But for Lensi, who is allergic to dairy, eggs, nuts, and kiwifruit, it wasn’t as easy as going to a restaurant or following a standard recipe. “I decided I needed to figure out my own recipe,” she says. With the help of her mom, tuning in from Milan via FaceTime, Lensi experimented with coconut flour and brown rice flour before settling on oat. She also learned that chia seeds can act like an egg substitute, binding the batter together. “There were a lot of trials and errors, but I figured out that it is possible to make pancakes if you have a lot of food allergies, or you just want to avoid eggs or dairy,” says Lensi.

The Joy of Cooking

Living with severe allergies while managing ABT’s grueling rehearsal and touring schedule hasn’t always been easy for Lensi. Eating out or relying on prepared food is rarely an option. “When I was younger, I always felt like cooking was a chore because I have to do it literally every day,” she says, adding that even on tour, she cooks her own food; the company travels with a microwave for her to use. But recently, thanks to cooking together with her boyfriend, ABT dancer Andrii Ishchuk, and experimenting with recipes she finds on Instagram and YouTube, she’s learned to relish her time in the kitchen. And when that’s not enough? “I like to put a TV show on, and that makes it more enjoyable,” says Lensi. “I love any comedy show. Right now, I’m rewatching ‘Ugly Betty.’ ”

Knives Out

The one kitchen tool that Lensi can’t live without is sharp knives. “I love having good knives,” she says. “Because my arms are not super-strong, if I have a bad knife I really have to push too hard. I am really picky about that.”

Ingredients

• 1 cup oat flour
• 1 cup oat milk
• 1 tbsp olive oil, plus extra for greasing the pan
• 2 tbsps cane sugar (“I personally like the taste of cane sugar,” says Lensi. “It has more of a flavor, and growing up I always used it.”)
• 1 tbsp chia seeds
• 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips (“I use the brand Enjoy Life, because it’s free of 14 common allergens,” says Lensi.)
  Toppings
• berries
• maple syrup

Instructions

1. In a large mixing bowl, combine oat flour, oat milk, olive oil, cane sugar, chia seeds, and chocolate chips. Mix until the batter is smooth. If it feels too thick, you can add a bit more oat milk as needed.
2. Set a nonstick pan over medium heat. Pour some olive oil onto a paper towel and use it to grease the pan. (Lensi stresses the importance of this step: “If you don’t use the paper towel, the oil goes around the pancake instead of underneath, and the pancakes stick to the pan.”)
3. Using a soup spoon or ladle, spoon small amounts of the batter into the prepared pan to create individual pancakes. Allow them to cook until small bubbles form on the surface, then carefully flip them with a spatula.
4. Top the pancakes with a generous serving of fresh berries, and drizzle with maple syrup. Serve warm, and enjoy!

The post American Ballet Theatre’s Virginia Lensi Shares Her Allergy-Friendly Oat Pancakes appeared first on Dance Magazine.

In making Chasing Canyons, I set out to choreograph a site-specific dance for a site so big it is impossible to see in its entirety. I began with my geologic knowledge of the Grand Canyon, built from my years of scientific training and the weeks I spent climbing up and down its walls. The resulting gesture phrase follows the canyon’s life cycle: the initial crush of its basement rocks, the tilting of overlying strata, the massive gap in time known as the Great Unconformity, subsequent deposition of layers upon layers of sediments, and, finally, the coming of the Colorado River to uncover it all. From there, I began to draw the parts of the canyon that I could see, tracing the terraces and side canyons, dragging feet and fingers from the tops of the cliffs to the shady hollows at the base. I worked in the positions of the stars above the canyon, which mark its location in space and time. Then I merged it all together to create a moving map, not just of the canyon, but of how humans relate to it.

Connecting the canyon to the stars raised more questions: How do we interact with beautiful spaces, here on Earth and elsewhere? When we land on Mars, will we be owners or caretakers? At the end of the piece, I answer these questions: I erase the map. Much like art and science, I think that “to boldly go” and “take only pictures, leave only footprints” are two complementary, not conflicting, philosophies.

My time as the Astronomer (and dancer) in Residence at the canyon has ended, but I will carry it in my body as well as my mind. It is my greatest hope that in making these kinds of dances, I can inspire audiences to expand their minds—to explore the different ways we can understand, learn, and appreciate the universe in which we live.

The post Dancing Across the Solar System as the Grand Canyon’s Astronomer in Residence appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Moving With Precision

Dancers tend to demonstrate Pilates exercises exceptionally well as a result of their training, conditioning, and awareness of the details of movement. Bryant has found the deep knowledge of the body and of movement patterns she developed as a dancer to be indispensable in teaching Pilates. “I had decades of memorizing choreography, both for performances and during classes,” she says. “Classical Pilates has more than 530 exercises. Trying to memorize 530 random facts would be overwhelming, but placing them in a choreographic sequence makes them accessible.”

Similarly, dancers have experience with the body getting progressively warmer and stronger as they move through a dance class. “The same thing happens in a Pilates class,” says Bryant. “You start with relatively simple exercises and build toward more difficult and complex movement.”

Founded by Joseph Pilates during World War I to help rehabilitate injured and sick prisoners of war, Pilates draws upon principles of physical therapy, yoga, and gymnastics to create a holistic approach to exercise and movement. Bryant credits Pilates for extending her own career as a dancer. “I was a very hypermobile dancer and had a lot of chronic dislocations,” she says. “Pilates helped to stabilize my body tremendously.”

Teaching also offers a way for dancers to work in a field that’s more directly related to their passion for movement. “You can earn money with a job that actually informs your dancing,” says Bryant, explaining that many of her dance colleagues had second jobs in restaurants or retail. “Teaching Pilates gives you the opportunity to speak health into your body while also helping somebody else move better. It gives you a career that is directly related to health, wellness, and movement.”

Spiraling Strength

Karen Safrit can draw a direct line from her own dance training and teaching to her success as a Gyrotonic teacher. A competitive figure skater as a child, Safrit later danced professionally­ with Nikolais and Murray Louis Dance. She decided to get certified to teach Gyrotonic more than a decade ago as an asset to teaching in university dance programs. Instantly it clicked: “Dancers generally are not aware of how they achieve the strength in their movement, as it’s not often talked about in ballet or modern classes,” says Safrit. “The Gyrotonic Expansion System focuses on making the whole body stronger and giving people the ability to identify what they can do to achieve that strength and balance.”

The Gyrotonic Expansion System was created by Juliu Horvath, a former principal dancer with the Romanian National Ballet Company, who defected from Romania, settled in the U.S., and was a principal dancer with Houston Ballet. After a ruptured Achilles tendon ended his performing career, he moved to New York City and developed the Gyrotonic and Gyrokinesis exercises. For Safrit, who had also studied Pilates while getting an MFA in dance at New York University, Gyrotonic exercises are “more three-dimensional, with more spirals in all the extremities.”

Safrit has found that teaching fits well into many dancers’ schedules. “Most dancers are working at night if they’re performing, or taking classes at night if their city doesn’t have open classes during the day. A lot of the people who are practicing Gyrotonic are looking for sessions during the daytime.”

Teaching also taps into a skill many dancers possess: focus.­ “I remember when I was dancing professionally and class was the place where all the worries of the day disappeared and my only concern was dancing,” says Safrit. “My clients today describe a similar pleasure with Gyrotonic: You have to concentrate on each movement, and this mindfulness gives people an hour of focus that’s often missing in busy lives that are full of distractions and screens. They separate the pressures of life outside the studio from an hour of moving within the studio. Dancers understand that joy.”

Teaching Certifications

Teaching Gyrotonic, which is trademarked, requires becoming a certified trainer. Gyrotonic certification includes a pre-training course, the foundation course, an apprenticeship, and a final certificate/assessment, with a cost of just under $5,000. Continuing education credits are required every two years, costing between $400 and $1,000, and instructors are also required to have their own liability insurance (approximately $160 annually). Gyrotonic teachers typically charge clients between $100 and $175 for an hour-long private session.

“Pilates is legally considered a generic term, which means anyone can open a Pilates studio and start training teachers,” explains Everlea Bryant, who strongly recommends dancers get certified before teaching. She recommends looking for a well-established program with instructors who have significant experience in teacher training. While Bryant acknowledges getting certified can be expensive, with “some programs costing upwards of $10,000 for comprehensive training,” she notes that most teachers will earn many multiples of the cost of training.

There are ways to reduce and/or spread out costs: Bryant directs a studio that offers work–study positions and internships. “People can pay for their training while earning an income,” she says.

The post Why Dancers Make Great Pilates and Gyrotonic Instructors appeared first on Dance Magazine.

A Little More Mascara

Dennis Callahan (Monique): I think there were between 800 and 1,000 at the original open call. Scott Salmon, who was the choreographer, was not a New York person. So it was really like a clean slate as far as what he was seeing at these auditions.

David Engel (Hanna): I was only being seen for Jean-Michel [one of the leads]. Then they said, “We need to see you dance and in drag.” I didn’t know why. I came to the final dance call. Everybody else had learned all this choreography. I learned it on the spot.

Dan O’Grady (Odette): It got down to maybe 25 of us at the end. I had never done any drag, but I decided to show up in drag [for the final audition]. It was really, really funny. When I got into the cab, the cab driver got out, opened the door for me, called me ma’am. Then I went into the theater, and they didn’t know who I was. No one else arrived in drag.

DC: From 10 in the morning to 4 or 5 in the afternoon, we did all of the dancing in drag. And at the end of this long day, we were 12 and 12 across the stage.

DE: Basically, it was like the end of A Chorus Line. We were all lined up across the stage. And then they’re like, “Rehearsals start on this date—congratulations.” Everybody’s jumping up and down screaming, and I’m like, “What’s happening? What’s going on?”

DC: After the others left, they had the 12 of us gather around the piano and sing “There’s No Business Like Show Business” in real short-clipped piano voices. [Composer] Jerry Herman said, “This is the style of La Cage’s opening song, ‘We are What We Are.’ ” It was such a cool moment to be around the piano with Jerry and [music director] Don Pippin, all of us in drag.

Not a Place We Have to Hide

DE: The very first day of rehearsal, [director] Arthur Laurents said, “We are not doing this apologetically. We are proudly playing these roles.”

DO: He gave us all storylines. Some were more developed than others, but we all had a bit of one. He really instilled in us that we were important to the story.

DC: Though I don’t think any of us had any experience doing drag, I don’t think any Cagelle would say it was hard. The atmosphere in the room was so supportive and nurturing that none of us felt any fear of being judged.

DO: I remember Arthur working on “I Am What I Am” with George Hearn [who played Albin], a straight man. The amount of pride and dignity that Arthur conveyed not just to George but all of us was very powerful. It moves me even just to think of it now.

DC: The Cagelles were given the last bow. When does that ever happen? We each just took a humble bow as ourselves. The sound of the audience was unbelievable.

Sometimes Sweet and Sometimes Bitter

DE: We had a whole warm-up area in the basement, and at intermission, we’d dress up, we’d be ridiculous. We just kept creating and playing.

It was the best of times. And it was the worst of times.

DO: I first started hearing about the “gay cancer” when we were in Boston. Nobody knew what it was.

DE: I remember thinking to myself, if I went to a gay bar, I would hold my breath. You just didn’t know. It was everywhere, and if you tested positive, it was a death sentence, definitely. And you could go quick.

DO: I think David Cahn [Chantelle] was the first of us Cagelles who got sick and left, then John Dolf [Nicole].

