Duane Lee Holland Jr. / Maxx Lancaster
Duane Lee Holland Jr. is an interdisciplinary dance artist, choreographer, educator, musician, scholar, and cultural practitioner whose career bridges Hip Hop, concert dance, theater, music, scholarship, and community engagement. Holland began his professional dance career at the age of 17 with the internationally acclaimed Hip Hop theater dance company Rennie Harris Puremovement, where he was later named Assistant Artistic Director. He received his Master of Fine Arts in Dance, Magna Cum Laude, with a focus in Choreography from the University of Iowa.
A pioneer in advancing Hip Hop within higher education, Holland became the first full-time Hip-Hop professor at Boston Conservatory at Berklee in 2016 and at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2019. In fall 2022, he joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Dance Program. In May 2025, Holland became an affiliated faculty member of the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at UMass Amherst and served as the first Black Director of the UMass Amherst Dance Program during the 2025–2026 academic year.
Throughout his career, Holland has had the privilege of working with some of the most influential artists in American dance and theater, including Bill T. Jones on We Shall Not Be Moved, Garth Fagan on the original Broadway production of The Lion King, and Ronald K. Brown of Evidence. Holland also served as Assistant Choreographer, Dance Captain, and featured dancer in Maurice Hines’ Broadway production of Hot Feet.
Holland’s interdisciplinary practice extends deeply into music and theater. In 2010, he released his first independent R&B and Hip Hop music project, Life Expansion. His second project, Love n Life, featuring music developed in connection with his one-man show, The Adventures of Maxx Lancaster, was released in March 2021. In February 2023, Holland choreographed The Magnificent Seven, a contemporary musical exploring the historic 1996 United States Women’s Olympic Gymnastics Team, written by Gordon Leary and Julia Meinwald and directed by Catie Davis.
In March 2024, Holland released his third music project, Maxx Remixed, in conjunction with the debut of The Adventures of Maxx Lancaster: A Journey of Black Masculinity. This evening-length interdisciplinary one-man performance expands the possibilities of Hip Hop Theater through dance, music, storytelling, embodied history, and autoethnographic research. Centering Black American male queerness, the work investigates masculinity, sexuality, spirituality, vulnerability, cultural memory, healing, and liberation. The Adventures of Maxx Lancaster is currently being developed for domestic and international touring.
Holland’s exploration of Maxx Lancaster also extends from the stage into literary and scholarly inquiry. In November 2024, the publication Caribbean Men in the Arts: Demystifying Masculinities with Essays, Interviews, Poetry and Stories featured the essay The Misadventures of Maxx Lancaster: Melanin, Mack Trucks, Weapons of Masculinity. This collaborative literary project between Holland, Dr. Kemal Nance, and Dr. Gregory King expands the intellectual landscape surrounding Maxx Lancaster, examining Black masculinity through embodied, artistic, cultural, and autoethnographic perspectives.
Holland is also the founder of CRĀV (Cultivating Revolutionary Artistic Virtuosity), an arts and education organization through which he has conducted community outreach and interdisciplinary arts programming throughout the suburban Philadelphia region and in collaboration with universities across the United States.
Across performance, scholarship, education, and community engagement, Holland’s practice is rooted in the belief that Hip Hop is an expansive site of cultural memory, rigorous inquiry, innovation, healing, and possibility. His work continues to build bridges between generations, disciplines, institutions, and communities while creating space for the complexity and brilliance of Black American artistry.