Katrina Reid (she/her) is a dancer and choreographer who crafts art projects rooted in improvisation, experimentation, and storytelling. Select presentations of her work include the Queens Museum, ISSUE Project Room, the Knockdown Center, Current Sessions, DoublePlus/Gibney Dance, AUNTS, the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Florida A&M University, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX). As a collaborator, Katrina explores performance across dance, theater, music, ritual, and film. Most recent projects include [siccer] by Will Rawls, and the upcoming Spectral Dances by Jonathan González, as well as past works by David Thomson, Third Rail Projects, Kevin Beasley, Emily Johnson, Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born, Marguerite Hemmings, and Megan Byrne, among others. Learn more at katrina-reid.com.
For more, visit Eva Yaa Asantewaa's InfiniteBody blog here.
Petra Kuppers (she/her) is a disability culture activist and a community performance artist. She
grounds herself in disability culture methods, and uses somatics, performance, media work, and
speculative writing to engage audiences toward more socially just and enjoyable futures. In these
pandemic years, she’s been engaged in crip drifts: working with human and more-than-human
others outdoors (or through dream journeys online), exploring interdependence, listening, being-with, and complex joy.
Her latest academic study is Eco Soma: Pain and Joy in Speculative Performance Encounters
(University of Minnesota Press, 2022, open access). Her fourth poetry collection, Diver Beneath
the Street, investigates true crime and ecopoetry at the level of the soil (Wayne State University
Press, February 2024). She teaches at the University of Michigan, and is a 2023 Guggenheim
Fellow.
https://wsupress.wayne.edu/9780814351116/diver-beneath-the-street/
https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/eco-soma
More on Eva Yaa Asantewaa's InfiniteBody blog here.
Daniel Phoenix Singh has worked in higher education, the field of dance, queer communities, South Asian communities, and in arts practice, policy, and funding at local and national levels. His identities lie at the intersection of his queer, antiracist, South Asian, immigrant, artist, and advocate roles in the various communities he inhabits. He acknowledges the complicity and internalization of colonial and racial oppressions in his life and works hard to approach issues from an anticolonial and antiracist perspective. He has been influenced by the work of Erode Venkatappa Ramasamy (aka Periyar | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periyar), Rabindranath Tagore, Arundhathi Roy, Toni Morrison, and particularly Justin Laing (http://hillombo.net/about/) who work from intersectional frameworks. In his dance practice, Daniel was mentored by Pamela Mathews as curiosity took him from computer science to a dance major in college. He is deeply grateful to Lorry May, Harriet Moncure Williams, and Karen Bernstein for helping shape his choreographic voice. Madhavi Mudgal and Leela Samson in India have broadened his perspectives on the space Indian dance forms can occupy both within the body, in the pedagogy, and field of dance. He is a single parent to amazing twins who have been his foremost teachers and test his improvisational skills every day. https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielphoenixsingh/
For more, visit Eva Yaa Asantewaa's InfiniteBody blog here.
NOTE: For a glossary of Laban terms mentioned in this episode, click here.
Alexandra Beller, Artistic Director of Alexandra Beller/Dances, (2002-present), was a member of the Bill T.
Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company from 1995-2001. Alexandra created over 50 original Dance Theatre works, presented at theaters throughout the US and companies in Korea, Hong Kong, Oslo, and Cyprus. She has created dance theater works for over 45 universities throughout the US.
Alexandra currently choreographs predominantly for Theater. Credits: Off Broadway: Sense and Sensibility (Sheen Center, Judson Gym, Folger Shakespeare Library, American Repertory Theatre, Portland Center Stage), (Helen Hayes Award, Lortel Nomination, IRNE Best Choreography), The Mad Ones (59E59), Bedlam’s Peter Pan (Duke Theatre), How to transcend a happy marriage (Lincoln Center Theatre), Regional: Two Gentlemen of Verona (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival), As You Like It (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Folger Shakespeare Library), The Young Ladies of... (Taylor Mac), Chang(e) (HERE), Current: Antonio’s Song (CATF, Milwaukee Rep), Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes) (La MaMa, and touring), Directing/Choreographing Macbeth. She wrote and directed an adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for 92Y.