DC: I don’t remember any conversation between the rest of us about the boys being sick. I think it was sort of a feeling of: If they wanted to talk about it they would, and they’re not, so neither should we. And maybe there was also a fear.

DO: We felt the loss from the inside, and I think that’s what sort of led us to start thinking about the Easter Bonnet competition. Howard Crabtree and the other costume folks did these silly Easter bonnets, and we had folks donate. In the beginning it was just the cast, the crew, and the orchestra.

DE: We did the Easter Bonnet pageant in the basement and a Queen of Hearts pageant for Valentine’s Day, both just among ourselves, and raised money for Gay Men’s Health Crisis. The next year we decided to bring the Easter Bonnet pageant onto the stage and invited other casts to come—A Chorus Line, Cats, there were a few companies. I remember when they flipped over the cards at the end, we had raised $17,000. I was sobbing, sobbing.

DO: I think we needed a sense of agency. Because there was no hope. There really wasn’t. Our friends were dying, and we couldn’t do anything about it. But we could dress up and act silly and ask people for money.

DC: Teddy Azar was instrumental in the whole look of the show makeup- and wig-wise. He was one of the first in the company to come down with AIDS. He was at St. Vincent’s, and David [Scala, who played Phaedra], Sam [Singhaus, Clo-Clo], and I got some nurse drag with these giant hypodermic needles and resuscitation devices, just ridiculous stuff, and we went down there. People who worked there came up to us and said, “Could you please come bring some of this joy into some of the other rooms?” And we went in and out of these rooms, these three big old drag queens in nurse drag, and it was joyous. The whole thing was joyous.

DE: I had plenty of hard losses, but the hardest was [executive producer] Fritz Holt. At the show that night, we silently got in place, and one by one we turned around in the opening number and we all started singing “We Are What We Are.” But then one by one voices were dropping out. We just couldn’t sing. We were all crying. The cast members in the wings on both sides were singing for us, trying to keep it going.

We Are What We Are

DC: When we would turn around one by one in the opening number, you could feel, physically, this sort of crossed-arm, furrowed-brow feeling from the audience. They were probably wondering if maybe we’re too close, we’re going to get [AIDS].

By the end of the show those same faces were leaning into the stage, wide-eyed. I left every night thinking, Wow, I think I was part of something that changed what people think about homosexuals.

DE: I came out to my mom when I was 18, and she really struggled with it. She couldn’t understand what she had done wrong. And it was La Cage that turned her around. It let her know that you can have love and family being gay. She became a mother to all of my gay friends that had parents that disowned them. They adored her, and she loved all of them.

DC: From the beginning my parents saw something in me. They would take me to the Muny Opera, to the Starlight in Kansas City, and nurtured that in me. But at the same time I didn’t ever feel like I needed to tell them I was gay. I thought the words and the situation would hurt them. And they knew.

When they saw the show, that was my way of being able to tell them and show them that I was going to be okay.

DO: La Cage changed my life. I got to work with Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Herman and Arthur Laurents and Fritz Holt and Barry Brown and Don Pippin, and George Hearn and Gene Barry [Georges] and Merle Louise [Mme. Didon]. I also learned so much from Linda Haberman [Bitelle] and Jennifer Smith [Colette]. The work ethic, the creativity, and the artistry was like nothing I had ever been exposed to.
DC: At the 40-year reunion, we sang “The Best of Times.” There were two older gentlemen sitting next to each other in the audience, and they were bawling. And I thought, god, this show affected more people than we will ever know. It’s so special to have been a part of something like that.

The post <i>La Cage aux Folles</i>’ Cagelles, 40 Years Later: Something About Sharing, Something About Always appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Evans-Krueger, who graduated from Wright State University with a BFA in dance, possesses a magnetic presence, ethereal movement quality, and contagious passion. She will bring this winning trifecta to The Outsiders (which opens April 11 on Broadway) as both a performer and associate choreographer.

Food for the Soul

“The workload within this industry can be exhausting. But at the same time, when you’re performing as part of a show that you really believe in, night after night, it feels like it’s for a reason and a purpose. When a show sits right within your soul, even the hardest workdays are beyond worth it, and that’s what so many of us are searching for in life.”

Making the Space

“I am very observant. I’m good at reading a room and fitting into wherever someone needs me. I want to be open and I want people to feel free to express themselves in a space. To prepare for my leadership role with The Outsiders, I make sure I do what I need to do—like journaling, taking my morning walk—so that I am grounded within myself before I step into a space where I am expected to be a support system for other people.”

All the Right Questions

“I’m very curious about why I am the way I am, and why people are the way they are. Digging into my humanity and diving deeper into what makes me me is an inspiration for the work that I do. When it comes to choreographing, I ask myself: ‘What do I need to heal? What do I want to discover about relationships?’ I feel like my life’s work is about breaking down all of the things I grew up on so I was and am able to build a foundation that works for me.”

The post Broadway Dancer Tilly Evans-Krueger Seeks Authenticity Above All appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“There’s a little bit of everything,” he says. “Tap is probably the only thing we don’t have.”

It may be an exaggeration, but not by much. In the show’s ballet- and contemporary-inspired tornado scene, a storm of dancers destroys Dorothy’s home and sends her off to Oz. Once she gets there, she’s swept up in a New Orleans–style second line that leads her down the Yellow Brick Road, where she meets a Tinman who pops-and-locks. Eventually, she is ushered into the Emerald City amongst a dizzying array of dances from the Black diaspora, from street styles out of Atlanta to Afrobeats to the South African amapiano. 

Though The Wiz may have one of the most versatile casts of dancers on Broadway right now—and, in Knight, a choreographer who has shown from his expansive commercial career that he can do pretty much anything—the show’s pull-out-all-the-stops movement isn’t about showing off. Instead, it’s a form of placemaking, says director Schele Williams, grounding Dorothy in elements of Black culture as she journeys through Oz and back home again.

“I liken Dorothy’s journey to a walk through the woods,” she says. “You can turn a corner, and it’s a gorgeous meadow. And then you can go another 40 yards and all of a sudden there’s a lake. Every turn, you can be in a new location with its own set of rules. It gives us permission to fully immerse ourselves in a new location.”

Tapping into his encyclopedic knowledge of dance genres to create a unique vocabulary was nothing new for Knight, who has spent years choreographing for top pop stars, most notably Beyoncé. What was new for him: the genre of musical theater, and the task of using those dances to tell a story.

And not just any story. The Wiz, a retelling of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and a staple of Black culture, was revolutionary when it premiered in 1975 with choreography by George Faison, winning seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Choreography. A film adaptation starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, with choreography by Louis Johnson, came three years later. Several efforts to reignite a Broadway production have been in the works since, including a revival in 1984 that only lasted 13 performances, and another attempt in 2004 that never got off the ground.

This time, The Wiz team predicts, will be different. Williams believes the world needs this show, with its joy-infused score and hope-filled message, right now. And by taking the production out of the ’70s and adding some contemporary innovations—in addition to Knight’s genre-bending choreography, there are updates to the book by comedian Amber Ruffin; costumes by Sharen Davis (of “Westworld,” “Watchmen,” and Dreamgirls); a dazzling set by Hannah Beachler, of Black Panther; and a modernized score by music team Joseph Joubert, Allen René Louis, Adam Blackstone, and Paul Byssainthe Jr.—they hope it will become timeless.          

“I really wanted to create something that didn’t feel super ‘now,’ ” says Knight, “but takes you on a journey of Black dance. Throughout the show you see how these people live, how they move, how they celebrate, how they mourn, how they support each other, how they find a family.”           

Knight began building the show’s choreography in October 2022. He workshopped movement in Los Angeles with some of his go-to commercial dancers. “I dreamed as big as I could,” Knight says. “For me, it was about, How do we keep the essence­ and energy of what George Faison did, and also bring JaQuel Knight to the table?”

Broadway veteran and The Wiz dance captain Amber Jackson says the dance call was one of the most intense she’s experienced, with long, fast combos that constantly switched between styles, and rooms jam-packed with a who’s who of Black dance talent. A dance workshop with the chosen few—many of whom were Broadway newbies like Knight—followed, then rehearsals, then the national tour, then another round of rehearsals and tweaks before Broadway previews.

Reviews of the tour seem to agree that the production is highly entertaining, if a bit flashy. But as far as the choreography is concerned, nothing is flashy for flashiness’ sake. “I think the movement does a really beautiful job of not letting the audience feel detached from it,” says ensemble member Maya Bowles. “It’s not so codified in technique that it’s like, ‘That’s so impressive.’ It feels familiar. It feels like home. It feels like something that’s inherently in us as a Black community. It’s something you can be a part of. The invitation is open.”

From Beyoncé to Broadway

Theater was already on Knight’s bucket list when he got the offer to choreograph The Wiz, a call that, he says, made him “lose his mind.” Moving from commercial dance to Broadway presented a new opportunity: Knight, who is so often tasked with executing the vision of another artist—whether Beyoncé, Megan Thee Stallion, or Britney Spears—had a chance to discover his own vision. “I feel like I’m given room to explore my creativity and shape my voice as a movement artist,” he says. “And I’m enjoying that.”

Being new to theater, and therefore not beholden to ideas of how things are “supposed to be” done, has given Knight freedom to push the boundaries of what dance on Broadway can look like, says Phillip Johnson Richardson, who plays the Tinman. “He has the audacity to reinvent the whole thing,” Richardson says, “and not think of it like, ‘We can’t touch that, that’s classic material.’ ”

A New Kind of Tinman

In most productions of The Wiz, during the song “Slide Some Oil to Me,” the Tinman shows off his newly lubricated joints with a tap dance. But in Knight’s interpretation, the dance break becomes a showstopping hip-hop moment that Richardson, who plays the Tinman, says revealed the whole character to him.

The movement—lots of popping, locking, and waving—felt familiar to Richardson, reminding him of dances he watched growing up. “It was like, ‘Oh, I know who this guy is,’ ” says Richardson. “ ‘And I know how I can approach this guy.’ It informed how I wear my hat—I was originally supposed to wear it to the front, and I was like, ‘Nah, he’d wear it to the back or the side.’ He’s a lot closer to me than I originally thought.”

The post <i>The Wiz</i> Returns to Broadway Nearly 50 Years After Its Premiere With More Dance Than Ever appeared first on Dance Magazine.

It’s true that her journey into dance was intertwined with higher education: She double-majored in dance and politics at Oberlin College and earned her MFA in choreography at UCLA. Her thesis work looked at salsa as a way to express social­ resistance in the debate around immigration. The Cuban­ American daughter of two labor union organizers, Alvarez had also seen her mother transition into academia, which made it feel familiar and accessible.

It hasn’t always felt inviting and inclusive, however. “I was constantly fighting to legitimize the ways that I danced, and the ways that I moved, and the things that I was interested in studying,” she says. When it came to exploring social dance practices outside of ballet and modern and how she wanted to move through the world as an artist, Alvarez says, “I found myself having to really push back and advocate and argue with people that it mattered.”

After she graduated, Alvarez focused on art and activism the way she envisioned it. After some early adjunct-teaching gigs in dance departments, she shifted her focus to cultivating her own work, accepting occasional guest-choreographer and visiting-artist opportunities instead. “It felt like the field wasn’t ready yet,” she says.

Years later—after carving her own path, building a thriving company, and receiving recognition for her work—she found the job opening at UCSD. “It literally was describing who I am as an artist,” she says. “When I got the job description, I was like, ‘I think they’re ready.’ ”

She’s so glad they were. “I’ve always had deep, deep love for learning, deep love for teaching, deep love for inquiry and curiosity,” she says. “So much of my own artmaking practice is about asking questions and grappling with the world, and there is no better place to be doing that than inside of a university.”

