Body and Soul

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 col...

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...

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 c...

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 dan...

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 p...

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...

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...

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...

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, an...

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...

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 ⁠⁠ InfiniteBody blog post Rebecca Fitton is from many places and peoples. She...

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...

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! ****** Heather Robles is a nondisabled queer Latinx cis woman...

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 s...

"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...

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...

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...

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/ .

During the pandemic, dance artist and photographer Ricarrdo Valentine continued to work towards a graduate degree in Dance, keenly aware of academia's toll on body, mind, and spirit. Influenced by healing philosophies, such as the famed Nap Ministry of Tricia Hersey, Valentine shares what he has learned about self-compassion and rest, critical tools of liberation from capitalism and grind cult...

US-raised Palestinian artist Samar Haddad King (Artistic/Founding Director of Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre) ruminates on what pregnancy, birth, and raising her daughter have taught her about time. Learn more about Samar Haddad King on InfiniteBody blog here . And read The New York Times ' review of the Spring 2022 Gibney presentation of YSDT's Last Ward here . https://ysdt.org/

In her work with Afro-Puerto Rican bomba traditions and contemporary dance, Megan Curet considers the relationship between movement, sound, and decolonization within communal practice in Black diaspora.  She says, "I wanted to be a part of the conversation that shakes up the body, that shakes up the way we think, and I believe no other approach does so better than the act of moving, the...

Russian-born dance artist and educator Elena Demyanenko traveled from her adopted home in New York to Berlin to support the growing community of artists fleeing Russia's devastating war on Ukraine. In this moving talk, Demyanenko reflects on questions for herself and other artists making work in times of war, propaganda, censorship, and courageous disobedience. Learn more about Elena Demyanenko on...

Cory Nakasue sees complexity all around us and within us--from the cosmic realm above to the most intimate spaces below here on planet Earth.  Self-described as "a theater artist, writer, and astrologer whose work  includes choreography, dramaturgy, and video," Nakasue likely inhabits far more than even those multiple identities and roles. In this talk for Body and Soul , she shares thou...