She was on faculty at Princeton 2015-2022 and teaches at The Laban Institute for Movement Studies, HB Studios, UWM grad program. Alexandra holds a BFA/Dance, MFA/Choreography, and CMA (Certified Movement Analyst).
www.alexandrabellerrdances.org
For more, visit Eva Yaa Asantewaa's InfiniteBody blog here.
Valencia James is an interdisciplinary artist from Barbados interested in the intersection between dance, theater, technology, art installation and activism. Her works have explored remote interdisciplinary collaboration, artist-driven open-source software tools and the combination of live performance with immersive interactive technologies. Currently, she is researching the relationship between performance and play and how traditional Caribbean cultural and spiritual forms have been used by communities in active resistance and problem-solving in the face of colonial systems.
Valencia has been a 2020 Rapid Response Fellow at Eyebeam NYC and a 2021-2022 Sundance Interdisciplinary Fellow. She has presented work at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence 2015, SIGGRAPH 2021, and the 2022 New Frontier exhibition at Sundance Film Festival. Valencia has participated in group exhibitions in Istanbul, Buenos Aires, Budapest, San Francisco and Berkeley. http://valenciajames.com/
See Eva Yaa Asantewaa's InfiniteBody blog for more.
Melanie George is Associate Curator and Scholar in Residence at Jacob’s Pillow, and guest curator for the 2024 American Dance Platform at the Joyce Theater. As a dramaturg, she has contributed to projects by Raja Feather Kelly, Helen Simoneau, Alice Sheppard, Urban Bush Women, and SW!NG OUT among others. Melanie is featured in the documentary UpRooted: The Journey of Jazz Dance and a contributing to scholar to Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches, and Rooted Jazz Dance: Africanist Aesthetics and Equity in the Twenty-First Century. Melanie is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Rutgers University and has guest lectured at Harvard University, the Yale School of Drama, and The Juilliard School. In 2021, she was named one of Dance Magazine’s 30 over 30, and is the recipient of the Outstanding Leadership Award from the National Dance Education Organization. She is a performer/dramaturg with The Jazz Continuum. https://www.melaniegeorge.org
See more about Melanie George at Eva Yaa Asantewaa's InfiniteBody blog: https://infinitebody.blogspot.com/2024/03/body-and-soul-melanie-george-art-of.html
Bhumi B Patel directs pateldanceworks and is a queer, desi, home-seeker, science fiction choreographer, movement artist, and writer. She has presented her choreography in the Bay Area, Manoa (Hawai’i), Los Angeles, New York, and Columbus (Ohio). Bhumi was a 2022-2023 Dance/USA Fellow and a 2023 YBCA 100 Honoree. She has presented at Dance Studies Association, Popular Culture Association, National Women’s Studies Association, and Asia Pacific Dance Festival, and has published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Contact Quarterly, and InDance. Her research on queer decoloniality and improvisation intersects with her performance-making as a way of tracing the deep connections of past, present, future to build communities of nourishment and care. pateldanceworks.org
See more about Bhumi B Patel at Eva Yaa Asantewaa's InfiniteBody blog: https://infinitebody.blogspot.com/2024/03/body-and-soul-bhumi-b-patel-this-world.html
We welcome artist/educator olaiya olayemi who shares her view that resisting grind culture and living a sustainable life necessitates time for rest, play, and pleasure.
olaiya olayemi is an antidisciplinary artist, radical educator, pleasure anarchist, and erotic witch. she creates texts, images, sounds, and movements. she currently lives in philadelphia, pa.
Learn more about olaiya olayemi at: ww.pillowtalkwithaplaygurrrl.com
And visit Eva Yaa Asantewaa's InfiniteBody blog here.
In Part Two of Mythologies of Erasure, we continue our visit with playwright and scholar Dr. Nina Angela Mercer who draws from family roots in Washington, DC and her lifelong fascination with mythology and world-building to examine how stories a society or community tells about itself too often promote marginalization and erasure of history.
