Chanda Dancy

Chanda Yvette Dancy (born November 14, 1978) is an American film and television composer, and classical concert composer.

In 2022, Dancy's score for the 2022 film Devotion was shortlisted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for Best Original Score for the 95th Academy Awards.

In 2024, Dancy's score for the Paramount+ miniseries Lawmen: Bass Reeves was nominated for Outstanding Original Title Sequence for a Television Production for the 2024 Society of Composers and Lyricists Awards.

Arts Boston named Dancy one of "10 Contemporary Black Composers You Should Know" in 2018, and Dancy has "quickly [been] gaining recognition as a foremost black American contemporary composer" (Anthony Parnther, Conductor, San Bernardino Symphony).

Early life Raised in Houston, Texas, Dancy was taught piano at the age of 3 by her mother's mother, who was a classical musician, composer, and opera singer.

Dancy first learned violin in the third grade,

Education Dancy received her Bachelor of Arts in Music from Houston Baptist University and is a 2004 alumnus of USC's Program for Advanced Studies in Scoring for Film and Television.

In 2002, Dancy was a recipient of the 2002 BMI Pete Carpenter Film Scoring Fellowship. where she was honored alongside film composer John Williams.

Dancy is a Fellow of the 2009 Sundance Film Composers Lab.

Advocacy Dancy is on the board of the Alliance For Women Film Composers, and is a member of the Composers Diversity Collective.

Berklee College of Music in April 2023 hosted Dancy as a member of a panel of composers and musicians, including Hildur Guðnadóttir, Stephanie Economou, Nami Melumad, and Dara Taylor, on the occasion of Inaugural EA Day, celebrating women in the screen scoring industry.

Career

Film and television composing Dancy began scoring short films in 2004. For about 10 years, she wrote music for her friends' student films and short films, then their first features.

Short films In 2004, Dancy scored director Mari Okada's short film "The Correct Use of Oranges" which was screened at Centre Pompidou in France.

In 2008, Dancy scored the EC award-winning short film, "Watchtower".

The 2008 short film "A Thousand Words" was scored by Dancy, who was praised by director Ted Chung as being a "phenomenal composer". The film was featured as a Vimeo Official Festival Selection, as part of Pangea Day Films,

In 2012, HuffPost praised Dancy's "rich musical score" in director Michael Shu's short film, "Unmentionables".

In 2016, Dancy scored director Jonathan Wysocki's short film "A Doll's Eyes", which won the Cinephile Award at the Busan International Short Film Festival and was nominated for the Iris Prize Award.

TV and miniseries composing

The Defeated Dancy scored Netflix's limited series "The Defeated" in 2020. The producers requested an epic orchestral score with modern elements such as synths and sound design to create a dark, seedy, backdrop for the series. writing over 4 hours of music in 6 weeks, and recording the score with an 85-piece orchestra in Prague over a period of 8 days.

Dancy told the Alliance For Women Film Composers that a big producer discovered her music on Spotify, eventually leading to her getting hired for "The Defeated" which turned out to be a catalyst in taking her career to another level.

Dancy's 8-episode score for the Taylor Sheridan-produced series was digitally released by Lakeshore Records on November 10, 2023.

The score was nominated for Outstanding Original Title Sequence for a Television Production for the 2024 Society of Composers and Lyricists Awards.

Paste Magazine said of Dancy's score "There's an inherent melancholy here, underlined by Chanda Dancy's elegiac score, that often defines Westerns of the best kind".

The Digital Fix called Dancy's score "chilling and unusual" and Geekstronomy called the score "poignant", stating it "creates a thrilling and emotional backdrop".

Feature film composing

Everything Before Us In 2015, Dancy scored YouTube outfit Wong Fu Productions' debut feature film "Everything Before Us". and Deadline.

Dramarama In 2020, Dancy scored director Jonathan Wysocki's film "Dramarama", which was profiled in HuffPost. Dancy's band Modern Time Machines "Dramarama" premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival and Outfest 2020, and won numerous awards including the Jury Award Best Comedy Feature at Woods Hole Film Festival and Best LGBTQIA+ Feature at Oxford Film Festival.

Devotion In 2022, Dancy's Oscar-shortlisted score for the Sony Pictures film "Devotion", was released by Lakeshore Records.

Dancy's score for "Devotion" was recorded in Nashville over the course of eight days with 109 musicians. Devotion actor Glen Powell lobbied for Dancy's Oscar nomination, stating that "Her score added so much dimension to our film, and even incorporated the sounds of planes recorded in an old church".

Jonas and Dancy did a Q&A about their musical contributions to the film, at a screening discussion moderated by Variety's Angelique Jackson at the SCL.

I Wanna Dance with Somebody In 2022, Dancy scored the Sony Pictures biopic "Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody", directed by Kasi Lemmons.

The film became the most popular movie on Netflix in April, 2023.

In December, 2022, Dancy promoted the film on Variety Magazine's Composer Roundatable (moderated by Jon Burlingame) as part of the Music for Screens Summit panel presented by BMI, alongside Oscar-nominated and Grammy and Emmy-winning composers including Terence Blanchard and Nicholas Britell.