Making Way for New Stories

Alvarez’s parents instilled in her a drive to make the world “a better, more loving, and just place,” she says, and she wanted to do it through movement. “I have a deep belief that choreography is community organizing,” she explains. “You’re imagining and creating worlds, and you’re redefining the ways in which we think about the world and think about ourselves within the world.”

That, in an oversimplified nutshell, is the philosophy she brought with her to UCSD at a moment when the “Dance” part of the Theatre and Dance Department in particular was in transition. “I fell in love with the blank canvas that I saw,” she says, along with the students and colleagues she met. It gave her the freedom to start building something new.

In her first year, she taught courses on the politics of partnering, introduction to dancemaking, and what she calls “ancestral technologies,” exploring the wisdom of one’s ancestors embedded in social dance practices. She hired nearly a dozen new lecturers to teach classes in forms as diverse as traditional hula, flamenco, capoeira, Filipino folk dance, West African dance, Afro-Cuban dance, tap, jazz, contact improvisation, and more.

She also did a lot of listening, and heard a common refrain­ about people being isolated in their own silos. She established a weekly “Connection Jam” where anyone and everyone is welcome. “We’re gonna get down, we’re gonna dance, we’re gonna sweat, and we’re gonna move together,” Alvarez says. “We’re gonna practice joy.”

Another new tradition has all the technique classes gather at the end of the quarter to share what they’ve been doing with their peers. It was so popular the first quarter they did it, in a small black-box theater, that they moved to the Epstein Family Amphitheater the next time around.

“Ana María’s presence in the department is wholly inspiring and palpably positive, and she has forged a strong sense of community,” says faculty member Jade Power-Sotomayor, explaining that Alvarez led the way in cleaning out the dance office and putting up new posters all over the building, “literally making way for new bodies and new stories.”

Connecting Campus and Company

The new role at UCSD came with a serious commute and a major balancing act. Alvarez still lives in Los Angeles with her family and continues to work as an artist with CONTRA-TIEMPO and beyond. It’s only possible to juggle, she says, because CONTRA-TIEMPO horizontalized its leadership structure—with Alvarez as artistic director running the group with three other directors. She splits her weeks between campus and company and plans intensive projects for academic breaks.

There are no silos here, either. “Because I have this access and connection to a professional dance company that is making work, that is touring, that is running summer programs, that is doing regular local gigs,” she says, “my students also have access to that.” Early on, Alvarez invited company members to San Diego to lead a Connection Jam so her students could meet and engage with the pros. In recent months, Alvarez has been working with a group of students to explore and deepen the physical language of ¡azúcar!, her latest piece for CONTRA-TIEMPO, to culminate in a performance with other faculty choreography at Winter Works on March 15 and 16. When CONTRA-TIEMPO comes to UCSD to perform ¡azúcar! in April, those students will become the community cast that shares the stage with them.

“I’m just so excited to be anywhere she is,” says Norma Ovalle, who graduated last year but is participating in the process as an alum volunteer. “I didn’t necessarily grow up seeing that there’s a possibility for somebody like me to pursue this,” she says. But that changed when she met Alvarez. She’s now working toward an associate’s degree and a future in dance.

Coming up a few years behind her, Vrisika Chauhan, a junior­ who has a background in Indian classical dance and also didn’t always feel like she belonged, decided to declare dance as a second major. “My perspective on what dance is has truly shifted,” she says, thanks to Alvarez. “She has helped so many students, including myself, feel seen.”

The post Ana María Alvarez Redefines the Dance Program at UC San Diego appeared first on Dance Magazine.

While dance is often considered inextricably linked to music, the absence of music can open a unique space for exploration. Three artists share their experiences and advice for dancing in works without music.

Tune In to Your Senses

Most dancers are accustomed to navigating a work through its music, whether planning complex movement patterns onstage or predicting a partner’s location leading up to a big lift. Without music as a guide, dancers instead often rely more on other senses, like sight, but they are still listening. Sam Black, Mark Morris Dance Group’s company director, suggests that the heightened sensations and subtle adjustments made while dancing in silence have a lot in common with what happens when performing with live accompaniment. Because live music varies slightly each time it’s performed, dancers have to adjust accordingly in the moment. “We’re always looking around, we’re always listening very closely to cues,” he says. “That is even more true in a piece where we don’t have musical cues or anything to listen to except each other’s breathing and footsteps.”

Connecting with your senses in a deep way is something that will likely take practice. Black recommends gathering a group of dancers and practicing walking across the floor together, shoulder to shoulder, focusing on tuning in to your own senses, as well as the energy of the group. “The only goal is to stay in line, just walking shoulder to shoulder across the studio,” he explains. “There’s no prescribed amount of time that it’s supposed to take, and you’re not walking in rhythm.”

Establishing a deep awareness of the sounds and placement of the other dancers can also help with distractions, which you may be more apt to notice in the absence of music. “If somebody is coughing in the audience, or if somebody sneezes or there’s rustling, you just have to remain in that super-focused space,” says Emilie Gerrity, a principal dancer with New York City Ballet. Incorporating a mindfulness practice focused on your senses can help make the process of tuning in easier come performance time.

Emphasize Artistry

Dancers also draw artistic inspiration from the music, such as dynamics and emotions. These still exist in silent works, but they might need a bit more accentuation without the aid of a score, Gerrity says. “Because there’s not that added element of music, you really have to draw your audience in,” she explains.

When rehearsing for Jerome Robbins’ Moves, which is performed in silence, Gerrity says it was helpful for her to remember the dynamics of a certain step or section through sensory-based cueing. She says the rehearsal director offered mental imagery as artistic inspiration, describing which moves felt “hot” in temperature, or which step felt like a “shock.”

Dancers can incorporate this strategy by asking their directors or teachers for insight into the intention or feeling of the work, or by taking time to explore it on their own. Black recommends practicing a simple phrase to different kinds of music, paying attention to the tones and feelings each song brings forth. Acknowledging and challenging these natural inclinations can be helpful when it comes to performing without music. “I do think it’s natural that music is an indication, often, of emotion or mood. But the opposite of that is: Just because something doesn’t have music doesn’t mean it’s devoid of feeling or emotion,” Black says.

Dance as One

While it’s always important to stay attuned to other dancers, dancing in a group without music makes this even more vital. “You have to stay on the same wavelength, the same breath pattern, the same energetic movement,” says Leslie Andrea Williams, a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company. “That requires not doing too much to stand out or be beyond the pack. It’s about feeling that collective energy.”

To practice moving as one, Williams recommends an exercise inspired by Graham’s Steps in the Street, which is partially silent. In a group of dancers, establish a rhythmic pattern each dancer can repeat to themselves mentally. (The Graham dancers use a syllabic pronunciation of “silent walks.”) Then, walk backwards with your eyes closed, using this particular beat—and the sounds you hear from other dancers—to guide your movements. “You try to create the sound—and then the silence in between—without looking at anyone,” she explains.

Black also recommends the group of dancers learns a simple movement phrase without counts. Then, covering or facing away from the mirrors, perform the phrase together, trying to stay in unison. Face different directions for an extra challenge. He says this exercise will help develop “the ability to key into what other people are doing. You have to be able to make real-time adjustments, but you’re so keyed into each other and so attentive that it actually ends up being easier because you don’t really have to do as much—it’s almost like catching the current and just riding on it.”

The post The Art of Dancing Without Music appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts have raised awareness about exclusionary practices in all kinds in dance, and the mainstream body-positivity movement has led to some progress—most noticeably impacting the dance world since the rise of social media. Yet sizeism remains an especially recalcitrant, systemic issue that continues to plague dancers worldwide.

The Roots of the Problem

“Sizeism is the idea that people in bigger or fat bodies are less worthy; they’re less capable,” explains TJ Stewart, an assistant professor at Iowa State University who researches stigmatized identities. “This connects to a broad and deep-seated value of hard work and individualism. The idea is that fat bodies don’t work hard, that they are lazy.” Even today, plus-size dancers often have to work harder to prove their value.

Sizeism is not a dance-specific issue. But while industries like fashion and media have been held more accountable in recent years, the dance world appears especially slow to adopt inclusive changes. Much of this can be tied to the fundamental role of the body in dance, and the notion that bigger bodies have a limited range of dance ability. A culture of extreme thinness has long dominated ballet and ballet-based styles in particular.

There’s also the insidious belief that larger bodies are solvable problems—again, not unique to the dance world, but notably prevalent within its perfectionist culture. “The dominant frame is that ‘You have a body that isn’t the way bodies should be, and you can change that. So if you don’t, any negative experiences you have are your fault,’ ” Stewart says.

Subtly Exclusionary

While overt size bias is still a problem in dance, today discrimination frequently happens in subtler ways. And when bigger bodies are included, they are often either tokens or afterthoughts.

In the summer of 2023, for example, Australian pop star Troye Sivan released a dance-centric music video to his single “Rush.” Fans across the world took to social media to ask: Where was the body diversity? Why were only ultrathin bodies represented?

Sivan eventually responded to the situation, and featured a somewhat more-inclusive array of bodies in his following music video. But while the “Rush” video wasn’t an outright fatphobic attack, it was evidence of an implicit form of sizeism: In dance, including bigger bodies often isn’t a priority until it becomes a public relations issue. “Fixing” that kind of crisis sometimes leads to tokenism, in which a small number of larger bodies (often just one) are included to ensure a level of applause, credit, or clout.

Steps Forward

That’s not to say progress has been nonexistent. A wave of trailblazers have led the charge to bring down sizeism. Amanda LaCount’s #breakingthestereotype movement has made her a prominent role model for plus-size dancers; Kameron Saunders’ standout performance on Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour earned public acclaim. Social media platforms have helped expose more dancers and dance fans to a wider array of talented dancing bodies, particularly in commercial dance.

Additionally, the fight for the art world to become more inclusive now has legislative oomph. A new law passed in New York City last year prohibits height or weight discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations, joining similar laws already on the books in Binghamton, New York; Madison, Wisconsin; San Francisco and Santa Cruz, California; Urbana, Illinois; and the State of Michigan.

Change From the Top Down

When it comes to sizeism in dance, the yo-yo of positive momentum and backwards thinking can make it difficult to figure out how to create lasting change. But many point to the dance world’s leaders—its teachers, choreographers, and directors—who hold outsized power when it comes to shaping expectations and norms.

“Eating disorders and depression and a lot of hate with yourself, that all [can start] within the studio,” says plus-size dancer Aisha Olemba, who recently danced on tour with SZA. Olemba shares that she shied away from dance until college, attributing that hesitation to “the outdated look of what I thought a professional dancer looked like.” Many like her have given up on dance altogether because of toxic messaging about what the size of a dancer “should” be. Eliminating weight talk in class, especially with young students, can help build a better foundation for dancers of all sizes.

Dancer Floyd Slayweather, whose credits include Lizzo and Saucy Santana, says that dance leaders need to consistently cultivate body diversity in classrooms, casting practices, and the industry as a whole, so that it becomes a new normal rather than a box to tick on a checklist.

“I wish that teachers were not looking at dancers of size as an anomaly, or just picking us out because they want to create a viral moment,” he says. To move past the tokenizing we-only-need-one mentality, “it has to be normalized,” Slayweather says. “If you’re going to stand on inclusivity, then you need to practice it.”