Dr. Nina Angela Mercer is a culture worker, scholar, and interdisciplinary artist. Her plays include GUTTA BEAUTIFUL; ITAGUA MEJI: A ROAD AND A PRAYER; ELIJAHEEN BECOMES WIND; CHARISMA AT THE CROSSROADS; A COMPULSION FOR BREATHING; MOTHER WIT AND WATER-BORN; and GYPSY AND THE BULLY DOOR. She also collaborated with Urban Bush Women as writer and performer in HAINT BLU. Nina’s writing is published in The Killens Review of Arts & Letters; Black Renaissance Noire; Continuum: The Journal of African Diaspora Drama, Theatre, and Performance; A Gathering of the Tribes Magazine Online; Break Beat Poets Vol 2: Black Girl Magic; Are You Entertained? Black Popular Culture in the 21st Century; Performance Research Journal; Represent! New Plays for Multicultural Young People; and So We Can Know. She is currently a community engagement fellow at The Woodshed Center for Art, Thought, and Culture at Georgetown University's Racial Justice Institute. She is also the executive director of Ocean Ana Rising, Inc./OAR. For more information, visit her at www.ninaangelamercer.com.
For more about Dr. Mercer, also visit InfiniteBody blog. Click here.
Next, we visit with playwright and scholar Dr. Nina Angela Mercer who draws from family roots in Washington, DC and her lifelong fascination with mythology and world-building to examine how stories a society or community tells about itself too often promote marginalization and erasure of history.
This episode is Part 1 of Dr. Mercer's talk and will be followed by Part 2 in our next episode.
Dr. Nina Angela Mercer is a culture worker, scholar, and interdisciplinary artist. Her plays include GUTTA BEAUTIFUL; ITAGUA MEJI: A ROAD AND A PRAYER; ELIJAHEEN BECOMES WIND; CHARISMA AT THE CROSSROADS; A COMPULSION FOR BREATHING; MOTHER WIT AND WATER-BORN; and GYPSY AND THE BULLY DOOR. She also collaborated with Urban Bush Women as writer and performer in HAINT BLU. Nina’s writing is published in The Killens Review of Arts & Letters; Black Renaissance Noire; Continuum: The Journal of African Diaspora Drama, Theatre, and Performance; A Gathering of the Tribes Magazine Online; Break Beat Poets Vol 2: Black Girl Magic; Are You Entertained? Black Popular Culture in the 21st Century; Performance Research Journal; Represent! New Plays for Multicultural Young People; and So We Can Know. She is currently a community engagement fellow at The Woodshed Center for Art, Thought, and Culture at Georgetown University's Racial Justice Institute. She is also the executive director of Ocean Ana Rising, Inc./OAR. For more information, visit her at www.ninaangelamercer.com.
For more about Dr. Mercer, also visit InfiniteBody blog. Click here.
In this episode of Body and Soul podcast, dance artist and administrator Rebecca Fitton (she/they) presents insights from her research into the ways current systems of fiscal sponsorship maintain the status quo of power and fail artists.
Watch Fitton's film, Best Practices (2022).
Transcript of this episode
Rebecca Fitton is from many places and peoples. She nurtures community through movement, conversation, and food, strives to equally prioritize her multifaceted roles as an artist, administrator, and advocate. Fitton works as Co-Director/Director of Operations and Development for Bridge Live Arts and as the Director of Studio Rawls for artist Will Rawls. She has previously produced multi-disciplinary works for J. Bouey, zavé martohardjono, and FAILSPACE. From 2017-2021, she worked with DELIRIOUS Dances/Edisa Weeks to coordinate community gatherings focused on abolition movements. She was a Dance/NYC’s Junior Committee member from 2018-2020 and participated in Dance/USA’s Institute for Leadership Training in 2021. Their writing has been published by Triskelion Arts, Emergency Index, In Dance, The Dancer-Citizen, Etudes, Critical Correspondence, and Dance Research Journal. They hold a BFA in Dance from Florida State University and an MA in Performance as Public Practice from the University of Texas at Austin. rebeccafittonprojects.com
In this episode of Body and Soul podcast, the respected, award-winning artist and educator Vicky Shick discusses the challenge and "universal necessity" of trust in a time of widespread distrust and anxiety. As an artist, she sources trust in "the innate intelligence in our bodies" and "in the vulnerable practice of creation."
Vicky Shick has been involved in the New York dance community for four decades--teaching, performing, and making pieces. She feels grateful to all the incredible people with whom she has worked. She was a member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company and staged several of Brown’s dances, including in her hometown, Budapest. Previously, she was a member of the Sara Rudner Performance Ensemble. Vicky has developed student pieces at Barnard, The New School and Yale, among other institutions. Her last two works were at Arts on Site, and a collaborative performance at Roulette with choreographer/artist Jon Kinzel. In New York City, she teaches at Movement Research, for the Trisha Brown Dance Company and has taught for 15 years at Hunter College. She was a Movement Research Artist-in-Residence (twice), a Bessie recipient (twice), a grant recipient from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, a Gibney DiP grantee, and a Guggenheim Fellow.
