High-profile dancers such as Debbie Allen, Misty Copeland, Janet Collins, and Josephine Baker, have all provided representation for young girls who grew up to be the everyday women wanting to dance.

To see black women perform in an area in which women of color aren’t often reflected on a mainstream level, validates opportunities for any one to go after their dreams as a dancer just as each of these women have done.

Over the years, we’ve seen extraordinary dancers like Ashley Everette, Denee “Dnay B” Baptiste and Ashley Seldon but, there’s a new wave of dancers and 23 year old Carsan Lindsey is one of them.

In early March, it was announced that Lindsey, a recent graduate and former Dancin’ Diva Captain from Alabama A&M University was selected to tour with Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Jill Scott.

“I couldn’t believe it. It was an opportunity of a life time and I was very excited to go on this journey.”

-Lindsey

According to Lindsey, Scott reached out to the director of Malone Studios Dance Academy in Nashville for choreography and dancers for her upcoming tour.

“When the opportunity presented itself I just had to do it. Any dancer would love to go on tour with an A-list artist. Honestly the artist had a lot to do with my decision to audition.”

After a couple of intense auditions, Lindsey was chosen as one of two dancers for the “Who Is Jill Scott Words & Sounds Vol. 1 23^rd Anniversary Tour.”

When she first learned she was chosen to tour with Scott “I couldn’t believe it. It was an opportunity of a life time and I was very excited to go on this journey.”

While on stage with Scott, the dance extraordinaire’s role is to add a visual interpretation of the story that the artist is telling through her dance performance. To stand out on stage, “I lose myself in the music and stay in the moment, so that the feeling that the music gives me is portrayed through my movement to the audience.”

Lindsey began dancing at age 2 where she became a competitive dancer for Malone Studios Dance Academy in Nashville, TN owned by her mother. Therefore she was bound to become a dancer.

In 2017, she graduated from Ezell Harding Christian School. Before graduation she toured several college campuses but, AAMU campus was the most impressing. The young dancer enrolled and later auditioned to become a Dancin Diva her sophomore year. In 2022, she became one of three captains known as the Trifecta.

In December 2022, the Nashville native earned a bachelors degree in Animal Science.

Asked if she could give advice to an individual who wants to pursue dance as a career what would you tell them she replied, “Education is priceless because it gives me the freedom to pursue anything I put my mind to. I’m giving you this advice because this is what it did for me.

Lindsey credits her time spent at AAMU as a Dancin’ Diva for preparation to tour with Scott and future opportunities to showcase her skills in front of thousands of people at a time.

“Being able to do what I love on stage in front of all those people is the most exciting part about it all.”

-Lindsey