Mfoniso Akpan

Mfoniso Akpan is a celebrated arts leader, Artistic Director, choreographer, and educator whose career spans more than two decades of advancing stepping and African diasporic movement traditions on stages across the United States and around the world. Since 2014, she has served as Artistic Director of Step Afrika!, leading the Company’s artistic vision, developing repertory and artists, and expanding the possibilities of stepping as a contemporary performance art form. 

Akpan joined Step Afrika! in 2005 as a performer and teaching artist and later served as Assistant Artistic Director before assuming her current role. During her tenure, she has helped shape the Company’s artistic programming across more than 45 U.S. states and internationally throughout Africa, the Middle East, and beyond, including performances and cultural engagements at the White House. Her choreographic credits include Umngane, which received a 2010 Metro DC Dance Awards nomination for Outstanding New Work, as well as Nxt/Step, The Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence, Drumfolk, and other works in Step Afrika!’s touring repertory. She has also directed major Company productions and programs, including Step Afrika!, Magical Musical Holiday Step Show, the Home Performance Series, and International Step Camp–South Africa. 

Trained in tap, ballet, jazz, modern, African dance, and step, Akpan began her dance training at the Bernice Johnson Cultural Arts Center and has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Apollo Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Lincoln Center, and Avery Fisher Hall, as well as in the Off-Broadway production Hoofin’ 2 Hittin’. She studied biochemistry at the State University of New York at Stony Brook where she developed her stepping practice as a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. Through her artistic leadership and commitment to education, Akpan continues to honor the traditions of stepping while creating new pathways for the art form and the next generation of artists.