A Community of Kindness

As more plus-size dancers make inroads in the dance industry, they’ve found crucial support in each other. Olemba, Slayweather, and fellow dancer Collin Smith—a TikTok standout—all share similar stories about the transformative power that comes with being in a room of like-minded dancers.

Slayweather describes performing with a cast of larger dancers at the 2022 BET Awards as his own kind of Cinderella story. “Seeing a full cast of beautiful plus-size women and men—I still get emotional about it to this day,” he says. “To hug one another, to encourage each other, is an amazing feeling that I will take with me for the rest of my life.”

One of Olemba’s favorite memories is getting an influx of messages from other plus-size dancers after booking SZA’s tour. “Them coming to me and just saying how much they were proud of me just showed me through all those [hard] times…it made me want to push harder,” she says. “I realized that this is bigger than just me. I’m doing it for people who did not think that this was possible for someone that looked like them.”

And that influence extends beyond the dance world. Smith says that, as his profile has grown, he’s been overwhelmed by the effect his visibility has had on others, helping to create a broad-based community of kindness.

“That’s a motivating factor, to know that I’m making an impact and being an influence in some way,” Smith shares. “Just letting people know you can be exactly who you are, regardless of what you look like.”

The post What Will It Take For the Field to Become Truly Inclusive of Plus-Size Dancers? appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Company: Houston Ballet

Age: 21

Hometown: Indianapolis, Indiana

Training: Dance Creations Academy, Houston Ballet Academy, Houston Ballet II

Destination Houston: Best bonded with Houston Ballet during his first summer intensive there in 2018. “I improved so much and made so many friends. I felt this is a place where I can grow and learn,” he says. During his next summer, in Los Angeles at a Debbie Allen Dance Academy intensive, he met guest teacher Lauren Anderson, who is Houston Ballet Academy’s associate director of education and community engagement. “She said, ‘Oh, you need to get back to Houston, like, right away.’ So I did.”

Quick rise: After joining Houston Ballet II in 2021, Best apprenticed with the main company in 2022, and sailed into the corps in 2023. After a flurry of lead roles, he was promoted to soloist at the beginning of the season, a time he describes as “taking that leap of faith and going along for the ride. I’ve surprised myself with what I was actually capable of doing and because of Stanton [Welch] and Julie [Kent]’s support and faith in me.”

Midsummer doubleheader: Houston audiences got to know just how much Best was capable of when he landed major roles—Lysander and Puck—in both casts of John Neumeier’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the start of this season.

What the co-artistic directors are saying: “Eric has such physical intelligence, his mind–body connection is extraordinary,” says Julie Kent. “There’s a divine quality to his dancing. Also, he looks great at every angle.” Stanton Welch shares that “Eric is a phenomenal talent. He is so musical, and brings such detail to my ballets. I get to choreograph without limit, and he makes me want to be a better choreographer.”

Speaking the same language: Best’s affinity for Welch’s intricate choreography comes through in the growing list of Welch’s ballets he’s performed thus far. “Now I can go into his new works knowing what he’s going to bring and what he’s looking for,” says Best. “I just try to come in with the same energy, ready to work.” Clear, originally created after 9/11, made a profound impact on Best. “Every time I watch this ballet or I perform it or rehearse it, I always find something new that ties to the narrative of it.”

Beyond dancing: Best loves drawing and sketching. “Mostly self-portraits, people, sometimes superheroes. I’m very passionate about art and would like to take more classes,” he says. “I always want to make sure that I keep doing the things that interest me besides dance.”

The post Meet Houston Ballet Soloist Eric Best appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Béjart, who played the role of The Poet (who directs the characters, who largely rebel against him), said of it, “It’s a difficult ballet because it’s not story. It’s visions, and sometimes so many visions happen in so little time in so many different places on the stage that you cannot absorb all of them at one sitting….It’s constructed like a movie, more or less, and like a symphony….The dream is coming and, more and more the dream is destroying the structure of classical music and classical ballet, as though dream and the subconscious are stronger than the rigid structure of ballet, and they destroy it….But the real story of the ballet is the fight between the creator and the interpreter. When it starts, [dancer Jorge] Donn and I are both sitting, like fighters, in the ring which is made from broken classical ballet barres. It’s a fight.”

By Stoop’s estimation, in addition to Donn as the Hero (who “is many personalities, including a rock singer and a clown and, at the end, becomes born again as the Poet”), the characters in that “fight” also included a young girl, a wife, novelist George Sand, Dionysius, Zarathustra, Pegasus, an eagle, a serpent, three Muses, a group of rugby players, and some motorcyclists. And, Stoop concluded the list, “There’s a great deal of death around, too.” 

The post TBT: Maurice Béjart’s “Difficult” Ballet <i>Dichterliebe</i> appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Morris became interested in cooking as a teenager, helping out his widowed mother. Years of traveling and touring have served to develop his passion. “I can do Indonesian, I can cook a Spanish meal, I can cook Italian food, French food…Chinese I’ve just been starting to get kind of good at,” says Morris. When asked if his approach to cooking has any similarities to his approach to choreography, he answers cheekily, “In that I’m very, very good, yes.” Morris adds that though cooking takes less time than making a dance, they both have ephemeral results. “You cook for hours or days, and then everyone eats it in five minutes,” says Morris. “Same with a dance. I work on it for years, and you’re done in 20 minutes. It’s both true and a joke at the same time.”

Ingredients
Yield: 6 servings

• 5 tbsps canola oil or peanut oil
• 6 whole cardamom pods (black or green)
• 6 whole cloves
• 1 cinnamon stick or 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 3 chili peppers, split in half (jalapeño or Thai, with heat level to taste)
• 1 tbsp grated ginger
• 3 medium red onions or 5 shallots, thinly sliced
• 6 cups any mixed vegetables, cut into about 3/4-inch chunks (Morris recommends any combination of sweet potatoes, eggplant, peas, long beans, pumpkin or squash of any kind, potatoes, carrots, cauliflower, and bell peppers.)
• 5 fresh curry leaves
• 3 cups water
• salt (to taste)
• 3 cups unsweetened
  coconut milk
• 1 tsp peppercorns (red, black, or white), crushed

Instructions

1. Heat the oil in a large saucepan or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the cardamom pods, cloves, and cinnamon, and stir. After approximately 30 seconds, add the chili peppers, ginger, and onions. Sauté, stirring, until the onions are soft and translucent, about 3 minutes.
2. Add the mixed vegetables, curry leaves, water, and a generous pinch of salt. Cover, reduce the heat to low, and cook until the vegetables are cooked through, about 15–20 minutes.
3. Add the coconut milk and crushed peppercorns. Simmer on very low heat (to avoid curdling) for about 2 more minutes.
4. Serve the stew with rice or papadam (an Indian flatbread made from bean flour).

The post Mark Morris Shares His “Stone Soup” Kerala Vegetable Stew Recipe appeared first on Dance Magazine.

I always try to reflect all my experi­ences, and my way of seeing flamenco, when I am choreographing. I want students to be able to capture and see in the creative process how I feel about flamenco, because since I was a very young child it has been a way of life for me. I always remember my homeland of Granada and my teachers in everything I create.

Working with the musical accom­panists is a joint effort. I give my ideas to the musicians and they give me theirs and thus begins the teamwork for choreography.

Improvisation is central to flamenco. I try steps and choreographic material with the dancers until the desired result is found. Improvisation with musicians is also important because, depending on what they contribute, different choreographic ideas also emerge.

Emotion for me is essential, and I try to make it present in all my choreography.

Expressiveness of the face should come naturally, it’s not something that can be learned or practiced. It is important to imbue the choreography with feelings and the personality that distinguishes each one of us.

When working with students at the university, I begin by focusing on the palo [musical form of flamenco] we’re going to choreograph. I look for something with a similar origin that’s already within the students’ realm of understanding, to capture the essence of the land where the palo originates from. I have choreographed to Tangos de Granada and Alegrías de Cádiz, and I’ve tried to ensure that the essence of those two cities, Granada and Cádiz, is reflected in the choreography and interpretation.

It is important never to see yourself as an island and to seek input and inspiration from those around you. I often go and see the work of my colleagues.

Preparing to work outside flamenco, first I listen to the music that I will interpret. Since I am not in my natural environment, I need to identify and become familiar with it. I then go to the studio and start choreographing. I also seek feedback and advice from dance experts outside the project.

As a professional my schedule is often hectic, but the spontaneity of creation arises at any time because, as an artist, I am always restless.

The post Iván Vargas on Creativity and Inspiration in Flamenco appeared first on Dance Magazine.

As a single working mother, Mom’s dedication amidst the height of the 1970s feminist movement was resolute. The studio often became my sanctuary as she worked passionately for what felt like 24 hours a day. She and her colleagues were on a mission, inspired by Mr. Ailey’s fearless vision, on the verge of international flight. Their solidarity was palpable. It grounded me and many other aspiring artists in the New York dance community at the time.

Surrounded by dancers, from all over the globe—New York locals, talents from Baltimore, Brazil, Eastern Europe, Japan, and beyond—I found a surrogate family in the studio. As a child among them, my youth seemed to bring joy to many who were far away from home. The dancers became my guardians; they nurtured me and supported my development.

One of my most memorable guardians was Pearl Lang, who called me Strawberry Girl, because of my love for strawberry yogurt. Ms. Lang was a Martha Graham dancer who had her own company that my mother danced for at the time. She was also the co-director of The Ailey School alongside Mr. Ailey then, a powerful leading feminist voice in the modern dance movement.

Watching these dancers in their classes began to pique my curiosity. It was as if, through their unapologetic nature and fearless subtleties, they revealed unspoken stories. The more I watched, the more I learned. Their whispers became more tenable and refined. The power of this silent expression, and my developing understanding of unspoken narratives, started to awaken the artistry within me that seemed to transcend gender and race.

My witnessing during these early years laid the foundation for my artistic journey and identity. It anchored my practice in the profound humanity and activism that I saw through others. It evolved into a comprehension of human behavior, people at their most powerful moments and in their most vulnerable ones. It was through their silent eloquence that I began to understand the artistic language of the soul. It was not only seeing their development as artists that moved me deeply, but through watching their process as human beings. As I witnessed this personal process, they became the most beautiful human beings in my eyes. I can still see and feel them living out their dreams through integrity and perseverance, one day at a time.

The post Francesca Harper, Artistic Director of Ailey II, Shares How She Found a Surrogate Family in Dance appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Jodie Gates is an all-too-rare figure in the dance world: an influential female leader. She began as a dancer at The Joffrey Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, Frankfurt Ballet under director William Forsythe, and Complexions Contemporary Ballet. Since retiring from the stage, she has built a resumé of unusually broad scope: a choreographer commissioned by Ballet West, The Washington Ballet, and others; founder and artistic director of the Laguna Dance Festival in Southern California; a professor of dance at UC Irvine; founding director and vice dean of the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance; and artistic director of Cincinnati Ballet from August 2022 to September 2023. (In a statement, the company described her departure after 14 months as a “mutual decision.”) Here, she offers her perspective to other women leaders in the field.

When I was a dancer, the field was dominated by males. That said, Robert Joffrey gave us a lot of autonomy. The agency that we had at The Joffrey Ballet helped shape me; when I direct and curate, I see in myself what Robert and Bill Forsythe gave me. After I retired, I was one of the few female choreographers in ballet.

I believe that my motivation and tenacity over the years were fueled by the lack of female leadership. Women have a different perspective that has been excluded for decades, and it is only going to benefit the field moving forward to have varying opinions and perspectives. I wore the pointe shoes; I danced Giselle. I can pass it on. It gives female dancers someone to identify with.

