Baker Artist Portfolios

Ryan Johnson, MFA, is a Black & Indigenous hybrid from Baltimore, Maryland, with caramel skin, black curly hair, a salt and pepper beard, and a big smile. Johnson sits at the intersection of African Diasporic Percussive Dance and Nonprofit Leadership. Currently, he is the first post-MFA Fellow at The Ohio State University in the Department of Dance specializing in African Diasporic Percussive Dance and a visiting professor at Bowie State University Theatre Department, serving as a bridge between academia, community, and the professional performance continuum. 

Ryan K. Johnson is an award-winning artist scholar who investigates and amplifies the histories and lived experiences of Black communities in North America, generating sonic and kinetic sensory-driven immersive evening-length performance experiences infused with percussive dance, technology, vocalization, and embodied storytelling as a form of social justice and archiving practices. His mission is to cultivate performance experiences that provoke, inspire, and ignite solution-oriented dialogue, reflection, and action from those who experience my work without re-traumatizing the communities directly connected to these moments in American history. He is committed to creating resource-driven, innovative programming and performance experiences that facilitate a collective understanding beyond individual lived experience and establish new ways of engaging with African Diasporic Percussive Dance and Culture. 

Johnson's credits include performing with Gregory Hines and Marvin Hamlisch, a featured artist in Ayodele Casel's Diary of a Tap Dancer, as a composer, choreographer, and onscreen talent for BB&T Zelle Commercial, in shows including Step Afrika!, STOMP, Cirque Du Soleil, Broadway's After Midnight Tour, Rose Rabbit Lie, and The Washington Ballet. Johnson has been awarded the DC Metro Award for Outstanding Individual Performance, the 2012 Coppin State University Urban Dance Legacy Award, 2021 Bakers Award and won multiple awards from the Maryland State Arts Council for choreography. Internationally, he has premiered works at Tap in Rio Festival, The International Festival de Cajon, The International Body Music Festival, DancEncore, TDC Festival, HIFA, and Festival Gnaoua. 

In 2015, he created SOLE Defined Percussive Dance Company with Quynn Johnson, EdM. SOLE Defined, a 2023 NEFA NDA awardee (@soledefinedlive), is the Maryland/ Washington Metro area's leading arts organization specializing in percussive dance, Tap Dance, Body Percussion, and Sand Dance, – using the body as an instrument to create evening-length sensory-driven immersive performances comprising of audience participation, integrated media, technology, instrumentation, and storytelling. SOLE Defined's mission is to be the institutional hub for African Diasporic Percussive Dance methodologies, providing full-time employment with health and retirement benefits to BIPOC artists, creatives, administrators, and crew.

He curated a series of live conversations discussing the climate of our nation and dance community, featuring panelists representing a wide range of socio-economic demographics covering topics including nonprofit operating procedures, business practices, philanthropy, touring expectations, presenting limitations, and pedagogy. 

He dedicates his work to his grandmother, grandfather, and mother.