Blink Twice In 2024, Dancy scored Zoë Kravitz's directorial debut "Blink Twice" released by Amazon MGM Studios through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures. Dancy's score was shortlisted for Best Original Score at the 97th Academy Awards.

Dancy and Kravitz collaborated by sending each other clips of sounds they would hear in the wild, and had a number of inspirations ranging from gagaku to Igor Stravinsky's compositions to Indonesian drumming to the theme song from Fantasy Island.

One of Them Days In 2025, Dancy scored the Sony Pictures buddy comedy film "One of Them Days", directed by Lawrence Lamont, written by Syreeta Singleton, starring Keke Palmer and SZA (in her film debut). The original motion picture soundtrack was released by Madison Gate Records.

I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) In 2025, Dancy scored the Columbia Pictures slasher franchise film "I Know What You Did Last Summer", directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. It is the fourth installment in the I Know What You Did Last Summer franchise and a sequel to I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998).

The original motion picture soundtrack was released by Milan Records, a label of Sony Music Entertainment.

Swiped In 2025, Dancy scored the American biopic "Swiped" written and directed by Rachel Lee Goldenberg. Based on Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder and CEO of Bumble, it stars Lily James as Herd. The original motion picture soundtrack was released by Hollywood Records.

The film had its world premiere in the Gala Presentations section of the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival on September 9, 2025, and was released in the United States on Hulu and internationally on Disney+ on September 19, 2025.

Documentary film composing

On These Grounds In 2021, Dancy scored Garrett Zevgetis' SXSW 2021-premiering documentary film, "On These Grounds", which received praise from The Guardian, and the International Documentary Association. Peabody Award-winning film also won the Special Jury Award: Impact for Change at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and was profiled by The New York Times.

Orchestral composing

Centrifuge: Or The Powers That Separate Us In 2016, Dancy had an orchestral work commissioned by the Southeast Symphony entitled "Centrifuge: Or The Powers That Separate Us" which had its premiere conducted by Anthony Parnther at Shatto Chapel in Los Angeles.

OrchestraOneNYC.org said that the work "contains all the character and twists and turns that her music for film contains".

Impermanence In 2021, Anthony Parnther commissioned Dancy's work entitled "Impermanence" to pay tribute to loved ones lost during the pandemic. Dancy's work had its premiere in October 2021 by the San Bernardino Symphony at the California Theatre.

Cacophony of Spirits In December 2023, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra commissioned Dancy to write the 11-minute concert work four-section "Cacophony of Spirits: A Cinematic Tone Poem", which had its world premiere at a performance conducted by Anthony Parnther.

ArtsATL called Cacophony of Spirits "compelling" 64, and added "Chanda Dancy's commissioned work for the ASO showed she is a concert hall composer on the rise."

EarRelevant.net said "[Dancy's] piece hearkens to stylistic elements drawn from Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and a handful of 1940s Americana composers"

Collaboration with bands Dancy is a member of Los Angeles shoegaze band Modern Time Machines. alongside Death Valley Girls and Frankie and the Witch Fingers bassist Nicole Smith and toured SXSW with the band in 2011.

Dancy's song "Dweeb" with Modern Time Machines was voted #1 on Kat Corbett's KROQ 106.7FM radio show in Los Angeles in May and October, 2010.

Dancy's song "Mammoth" with Modern Time Machines was performed live with Dancy playing violin on the premiere episode of The Eric Andre Show television program on Adult Swim in 2012, with Modern Time Machines performing simultaneously with the hardcore band Retaliate.

Vice Magazine in 2014 ranked the band's performance with Dancy as the "coolest" musical guest performance in the Eric Andre Show series, and The A.V. Club in 2023 called the performance "a welcome, entertaining, and strangely captivating cacophony".

Dancy performed live alongside The Smashing Pumpkins' bassist Nicole Fiorentino as a member of the Los Angeles band Light FM at their 2009 residency at Spaceland and she performed live with Los Angeles band The Robotanists at the Troubador in 2011.

Dancy also recorded alongside Silversun Pickups keyboardist Joe Lester and Gary Numan drummer Jimmy Lucido on the 2013 album "High In the Lasers" by Los Angeles band Nightmare Air.

Influences Dancy spoke to the Los Angeles Times in 2022 about her appreciation for traditional film scores with orchestras, as well as scores built on guitars and other non-orchestral instruments.

Dancy has named influences ranging from John Williams, Tchaikovsky, Béla Bartók, Dmitri Shostakovich, Antonín Dvořák, Krzysztof Penderecki, Joe Hisaishi, Arvo Pärt, Duke Ellington, Gunther Schuller, and Vince Mendoza, as well as EDM, R&B, Jazz, and experimental/sound design elements on top of the traditional European classical orchestra.

Dancy also cites anime scores as influences, such as scores by Yoko Kanno for Macross Plus and Cowboy Bebop, and video game scores such as Nobuo Uematsu's scores for Final Fantasy. Dancy also cites rock influences from the band Modern Time Machines' "ethereal swirling mass of guitar sound".