I would love to see more females creating full-length ballets. I still don’t feel like these opportunities are there. Is it because there are not enough females interested in doing it? Perhaps, so I think we need to mentor and have a creative space for that. It’s imperative that we hear from women.

We need to recognize what harm has been done generationally, such as mentoring that young male dancer to be a choreographer, but not that female dancer. We need to really look at how we are in the studio with one another, the language we use, how we can bring a sense of humanity into the room.

When you’re in the role of leading, it’s a hard job. You have to manifest success while listening to everyone. I think women leaders are perhaps judged more harshly than our male counterparts. What I would like to see is more opportunities, more communication. I see more women leading in academia, and that is changing.

The stakes are high for women, but it’s okay to fail—it’s okay to make a dance and fail, or make a decision and fail, and take accountability for it. Be patient. Learning as you go is difficult. Mentorship is key—don’t be afraid of asking for help. Most importantly, lean on us—lean on the individuals who have a breadth of experience. That sisterhood is a place of belonging.

Maybe it’s up to me to open my arms and say, “I’m here.” I would love to be able to help the next generation of creative thinkers and leaders. In this season of my life, it’s about, How can I be of service to the field? To be truly impactful, it needs shape-shifters and change-makers to move it forward.

The post Director and Choreographer Jodie Gates Shares Her Advice for Female Leaders in Dance appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Tacy’s experiences aren’t unusual, especially for dancers who are experiencing a dramatic ramp up in their activity level. Joshua Metzl, an orthopedic sports medicine physician at UCHealth Steadman Hawkins Clinic who works with dancers at Colorado Ballet, says that increasing the amount of time spent training—and the resulting potential for overuse—is the leading cause of plantar fasciitis among dancers.

What Is Plantar Fasciitis?

Plantar fasciitis is an inflammation of thick tissue on the bottom of the foot called plantar fascia. It often shows up in dancers as pain in the heel, especially when doing weight-bearing exercise. Metzl notes that it’s often most painful first thing in the morning, and symptoms can ebb and flow throughout the day.

In addition to a sudden increase in activity levels, plantar fasciitis can also be triggered by changes in footwear, like switching from pointe to flat shoes. The quality of the studio floor or performance surface can have an impact. Outside of the studio, walking more than normal and/or on different types of surfaces can lead to plantar fasciitis.

Although plantar fasciitis is common amongst dancers, there are other conditions that could be causing similar pain. Metzl explains that the bones of the feet could also be to blame, with common bone-related plantar fasciitis doppelgangers instead being calcaneal stress fractures and calcaneal apophysitis, an inflammation of the growth plate in a younger dancer’s heel. An X-ray can help determine the root cause of this kind of foot pain.

Treatment and Healing

Treatment for plantar fasciitis usually involves working with a physical therapist to establish a daily stretching and strengthening program for the plantar fascia, Metzl says, adding that if the condition is more chronic and doesn’t respond to initial treatment, an MRI, corticosteroid injection, and/or a platelet-rich plasma injection, which acts as a localized anti-inflammatory, might be used as well.

At the onset of symptoms, Tacy recommends taking over-the-counter anti-inflammatories to ease pain, as well as employing gentle massage techniques. She says that icing—either by simply applying an ice pack to the bottom of the foot or by gently rolling out the sole with a frozen water bottle—can be helpful.

It’s also important to be strategic about daily footwear. Metzl says wearing orthotics or arch supports in your shoes can relieve symptoms by off-loading pressure from the plantar fascia. Tacy found that choosing shoes with a wide toe, which better mimics the natural shape of the foot, proved helpful. In more severe cases, a walking boot might also be recommended. Although plantar fasciitis does not always necessitate time off from dance, don’t underestimate the power of rest to ease and prevent pain. “There’s a really great saying: ‘If you don’t choose when to rest your body, your body will choose for you,’ ” Tacy says.

It’s All Connected

When plantar fasciitis is severe, dancers might decide to modify their technique to mitigate pain. Although this might feel like a way to muscle through class or rehearsal, both Metzl and Tacy agree that this approach can cause more issues down the line. “The term we use in orthopedics is ‘kinetic chain’—all of these structures in the body are interconnected,” Metzl says. This means that untreated plantar fasciitis has the potential to lead to pain in other areas of the body, like the knees, calves, hips, and low back.

When Tacy was dancing professionally in New York City, she suffered a serious injury that sidelined her for months. Although the injury involved an accident with a set piece and wasn’t directly related to plantar fasciitis, she believes that imbalances caused by her foot pain were a contributing factor to injury severity and recovery time. “As soon as I graduated college and got my first job, lo and behold, the foot that was most affected by plantar fasciitis was the one that I injured,” she says. “Looking back, I can see how it’s all connected. If I had taken care of my plantar fasciitis and strengthened and healed my foot in the correct way, I don’t think that my injury later would have been as severe or would have needed as much care.”

Two Stretches for Plantar Fasciitis

Joshua Metzl, an orthopedic sports medicine physician who works with Colorado Ballet dancers, recommends these two stretches for dancers suffering from plantar fasciitis.

Calf stretch with a towel roll

1. Roll one edge of a towel.
2. Stand on the towel with one foot, with the rolled portion under your toes and metatarsal and the flat portion under your heel.
3. Assume a small lunge position, with the back leg straight and on the towel, and the front leg slightly bent.

FHL tendon glide

The flexor hallucis longus (FHL) tendon connects the calf to the big toe and plays a big role in pointing the toes and standing on pointe.

1. Place your feet flat on the floor.
2. Keeping the heel and ball of your foot in contact with the floor, lift the toes.

The post How to Identify and Treat Plantar Fasciitis appeared first on Dance Magazine.

With her elongated limbs and polished port de bras, Clark is a remarkably self-possessed dancer who uses her 5′ 10 1/2″ frame to fully inhabit every choreographic moment and musical note. She debuted in a slew of roles in 2023, including the Tall Girl in George Balanchine’s “Rubies” and the lead woman in Haieff Divertimento, which hadn’t been performed by NYCB since 1994. As more opportunities continue to come her way, Clark is determined to squeeze as much as possible out of each experience: “My overarching goal is always to continue growing—in my technique, my artistry, and my approach to new roles.”

Embracing the Unfamiliar
“I love exploring different movement styles, even if they’re not my forte. When I was rehearsing Justin Peck’s sneaker ballet The Times Are Racing, I had to tackle questions like ‘How does my weight need to be distributed differently in a sneaker versus a pointe shoe?’ or ‘How can I syncopate the steps and accent certain moments that reveal different aspects of the music?’ ”

Using Imagination as a Tool
“As an English major at Columbia University, I love storytelling. When preparing for a role, I imagine a character or story to inform my movement. Even for something plotless like Haieff Divertimento or ‘Rubies,’ there’s a certain flavor to each part. It’s helpful to think about steps in terms of analogies and images, ranging from moving my hands through water to embodying a strand of seaweed in the ocean.”

A Recurring Pinch-Me Moment
“Dancing Balanchine’s Serenade always feels like a career-reaffirming experience. I’ve performed it for many seasons, and every time, it hits me that I’m living in the tableau I dreamed of for so long. It’s such a community-based ballet, and one of my favorite things about this career is connecting with the dancers around me—they’re my best friends and greatest sources of inspiration. To dance as part of a group, especially in a ballet containing so much meaning and joy, will always be a highlight.”

The post New York City Ballet Dancer Christina Clark Is Celebrating Every Stage appeared first on Dance Magazine.

I’ve had to, and I still have to, overcome so many adversities in dance. But one thing I am proud of is that, no matter what happens, giving up has never been an option for me. As an artist you learn how to develop love, patience, space, and a deep understanding of why you do what you do.

How does dance make me feel? Is it even a feeling, or is it a moment, a dream, a reality? I only know that I am myself fully when I am onstage dancing. That’s where I feel safe and right at home.

As a Black Latina, immigrant, mother, and woman I carry so much culture and so many ancestors. I embrace all of them. They make me unique, and I bring them to my dance, making it unique.

Over the years my relationship with dance has changed drastically. There have been many ups and downs, disappointments and moments of great happiness, especially after becoming a mother. I can’t quite explain, but I feel more powerful when I am onstage, because onstage I can just be an artist. I don’t have to prove anything. Choosing this art form has given my life a new purpose.

Dance to me is connection, creativity, love, a way to tell a story, and that’s why I do it. But I also see dance as a type of transformation. I continue to expand my artistry on- and offstage. I’m working to change the future of dance.

The post Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Ingrid Silva Shares How She Feels Safe and at Home When Dancing Onstage appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Greta is not real. She’s the personification of the creative idea, as imagined by the Soles of Duende trio: Castro, Brinda Guha, and Arielle Rosales. Other times, a dancer might call out “parking lot,” to table an idea they don’t have time for, or “mangu,” which is the name of a mashed plantain dish and signals they’re too drained or overloaded to think clearly. 

Any group develops their own lingo after spending hours together. But for three dancers working in different physical languages—kathak (Guha), flamenco (Rosales), and tap (Castro)—this shared verbal lexicon streamlines the creative process. “They don’t share the same style, but they share the same kind of creative energy,” says tap dancer Jason Samuels Smith, who recently worked with the trio during a residency at the Chelsea Factory in New York City. “Some collaborations can feel forced. But with them, you feel the chemistry, you feel the camaraderie.” And at a moment when cross-cultural conversations can feel fraught, these artists are showcasing the power of embracing our differences.      

Distinct Voices in Harmony

Soles of Duende, or “Soles” as the dancers call it, started in 2016 when Guha and Rosales had an opportunity to perform at Dixon Place. The pair had met as colleagues at Broadway Dance Center and had already done a few projects together, and they wanted to weave in an additional percussive dance voice this time. “We needed a third sound so it wasn’t just a back-and-forth, but a conversation amongst a team,” says Guha. Then, at Run The Night, a commercial dance competition led by Jared Grimes, Guha watched Castro set the audience afire with a tap dance solo to an excerpt of “Winter,” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. She knew she’d found their third voice.   

The first time all three gathered as a group was for a publicity-photo shoot for the piece they hadn’t begun rehearsing for yet. Still, the vibes flowed. “It was like we were all long-lost friends,” says Guha.

The work they created was a hit, and they were asked to perform it again…and again. “People want to see virtuosity in music and rhythm that doesn’t include machismo and competition,”­ says Guha. By 2018, Soles was back at Dixon Place as artists in residence creating the first iteration of their full-length work Can We Dance Here? That work has since become­ a calling card, with the latest version taking the stage at The Joyce Theater this January as part of the American Dance Platform. 

In the audience of that 2018 run was critic and curator Eva Yaa Asantewaa, who, wowed by their vivacity and generosity as performers, would later commission Soles for Gibney’s Spotlight Series in New York City. “I was completely won over, not only by their individual technical and aesthetic capabilities but also by the seamless, joyful way they blended these discrete percussive dance styles and energies,” she says.

Experimentation and Negotiation

In Soles’ work, the dancers sometimes “pass the mic” back and forth, and sometimes dance in unison. But much of the magic happens when they each tackle the same rhythm in their own style, showcasing just how many similarities live within their differences. “We hear music very similarly often, but the way we physically execute the step is very different,” Rosales says. To get a better sense of each other’s weight distribution, the three will sometimes put on each other’s shoes, or Guha’s ghungroo ankle bells, and do traditional warm-ups in each other’s forms. 

