Moving Into the Light: A Dancing Story

by Delaney Gladson

For Charlie Maybee, dance is not just a career: It’s a lifestyle – a way to express his feelings on the world and bring attention to its many stories, ones which may not usually get the spotlight. 

Within the last five years, Maybee has built up an incredible résumé for himself, working as a genealogy research assistant, having residencies in two different states, being a featured artist in several different performances and creating his own choreography and performances. On top of his independent work, Maybee is also an adjunct lecturer at the College of Charleston, where he teaches courses for the Department of Theatre and Dance and the Arts Management Program. 

Maybee’s passion for dance began while he was in high school. Although he had been taking classes since age 5, he began to take the idea of pursuing dance more seriously while attending a performing arts magnet school, where modern dance and choreography became part of his everyday routine.

“Around the same time, I also began performing with the Metropolitan Youth Tap Ensemble, where I sharpened my tap dance skills and got to train directly heavy hitters in the genre like Chloe Arnold, Barbara Duffy, Jason Samuels-Smith, Baakari Wilder, Dianne Walker, Michelle Dorrance, Derrick Grant and many others,” Maybee explains. “Those two worlds coming together for me at such a key moment was pivotal for my development as an artist and set me on a very specific path into the worlds of dance and music.”

A Native Story

Today, much of Maybee’s work, both his own original performances and collaborations, focuses on using the natural politics of dance and the body to tell stories that have been long overlooked.

For several years, he partnered with Rosy Simas Danse, a company that creates and displays Native contemporary art, as both a research assistant and an artist.

Their partnership began in 2021 for a piece titled, A:gajë:gwah dësa’nigöëwë:nye:’ (i hope it will stir your mind), where Maybee conducted genealogy research for Simas, helping her catalog information about past relatives and creating a family tree for her installation portion of the piece. Later, when the piece was choreographed in 2024, Maybee danced in the company’s performances and was part of their Jacob’s Pillow residency, as well as the world premiere at the Walker Arts Center in May 2026.

Both Simas and Maybee are descended from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, a confederation of six indigenous nations across upper New York state.

“It is important to tell Native stories for the same reason it’s important to any culture: because context is paramount to a fuller understanding of history,” Maybee states. “Art making and cultural memory are deeply intertwined practices. Getting to be a part of this process with Rosy, as both a dancer and genealogy assistant, has shown me how much care, responsibility and research is required to communicate Native stories and ideas clearly and accurately.”

An Experimental Frequency

Another collaboration essential to Maybee’s body of work is his project with CONCEPT RXCH, a sonic and visual artist based in Charleston. After meeting at local music venue Tua Lingua and discovering that they both had unique, experimental approaches to sound and noise, the two kept in contact, creating electronic music and tap dancing, which eventually led to the creation of their work, Noise Source.

Noise Source is an improvisational response and meditation on Article 36 of The Negro Act of 1740, which stated that enslaved people were banned from having drums or other instruments for fear that they might be used for discrete communication. With the combination of live synthesized sampling by CONCEPT RXCH and the digitized approach to tap dance by Maybee, the performance uses postmodern percussion to communicate and fulfill the role of the confiscated African drums. The performance premiered as part of the College’s 2026 Stelle di Domani theatre and dance series for Piccolo Spoleto Festival.

Maybee is grateful to have found a collaborative partner in RXCH.

“Working with RXCH has been a dream, and I’m very thankful that we found each other because it can be difficult to find people who operate on a similar weird, experimental frequency that I do,” he says. “He has very quickly become an essential friend and collaborator for life, and this project could not have existed without his incredible intuition and support.”

When Maybee is not working with other dance companies, he is working with a group that he founded in 2014, the Polymath Performance Project, a group of performing artists that specialize in experimental tap and work to create interdisciplinary tap dance pieces. 

A Community Space

For Maybee, the work does not stop at performance.

Maybee – who has had residencies in Maryland and Minneapolis and was selected as a featured artist in 2022 for the BlackLight Summit at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center – is an independent scholar and passionate about researching and writing about tap dance aesthetics.

He has presented his work nationally at conferences such as the Dance Studies Association Conference, the American College Dance Association Conference and the American Society for Aesthetics Conference. At the latter, he was honored with the Irene H. Chayes New Voices Award for nourishing and sustaining understanding and inclusivity in the arts and higher education. 

Maybee clearly practices what he preaches as an adjunct lecturer at the College of Charleston’s Department of Theatre and Dance, where he has been teaching for the last four years.

“I would say that my favorite aspect of the job is being in the actual classroom with my students,” he says. “It’s always provided me with space for experimentation and community, and I cherish the opportunity to help my students build that for themselves.”

College of Charleston students and faculty alike are lucky to have Maybee as an invaluable member of the community, fostering the artists of tomorrow and contributing to a more aware and inclusive culture for the arts all over the country. 

Delaney Gladson is a senior communication major minoring in arts management at the College of Charleston.