2020. Frohardt’s next residency project was 2023’s “PlastiCon,” a series of public events exploring issues surrounding single-use plastic, her creative process and Carolina research in greater depth.

Rhiannon Giddens

Giddens (right) was the first artist-in-residence for the Southern Futures program, finding connections between southern history and music. (Jeyhoun Allebaugh/UNC-Chapel Hill)

Giddens’ opera “Omar,” which tells the story of enslaved West African scholar Omar ibn Said, won a Pulitzer Prize and earned widespread acclaim. Following that success, Giddens — a Grammy Award-winning musician and MacArthur Fellow — became CPA’s inaugural artist-in-residence for Southern Futures. That collaborative initiative uses the arts and humanities to explore the histories of the American South and how they shape the region’s future. At CPA, the initiative connects artists with local communities and Carolina’s research resources as they develop work rooted in Southern histories and experiences.

“Rhiannon is as much a historian as a touring musician, but she spends so much of her life on the road,” Kolling said. “What we could offer her was time to devote fully to her practice of unearthing cultural artifacts that tell us the truth about our history. She could be still, in partnership with archivists and librarians, and follow her curiosity without a tour schedule pulling her away.”

Giddens teamed up with Carolina’s American Indian Center and conducted additional research on 19th-century Southern life. That work culminated in summer 2024 with “Roots and Reclamation: Native North Carolina and the LandBack Movement.” The two-day event featured several programs and an American Indian powwow before concluding with the public concert “Giddens and Friends,” featuring Giddens alongside Martha Redbone, Pura Fé and Charly Lowry.

Rhianon Giddens next to a masked individual looking at a collection of archival papers displayed in front of her.

Giddens collaborated with Carolina’s Wilson Library, going through archival materials that gave her more of an insight into 19th-century southern life. (Submitted photo)

The event also marked the final performance of Giddens’ residency.

“To have an open-ended research residency, to have access to the archives and be able to do primary source research with the kind of support you usually only get when you’re a doctoral student was great,” Giddens said.

Michelle Dorrance

Dorrance (right) had a long history of performing at Carolina, before starting her current CPA residency. (Submitted photo)

As the first artist-in-residence to participate in the newly launched Wyndham Robertson Artist Residency — named for the pioneering journalist who has long supported CPA — Dorrance is researching the roots of tap dance in the American South, specifically in her native Chapel Hill.

Dorrance, a MacArthur Fellow and renowned tap dancer, performed at CPA several times before her residency. Now, she is conducting research at Wilson Library and through additional campus resources to tell the story of tap’s origins.

“So much of tap’s history is not written down,” Kolling said. “The techniques and the stories are passed directly from teacher to student, body to body, generation after generation. Michelle is working to trace tap’s origins in the American South accurately and thoroughly while the elders and tradition-bearers who hold that oral history are here to guide her.”

Michelle Dorrance smiles while listening to researcher making downward hand motion in front of tap shoes sprawled out on small table in between them.

At a BeAM makerspace, Michelle Dorrance consults with technical supervisor Joel Hopler about the material culture of tap dance as part of her research into the art form’s history. (Submitted photo)

While Dorrance is still in the early stages of her residency, her work reflects the same commitment to deep research that has defined CPA’s artist residencies.

“The heart of an artist residency at CPA is trust,” Kolling said. “We don’t dictate what an artist is supposed to find. They’re free to follow a question wherever it leads.”