Choreographing is a constant negotiation—with each other, and with how they represent their forms. “We have a Boricua from Connecticut doing tap dance. We have a Mexican Jew who grew up on the Lower East Side doing flamenco. We have a Bengali American who’s learning a North Indian classical dance form in New Jersey,” says Guha. “Are we even allowed to make these artistic decisions? And when do we move forward with and without blessings, and when do we experiment in good faith?” Those questions are part of what informed the title of Can We Dance Here? (The other part is more literal: The trio has often been offered residencies, but told they couldn’t make noise and wouldn’t have a percussive floor.)

All three are very aware that work in historically marginalized forms must be done with integrity. “Even when we have choreographic disagreements, we’re like, ‘Well, why do you feel like that?’ And then we end up having an hour-long conversation about history and why this step is this way,” says Castro. 

Yes, They Can Dance Here

Today, Soles also includes three live musicians. They’re treated as both a band and a dance group, which can open up opportunities at many types of venues but can also sometimes mean performing on small stages with amazing sound quality but little space to move. Now, with a 2023 Bessie nomination for Outstanding Breakout Choreographer and rave reviews in The New York Times, they’re hoping to get the best of both worlds soon. This year, the group is wrapping up the final performances of Can We Dance Here? and working on a new feature-length work to premiere in 2025. 

They’ve stopped asking for permission to dance because, wherever they are, they know they’ll find a way to do it. “Even when we wait for the train to go back home, we’ll hear the subway and we’ll just start clapping,” says Rosales. “And now we’re jamming and stomping and doing vocals to the sound of the train going by. That’s how we hang out.”

Meet the Trio: Amanda Castro

When people ask Amanda Castro what kind of dancer she is, she likes to tell them “I’m a storyteller.” 

She could also say she was that BFA student who choreographed tap dance numbers at the experimental California Institute of the Arts, even after the dean told her not to. Or that she followed four years at Urban Bush Women with stints in a regional production of In the Heights and as Anita in a tour of West Side Story. Or that she now works with heavy-hitting tap dance stars like Ayodele Casel, Dormeshia, Jason Samuels Smith, Jared Grimes, Caleb Teicher, and others. She could mention being one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” in 2023, and winning a Bessie for Outstanding Performer later that year. 

But she sticks with what she sees as her mission as a dancer: to tell stories. “Yes, there are different languages, which are the different styles of dance,” she says. “But I’m here to provide a service to the people.”

Meet the Trio: Brinda Guha

Collaboration has long driven Brinda Guha’s work. It’s even why she fell in love with kathak itself. “I realized how kathak was a confluence of Hindu and Muslim cultures and religions, how it exemplifies how people actually work together and live together and express together and make music together,” she says. 

Today, in addition to her work as a dancer and company manager with Soles of Duende, Guha is the artistic director of contemporary Indian dance ensemble Kalamandir Dance Company, curator of arts showcase Wise Fruit NYC, and senior producing coordinator for Dance/NYC. Her main goals are to investigate what makes any art form contemporary and to work from a place that’s driven by the feminine divine, whether in the exploration of contemporary Indian dance in her personal dance practice or through collaboration. 

To better understand the essen­tial elements of dance, she’s sought out practitioners from other forms.  It’s why she first decided to collaborate with Arielle Rosales. “There was this dialogue around where our personal styles found a way to speak to each other cohesively, and when they were in dissonance,” Guha says. That dialogue has only grown deeper through her work in Soles. 

Meet the Trio: Arielle Rosales

On her website, Arielle Rosales calls herself a “social engagement performing artist.” It was a term she chose, she says, because she could never find the right words to describe her work: “Just saying ‘flamenco dancer’ felt inaccurate.” 

In addition to pushing the boundaries of flamenco, Rosales is a percussionist with an all-woman Afro-Brazilian band, and she once ran a multicultural dance school in East Harlem called House of Duende (which hosted some of Soles of Duende’s first rehearsals and led to the group’s name). The phrase “social engagement” also felt like it better encompassed her love of engaging directly with the audi­ence through site-specific work and the lecture-demonstrations she does with Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana. 

Still, Rosales admits that the term initially came out of a place of fear that her experimentations with the form meant she didn’t fully qualify­ as a flamenco dancer. But that’s changed. “Over the seven years with Soles, because we are so intentional about what traditional things we’re using, and when we’re breaking the rules, in that journey of integrity, now I will call myself a flamenco dancer fully,” she says. “I don’t feel any more like anyone can take that away from me.” 

The post Sole Sisters: The Cross-Cultural Collaboration Soles of Duende Offers Just the Kind of Art We Need Right Now appeared first on Dance Magazine.

When Collins was interviewed for Dance Magazine’s February 1954 issue, she was in her third season with the opera while using her downtime to prepare the concert-dance programs she toured around the country during the off-seasons. She recalled auditioning for Léonide Massine as a teenager and being offered a place with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, which she turned down because “for the corps de ballet, he said he’d have to paint me white.” After, she said, she “cried for an hour. And went back to the barre.”

Asked how she resolved her dual training in ballet and modern dance, she said: “There is no conflict. You need both to extend the range of the body. The illusion you communicate while dancing depends on what you feel about your dance. For instance, I love Mozart. For that I need elevation and lightness, which I’ve learned from ballet. I love spirituals, too, and for that there is modern dance and a feeling of the earth.” 

The post TBT: Why Black Ballerina Janet Collins Turned Down the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The Nuts and Bolts

If you get the job, how much will it pay? “Some small companies offer salaries that are barely above the poverty line,” says Boston Ballet dancer Courtney Nitting. “Consider, if you take a contract, will you need a second job? Do you want to live with a roommate? Will you be able to save any money for your future?” It’s also worth finding out whether the contract includes benefits such as health insurance or perks like shoes and access to physical therapy.

Your financial line in the sand might be different than someone else’s—and it might shift as you mature. When you’re starting out, you might find value in working for exposure and connections. Still, be wary of being taken advantage of. “Taking a job shouldn’t feel like sacrificing your worth or your body,” says theater dancer Caylie Rose Newcom, who most recently worked as assistant dance captain and swing for Radio City’s Christmas Spectacular.

On that note, consider each gig’s time commitment. How many performances or weeks are included in the contract? Will you do community outreach as well as main-stage productions? How many days a week will you be dancing? Will you tour?

Some of this may depend on whether a job is union or nonunion. “A union company provides more benefits and protections,” says Virginie Mécène, director of Graham 2. “There are rules the management must follow about hours, travel, and benefits.” Nonunion gigs, on the other hand, may offer more flexibility. For example, Mécène recalls touring with Battery Dance Company and being able to book extra performances on the fly. “That couldn’t happen in a union company,” she says. “Everything must be organized in advance.”

The People Factor

It’s normal for a show or company to experience dancer turnover—but is there such a thing as too much turnover? “Nowadays, dancers don’t tend to stay in one place as long as they used to,” Mécène observes, “but if there are a lot of people leaving a job at the same time or quite quickly, that’s something to investigate.” Auditioning for an organization that doesn’t retain dancers can be a risky proposition.

The same goes for turnover within the administration. One director change can be a breath of fresh air, but multiple changes in only a few years can signal problems. Plus, “if you audition for a company and they get a new director, you might not be the type of dancer they’re looking to change the company to,” Nitting says. Gabrielle Collins, a dancer with Smuin Contemporary Ballet, adds that with a new director, “the current dancers are also auditioning to keep their place in the company,” which can make the environment feel both competitive and unstable.

What should you look for, in terms of the people you’ll be working with? Nitting likes seeing a mix of older, more experienced performers and new professionals. “That shows that there’s room for growth,” she explains. It’s also important to have higher-ups that listen and care. “It’s not a good sign if you don’t feel comfortable speaking openly with the director or choreographer about something you need,” says freelance performer Ida Saki, whose credits include Bob Fosse’s DANCIN’ on Broadway. “It’s important to be in a room with good people.”

The Intangibles

To get a sense of what it would be like to work under a director or choreographer before you audition, try to join them for an open or master class. “See how they lead the room,” Newcom says. “There have been times I’ve taken a class with someone, and that experience told me whether I’d want to do a whole show with them.” For concert dancers, this might mean doing an intensive, or asking to take company class or observe a rehearsal.

Call on your network in the dance community for insider information. “You probably have a friend of a friend in a company—and if you don’t, you can reach out to people on social media,” Collins says. Getting personal anecdotes about a job or director can help you narrow down your list of auditions.

And remember: What’s right for someone else may not be right for you. “My partner is a dancer,” Saki says, “and what he wants is a solid, steady, yearlong contract. I want to be diversified in my work. I want to fit as much as I can into each year. Everybody’s different!” Give your own wants and needs a lot of thought before showing up in the audition room, and you’ll stand a stronger chance of landing a job where you’ll thrive.

Warning Signs

How can you tell a company is experiencing financial strain? Look for these potential red flags before you audition:

• Fewer performances scheduled than last year
• Less (or no) touring planned this year
• Layoffs within the organization (dancers and/or staff)
• Facilities are outdated or in need of repair
• Cutbacks on perks such as free shoes and physical therapy

The post What to Consider Before Auditioning for a Potential Employer appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Figgins trained at the legendary Jones-Haywood School of Ballet (now Jones-Haywood Dance School) in Washington, DC, then danced leading roles as a member of Dance Theatre of Harlem and performed in the Broadway shows Motown: The Musical and Memphis, among others. Her focus now is on creating caring environments for dancers, and she’s guiding Ballet Tech’s recent initiative to make dance education more accessible in New York City’s public schools.

Dancing is important regardless of whether you’re going to do it professionally or not. Ballet Tech Across New York is about students having a truly enriching experience with dance. Obviously, our hope is that students will graduate from Ballet Tech and use their training to continue pursuing dance and the performing arts, but what about all the students who choose to not pursue performative arts? How are we engaging them? C​reating a safe environment for people to explore dance​ encourages people to remain involved in ​the dance​ community.

We’re giving something back to these communities that are allowing us to come into their schools to identify potential students for our program. These enrichment programs allow us the opportunity to see beyond what the physical body looks like to all the other components that make a dancer a dancer: creativity, musicality, coordination, and the ability to follow directions. An audition process could feel extractive, like we’re going in identifying students who have talent and taking them out of their communities. Now, we’re making sure all the students have a really great experience with dance.

Ballet Tech Across New York offers­ two different tracks. There are schools that already have dance built into their programming, and those schools might want something that’s a little more rigorous, our BT Ballet Basics. The second track, Dance for EveryBODY, lets everybody know that they can dance. The reality is that some bodies don’t want to ​have a straight​ened knee or a pointed foot, or turnout, and th​ose bodies should ​also be able to access dance. In the Dance for EveryBODY class, we do some creative movement, some improvisation, some isolations, and some ballet ​steps, as well.

I’m trying to provide students with what I would have wanted for myself and my peers when I was training. I grew up learning ballet in a predominantly ​Black ​dance community​. I didn’t have to assimilate and leave my cultural expressions of movement​ at the studio door, an experience I have heard time and time again from other Black dance professionals training in predominantly white ballet spaces. ​

When you are Black in ballet, it’s even more pressing to be able to have a critical, intellectual conversation about ballet, because you might not be taken seriously in certain spaces if you can’t. I want students to have as much language and as much learning as possible. Can ​we be critical about stories like Swan Lake? It’s a super-problematic story: Von Rothbart is keeping all these women against their wil​l. Being critical of these works allows us to breathe new life into them, making them more accessible and relatable to this generation.

