Center for the Performing Arts director faces wonderful challenges
Center for the Performing Arts Director Sita Frederick shared insight into how she hopes to engage new and returning audiences. “In the past, the center has excelled at presenting certain types of arts, and I am excited about the challenge of broadening that.”
Image: Stephanie Swindle Thomas
Real talk with the Center for the Performing Arts Sita Frederick
Heather Longley
June 02, 2021
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. As a dance artist and educator, Sita Frederick brings a fresh energy and perspective to the position of director of the Center for the Performing Arts. The self-described risk-taker said she expects to encounter “wonderful challenges” in her mission to make the arts more accessible to all.
IMAGE: Marlon Ramos Photography
Frederick, a Dominican and Canadian-American dancer who performed with Urban Bush Women, most recently served as director of community engagement at Lincoln Center from 2015 to 2020, where she led a team that presented inclusive family-arts programming on and beyond the Lincoln Center campus. During her tenure, she also launched new mentorship and internship programs for young people, and created an expansive residency program for community artists. Prior to Lincoln Center, Frederick developed her partnership and facilitation skills by working with Urban Arts Partnership as the program director for Everyday Arts for Special Education (EASE), a federally funded professional development program for educators in New York City. Under her leadership, the EASE program expanded to Los Angeles Unified School District and local arts organizations in an initiative to prepare teaching artists with strategies to teach non-disabled and disabled students in integra