Heather Robles gently beckons us out of the numbness we might have slipped into as the world feels so hard right now. What do we desire and how can desire and curiosity awaken and guide us forward towards joy?
You'll notice this episode has no background music. I didn't need or want that sound to cover Frijolito's snoring!
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Heather Robles is a nondisabled queer Latinx cis woman of Indigenous Mexican descent who lives on the stolen land of the Lenape and Canarsie peoples in what is colonially called Brooklyn. She is Founder and Artistic Executive Director of Alma Dance Company. As a choreographer and performer, she has worked with many artists including Yvonne Rainer, Sidra Bell, Pavel Zuštiak, Nathan Trice, DANCENOISE, André M. Zachery, Buglisi Dance Theater, Fredrick Earl Mosley, Suzzanne Ponomarenko Dance, The Equus Projects. She is also the Executive Director of the New York Dance and Performance Awards, The Bessies, and a certified birth doula at Our Birth Doula. Heather is also a dance educator, teaching artist, producer, and advocate for mental health in the dance field. https://www.almadanceco.com
Award-winning choreographer and writer Stephan Koplowitz discusses the importance of thorough research into the history of a place--and knowledge of one's own relationship to history--in the making of site-specific performance. He describes site work as disruptive and all performance as political.
Learn more about Stephan's own history and his work on InfiniteBody blog here.
Thomas Ford is a dance artist, writer and scholar whose research examines the mechanisms of identity and culture through an exploration of embodiment, choreography, and Black, queer, critical and performance studies. In today's episode, Ford reflects on the violent colonial history at the root of homophobia in Black families and community. https://www.thomasfordnyc.com/
Visit InfiniteBody blog.
This Spring, author Kate Mattingly published Shaping Dance Canons: Criticism, Aesthetics, Equity, an analysis of many decades of dance criticism in the US (University of Florida Press). As a white woman, she accepts responsibility to speak out on white supremacy. In her talk today, she shares thoughts on how white supremacy has historically defined and dominated dance criticism and continues to silence women in academia.
Dr. Mattingly has written for The New York Times, The Village Voice, Dance Magazine, and Pointe Magazine and is associate editor of Dance Chronicle. She is assistant professor of dance at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.
Learn more about Dr. Mattingly on InfiniteBody blog here.
"My life is a dance," says dancer-healer-teacher Italy Bianca, "How am I going to stage it, each and every day?"
Body and soul are connected, she knows from personal experience of trauma, healing, and creativity. In this talk to inspire other artists, teachers, caregivers, and anyone, Italy invokes what she has learned through modalities such as massage, acupuncture, herbalism, spiritual practice, and the use of sensory deprivation tanks.
Listen here and also learn more about Italy Bianca on InfiniteBody blog.
Like her bestie Tamisha A. Guy, who spoke in our previous episode, Dallas native Catherine Kirk is a ten-year veteran of A.I.M by Kyle Abraham and a thrilling performer. Kirk describes herself as "an artist of many measures," one fascinated by stories and questions of "why humans are the way we are."
Learn more about Catherine Kirk on InfiniteBody blog here.
Learn more about A.I.M by Kyle Abraham here.
Caribbean-born dancer Tamisha A. Guy celebrates her tenth year with A.I.M by Kyle Abraham--the New York-based, award-winning troupe which recently completed a triumphant spring season at The Joyce Theater. Acknowledging a time of deep contemplation and yearning for home, Guy speaks of her own fervent aim--to perform live for her family and community in Trinidad.
Learn more about Tamisha A. Guy on InfiniteBody blog here.
Learn more about A.I.M by Kyle Abraham here.
My guest, Dr. Iquail Shaheed, Artistic Director of Philadelphia-based DANCE IQUAIL!, sits in to talk about his desire to reflect the "three pillars of creating a new world" and how working with incarcerated populations has led to his new work, Public Enemy.
Learn more about Dr. Shaheed on InfiniteBody blog here and at http://www.danceiquail.org/.