Dance is not specific for any particular body type or cultural group. It’s something that all of us can enjoy. Sometimes people conflate “ballet” with “dance.” But ballet is just one way people dance, not the only way. I want to give students as much information as possible, so they have as many options as possible as they enter the ever-evolving world of dance.

The post Dionne Figgins on Providing Supportive Dance Education in New York City Public Schools appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The types of pieces I write for the magazine range from features to columns (like Dancer Diary) to cover stories. Today I’ll zoom in on “Sole Stories,” a feature I wrote for the February print edition of the magazine. In it, I chat with tap dancer and Dorrance Dance artistic director Michelle Dorrance about her tap shoes, New York City Ballet corps de ballet dancer Olivia Boisson about her pointe shoes, and heels dancer, teacher, and choreographer Hector Invictus Lopez about his heels.

Once my editor assigned the story, I brainstormed dancers who might have meaningful things to say on the topic. I pitched some options and we landed on these three stellar artists—chosen not just because they’re wildly talented but because their relationships with their shoes speak to larger discussions about identity, movement quality, and sound. I won’t spoil too much about my interviews with the dancers—you’ll have to order the magazine or follow this link—but I will say that they all had particularly interesting things to say. Then, we got the dancers into the studio with the extraordinary photographer Quinn Wharton and created some magic. (But for real, check out the images!)

Dorrance’s feet moved like lightning in her Lower East Side rehearsal space. She was even generous enough to teach me a tap step or two. Boisson’s endless lines lit up the School of American Ballet studios. She touched on the value of having pointe shoes that match her skin tone, and graciously filled us in on where to find the best paper towels for makeshift toe pads. (Where else but in the David H. Koch Theater bathrooms?) And Hector Invictus Lopez brought unmatched vibes to his photo shoot at Broadway Dance Center. Despite hardly sleeping the night before—he’d been performing until the wee hours of the morning)—he was kicking to the gods, serving face, and blasting Beyoncé at 8 am.

Once all of the interviews and photo shoots were done, I sat down in a quiet space and wrote the piece. I submitted it to my editor and she responded with thoughtful edits. After some revisions, she sent the piece to Dance Magazine’s fact-checking and proofreading teams to get it squeaky clean. Then the story and photos went off to the printer along with the rest of the fabulous February issue.

Even after six years, when I open my mailbox and find the magazine inside, my heart does a little leap. This month was no exception!

For a look at each of these dancers in action, head on over to Dance Magazine’s YouTube channel for my latest vlog.

The post Dancer Diary: What It’s Like to Write for <i>Dance Magazine</i> appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The time away gave Martins a sense of perspective and left her feeling refreshed. After she recovered from her injury, she auditioned again—and, finally, landed a coveted spot in Moses’ troupe.

Martins’ story is not unique. These days, auditioning two, three, four, or more times isn’t an anomaly—it’s often the norm. “In this industry you get told ‘no’ all the time, so auditioning is your job,” says Houston-based musical theater dancer Courtney Chilton. Depending on what corner of the dance scene you’re in, “You might spend more time auditioning than on contracts.”

Learning how to weather the emotional storm that often accompanies repeated rejection is a challenge. But doing so can lead to fulfilling opportunities. Consider these mindset shifts as you navigate return auditions.

It’s Just the Nature of the Beast

Radio City Rockette Ashley Kasunich Fritz auditioned a total of six times for the Rockettes before finally getting accepted in 2011. Now in her 13th season, she says that six auditions isn’t actually that uncommon in Rockette world these days: “The choreography is so specific, and there’s not a ton of rehearsal time, so you need to be able to match other people right away.”

“It’s the nature of the beast,” says Chilton. As a cast member and dance captain for regional and touring productions, such as South Pacific, Mary Poppins, and Elf, she remembers periods when she would book about one in 50 auditions. “And that was pretty good!” she says. In musical theater, where a casting director may see hundreds of dancers for one part, competition is especially fierce. Knowing that going in can help temper the frustration and disappointment when you find yourself auditioning repeatedly.

It’s Not You (Necessarily)

Though it’s important to be as prepared as possible for any audition, recognize that there will be many variables directors are considering as they make selections, some of which are unrelated to your dancing. A casting director may need something or someone hyper-specific at a particular moment. That doesn’t mean you aren’t right for the company or show—it just might not be your time.

“So many things have nothing to do with what you did in the room,” says Chilton. “You have to acknowledge that there will be plenty of times when they just want someone two inches taller.”

There Are Advantages to Auditioning Again

Despite the prior rejection, being a returning auditionee has its perks: familiarity with the company or show’s people, process, and choreographic style; the accompanying confidence that comes with that familiarity; and the opportunity to demonstrate your tenacity and dedication by coming back.

Both Chilton and Julie Branam, director of the Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes, agree that in most scenarios, directors look favorably on returnees. “You’re building familiarity and building relationships,” says Chilton. Branam agrees: “I love seeing dancers come back. I love to see when a dancer has really worked and is improving and is getting it.” Kasunich Fritz remembers getting cut in the first round at her first Rockettes audition, but making it further and further through the process each time, which helped boost her confidence. “The director could see where I started and where I progressed to,” she says. “Going through the process multiple times, they really get to know you.”

Similarly, getting face time with current company members and fellow auditionees can help demonstrate how well you work with others and give you some much needed social support as you navigate the audition process. “I saw other dancers who had auditioned multiple times as well,” says Kasunich Fritz. “You start to build a community. Since the dance world is small, it creates friendship and camaraderie.”

Protect Your Self-Esteem

It’s natural to feel disappointed when you get told “no,” but remember that one “no” doesn’t determine your worth as an artist or your future in the dance field. Acknowledge your feelings, and figure out self-care strategies that work for you.

The people in your support network, from friends and family members to fellow dancers, can be powerful boosters as you get back on the horse, offering a sense of perspective and affirming your talent and worth. “Find your people. Find your friends,” Chilton says. “Find someone who is going to go get a cookie with you after the audition.”

In the end, stay focused on what drove you to audition in the first place. “If you give up right away, you’re only hurting yourself,” Martins says. “It pays off to keep on going back, especially when it’s a company you feel connected to.”

Leveraging What You’ve Learned

When you’re auditioning for a company, show, or program for a second (or third, fourth, or fifth) time, applying the lessons learned from your previous rejection(s) is key. Here are three tips for setting yourself up for success as you audition again.

1. Record yourself doing combinations from the audition. One of the most helpful strategies for Rockette Ashley Kasunich Fritz was finding studio space and videotaping herself doing the combinations she had learned at the audition. “I would videotape them, watch them, check my angles, go over them, and then repeat the process, much like what we do in rehearsals now,” she says. “It was all about building that muscle memory through repetition.”
2. Take classes in the style of the show, program, or company. It’s possible that you may just need more time with the movement style or choreography in question. Elena Martins, dancer with Robert Moses’ Kin, remembers just how new and different Moses’ style felt to her when she first moved to the Bay Area. “I loved the style, but I get why he didn’t hire me right away,” she says. “It was just so different from what I had done before.” Over time, she grew more comfortable with Moses’ aesthetic and eventually joined his company.
3. Incorporate feedback. Many company and casting directors offer corrections and feedback during an audition. Take note! Rockettes director Julie Branam intentionally gives dancers feedback during auditions to see how they will respond. “As we get further into the audition process, we give specific notes to see if they can make the adjustment,” she says. “That’s part of the job. We do notes until the show closes because that’s how we keep the shows clean.”

The post If at First You Don’t Succeed…Learn How to Navigate Return Auditions appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Current project: Madonna’s The Celebration Tour

Age: 30

Hometown: Layton, Utah

Training: Dance Impressions (Farmington, Utah), New York City Dance Alliance, Marymount Manhattan College

Accolades: Chita Rivera Award for Outstanding Dancer in a Broadway Show, for Bob Fosse’s DANCIN’

Inspiring others: Andy Pellick vividly remembers noticing Love’s “special sauce” when she was around 12 years old taking his jazz class at NYCDA. Over the years since, when working on choreography “she gives you what you didn’t know you wanted,” he says. “She inspires a choreographer or a teacher or another dancer by doing moves in a way that you didn’t even know was possible. She’s able to be a muse for a lot of people, myself included.”

Swing success: Love was an ensemble dancer in the national tour of Wicked before the pandemic shutdown, and when the show returned, she rejoined as a swing. “The more tracks I learned, it was actually easier to remember them all, because I could understand where everyone was at any given time,” she says. “Swinging almost feels like an out-of-body experience. I can see things in slow motion.”

Dancin’ dreams: Love won a Chita Rivera Award for last year’s Broadway run of Bob Fosse’s DANCIN’. “That show is the dancer’s dream,” she says. “It’s so visceral but also nuanced, and it captured all the essences of what I want to be and portray.” She also loved her castmates. “It’s a game changer when you like everyone you work with and there is a real camaraderie. That’s the first show where I fully got to be myself. We all did.”

Exploring the world: When Love joined Madonna’s world tour—currently running through April, with 79 stops across Europe and North America—it took time to get used to the schedule, which sometimes includes rehearsals until 2 or 3 am. (The choreography is credited to a who’s who of creative minds, including (LA)HORDE, Valeree Young, Matt Cady, Damien Jalet, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Mecnun Giasar, Megan Lawson, and Nicolas Huchard.) Now that she’s up to speed, she takes full advantage of immersing herself in new cultures on tour. “I love to go to fitness studios, and I’ve been taking classes in different languages,” she says. “I’m also very interested in body language, so it’s been fascinating to sit in coffee shops and learn from the people in front of me.”

More than clothes: Love documents her funky, fun personal style on social media, and she’s found comfort in using fashion as another mode of expressing herself. She’s interested in eventually bringing some of that sensibility into costume design.

Growing and trusting: “Dance has saved me many times, gotten me through many heartbreaks,” says Love. “I’m now finding my voice more. I know I have things to offer, and I find that they’re being received. I’m trusting that even though I may not always feel like I fit in, I know that I belong.”

The post Meet Mattie Love, Performer With Madonna’s The Celebration Tour appeared first on Dance Magazine.

For Nickie, cooking is more than just a hobby. “Growing up, it was either becoming a dancer or going to school to become a chef,” says Nickie. Though he picked the former, he’s still looking for ways to turn his passion for food into a career. He runs his own prepared-meal business, and tracks his ventures in the kitchen on Instagram @chef_nickie. “Cooking is very therapeutic for me,” says Nickie, who prefers to spend time in the kitchen by himself. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

Seasoning as Accessories

Nickie applies the same philosophy to cooking that he does to fashion. “Your body is the base in terms of fashion, where in cooking the base will be your rice, your meats, your beans,” he says. “The seasoning is the accessories. You don’t want to be too much, and you don’t want to undercut yourself either. Mix and match—sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but you’ll learn for next time.”

Tune In to Your Ancestors

Nickie urges other cooks to taste as they go—he learned to cook by observing, not measuring, and sees all measurements as a guide rather than a rule. “When our ancestors tell us to stop pouring seasoning, that’s when we stop,” he says.

Ingredients

• 1 lb extra-sharp cheddar cheese (“In Trinidad, we use New Zealand cheddar cheese,” says Nickie.)
• 1 lb grated parmesan cheese
• 1 tbsp salt, for boiling pasta
• 1 lb (16 oz) dried elbow macaroni, penne, or other shaped pasta
• 2 tbsps unsalted butter, softened, plus more to grease pans
• 1 1/4 cup evaporated milk
• 1 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 8 oz cream cheese (Nickie says that you can substitute
  2 whisked eggs for the cream cheese, which binds the dish together, though he prefers the richer taste of the cream cheese.)
• 1 large carrot, grated
• 2 tsps granulated garlic
• 2 tsps onion powder
• 2 tbsps ketchup
• 1/2 cup creamy French dressing (“My secret weapon,” adds Nickie.)
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp adobo seasoning
• 1/2 packet Sazón seasoning
• 2 whole pimiento peppers from a jar, finely chopped
• 1/2 tsp dried parsley or fresh parsley, finely chopped

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
2. Shred the cheddar cheese using the large side of a box grater.
3. Mix the shredded cheddar together with the grated parmesan cheese, then divide the cheese mixture in half.
4. Bring a large pot of water (4–5 quarts) to a rapid boil. Add salt and pasta. Stir for the fi rst minute or two to prevent sticking, then cook until al dente (about 8–10 minutes) and drain. While the pasta is still very hot, return it to the pot. Add softened butter and mix until melted. Place the pasta in a bowl and set aside.
5. Place the same large pot over low to medium heat and add the remaining ingredients. Stir together until the sauce is smooth and creamy.
6. Add half the cheese mixture and stir until combined.
7. Add the pasta to the cream sauce and mix well.
8. Grease one or more glass or ceramic casserole dishes with softened butter.
9. Pour the cheese-and-pasta mixture into the dishes and top with the remaining half of the cheese.
10. Bake the macaroni pie until the top is golden brown, about 30–45 minutes.
11. Allow the pie to cool, then cut it into squares to enjoy. (“Pray for discipline,” adds Nickie.)

The post Keon K. Nickie, Artistic Assistant of Dallas Black Dance Theatre: <i>Encore!</i>, Shares His Family’s Trinidadian Macaroni Pie appeared first on Dance Magazine.

However, there are parts of the dance world where labor-organizing efforts haven’t quite taken hold. While dancers at several operas and in two dozen or so ballet companies are AGMA members, only three contemporary dance companies are unionized: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Martha Graham Dance Company, and Ballet Hispánico. An ever-increasing number of dancers are freelancers, meaning they don’t have access to the traditional union organizing route. And many dancers still do nonunion work in theater, film, television, and concert tours.

Across all industries, union membership has been declining for decades. But the country seems to be in the midst of a shift: Since 2009, the number of Americans who say they approve of unions and want them to be more powerful has steadily grown. In 2022, the National Labor Relations Board reported a 53 percent increase in union election petitions over the year before, meaning that more Americans were joining together with their co-workers to try to form unions. The agency also estimates that a whopping 60 million workers wanted to join a union that year but couldn’t.

Is this pro-union boom also headed for the dance world? It might be—and it could bring some welcome changes.

Why Dancers Are Getting More Interested in Unions

Over the last few years, workers at many well-known companies, including Starbucks and Amazon, have undertaken high-profile unionization campaigns. Then there were the 2023 Hollywood strikes, where workers from SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America stood up to powerful film and television studios. Many experts have speculated that these high-profile labor actions might be fueling the increase in pro-union sentiment.

However, according to dancer Antuan Byers, who serves as dancers vice president on the AGMA Board of Governors, the breaking point for a lot of the people in the dance world seems to have been the pandemic. “Dancers felt so unprotected in a field that was already unprotected,” he says. “We felt horrible in that moment. And I think that a lot of us were looking around for an answer and we saw the unions step up to protect dancers.” Unions not only helped to establish COVID-19 safety rules, but also tried to insulate dancers from institutional budget cuts.

Lots of budding dance labor organizers are also driven by issues of equity and social justice. Research shows that unions help to dramatically reduce gender and racial disparities in pay, among other benefits for workers. “Esther,” a dancer at a midsize regional ballet company that unionized with AGMA last year, says the effort was spurred in part by the dancers’ discovery that male company members were making more than twice what similarly experienced women were paid. (Esther’s name has been changed because her company is still in the midst of bargaining for its first contract, and she fears retaliation.)

All of these influences seem to be producing a notable generational shift, according to Griff Braun, AGMA’s national organizing director. “In years past, generally speaking, it would be the younger dancers who were much more afraid of rocking the boat and of unionizing than the more veteran dancers,” he says. Not so much anymore. “Now, sometimes it’s the veteran dancers that are comfortable in their position and they don’t want to rock the boat. But the younger ones are like, ‘Hey, we’re just coming into this profession and it needs to be better,’ ” says Braun.

Where Are the Contemporary Dance Unions?

Over the last several years, a wave of smaller ballet companies have joined AGMA. But while both Braun and Byers say they’re occasionally approached by contemporary dancers who are interested in unionizing, no such wave has materialized on the contemporary side of the dance world. Why is that?

For one thing, says Byers, the union model is familiar to ballet dancers. Seeing ballet companies join AGMA’s ranks showed dancers at similarly sized companies that they could do it, too, adds Braun. Contemporary dance companies, on the other hand, tend to be much smaller than ballet companies, with, on average, fewer dancers, fewer administrative staff, and a smaller budget. Contemporary dancers are also more likely to be freelancers, and under current labor law, freelancers typically cannot form and join unions. A bill that would have changed this, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, has passed twice in the House of Representatives, but has yet to make it to a vote in the Senate.

A common myth that employers use to try to discourage dancers from unionizing is that it will bankrupt the company. This isn’t true, Braun explains, because once the dancers’ union is formed with AGMA, it kicks off a negotiation with the company. A company can’t suddenly be forced to pay more than it can afford. But it is true that the union organizing and bargaining processes can be more difficult with a very small group of dancers because of several factors, including the fear of individual retaliation. It can also be intimidating and awkward, notes Byers, for dancers to have to deal directly with their choreographer or director, rather than having more administrative staff as a buffer.

But lack of budget shouldn’t necessarily discourage dancers from trying to organize. Even if substantial pay increases aren’t on the table, there’s so much more that dancers can bargain for. For example, “Laura,” a dancer at another midsize ballet company also in the process of bargaining for its first contract, and whose name has also been changed, said her union is pushing to receive casting and rehearsal schedules in a timelier fashion, and to make sure there are processes in place to keep the floors they dance on in safe condition.

Finally, says Braun, a big obstacle to organizing in the contemporary dance space is the culture. Declining to name specific companies, he says that directors at some modern and contemporary dance companies have instilled a strong anti-union sentiment in their dancers, often from the moment they enter the company. This creates a culture of fear around organizing for change. But that doesn’t stop a trickle of dancers from these companies from approaching AGMA every year—so eventually, the generational shift may take hold there, as well.

The Future of Commercial Dance Work

Instead of bargaining with individual dance companies the way AGMA does, Actors’ Equity bargains with all Broadway presenters and SAG-AFTRA with all film and television producers. Historically, you get into Equity and SAG by booking a union gig, which can mean attending endless frustrating and unsuccessful cattle call auditions. In response to criticism that this model can be exclusionary, in 2021 Equity shifted to an open-access membership policy, allowing anyone with past theater credits to join. Still, joining Equity or SAG-AFTRA can feel like a gamble for many dancers—the dues are higher than in other unions, and once a dancer joins Equity, they can no longer take dance jobs at theaters that don’t have Equity contracts.

For Ehizoje Azeke, whose credits include Warner Bros.’ In the Heights, Netflix’s­ tick, tick…Boom!, and the HBO hit “Succession,” among many others, union membership is worth it. Nonunion gigs, he says, are a “Wild West.” He recalls one particular nonunion gig he did with Todrick Hall at WorldPride in 2019. At the last second, Hall and his dancers were invited to join Ciara for part of her set—but offered no additional pay. “There were 20 dancers on this project. Four of us said, ‘If you can’t pay us to do it, we’re not going to do it,’ ” he says. “But all 16 of the other dancers did that additional performance for a multimillion-dollar recording artist, for free.”

On a union gig, there would have been someone to call for help, and pay minimums for the additional work, among other protections. And the more dancers join a union and get accustomed to working under better conditions, the less likely they’ll be to accept substandard gigs. Thanks to the recent SAG-AFTRA strike, dancers will see some improvements in their work on film and television going forward. For example, they can no longer be paid less for rehearsal than for on-camera work. Azeke hopes that’s only the beginning as dancers get more engaged within the union.

The post Is Dance Poised for a Union Boom? appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Working With Words

Before, during, or after class or rehearsal, feel free—and even encouraged—to talk through your needs with your dance partner. Discuss what’s going smoothly, what needs improvement, and how they can provide optimal support. Open communication not only establishes a foundation for successful collaboration but also makes it easier to stay on the same page onstage.

Mikaela Santos, a dancer with Atlanta Ballet, explains that it’s important to communicate discomfort with your partner, even though it can be daunting to offer feedback that could be perceived as negative. “I’ve definitely had times when something is uncomfortable for me and I didn’t have the guts to tell my partner,” she says. “Tell your partner straight up, be honest with them, and just tell them ‘Can we work this out?’ ”

If your partner is having a hard time understanding your point of view, Martín Rodríguez, co-founder of Ballet Nepantla, a New York City–based contemporary Mexican folklórico company, says that using metaphors or simple phrases can help alleviate confusion.

Let the Body Talk

Because it’s less easy to talk onstage, dancers often rely on nonverbal communication methods like touch, pressure, and eye contact to speak to their partner without making a sound. Developing these communication skills can prove a bit more elusive than verbal language, though, so it’s important to start working on them before opening night.

To familiarize yourself with using weight and resistance as a form of communication, Rodríguez and his dance partner Maria Gracia Perez Munoz, also a performer with Ballet Nepantla, recommend a simple weight-sharing exercise in which dancers hold each other’s arms while leaning away from one another (see sidebar). Perez Munoz notes that this exercise can also be done by leaning into your partner instead of leaning away. To level up, experiment with varying the points on the body from which you apply and receive pressure. “Start looking for points of support, where both bodies touch,” she explains. “You can either slide through the skin or roll, which means changing the points of support all the time.”

The eyes also can serve as a powerful means of communication for dancers onstage. Once you establish a strong connection with your partner, eye contact becomes a way to deepen that bond. “You look to the eyes first to know what you’re going to do, like a telepathic communication,” Perez Munoz explains. “And then the body does something.” Simple in-class exercises, such as maintaining eye contact while working on improvised or choreographed phrases, can help bolster this skill.

Listening In

Whether your communication is verbal or nonverbal, it’s important to actively listen to your partner, tuning in to their needs, preferences, and ways of moving. According to Patric Palkens, one of Santos’ partners at Atlanta Ballet, listening can mean anticipating your partner’s choreography, so you can ensure you’ll be there to support them when they need it. Using the context of a classical ballet pas de deux, he explains: “Because you’re standing behind her and she doesn’t turn around to watch you, you have to watch her.”

Listening to your fellow dancer will also help build trust, which is an essential part of a successful partnership. Perez Munoz says exercises like trust falls can help with this, and she also recommends an exercise where one partner leads the other through space. “A person closes their eyes, and the other person is leading them through space by putting a hand on their back and holding the other,” she says, explaining that it is the responsibility of both the leader and the follower to make sure they stay in contact.

Palkens, Santos, Rodríguez, and Perez Munoz all agree that being a good partner is a process. It takes time to learn how to move with and anticipate the needs of another dancer, especially while also navigating the myriad demands of a dance performance. “If you don’t click in the beginning, and the communication doesn’t happen naturally, I think that with time you adjust,” Perez Munoz says. “Once you get to know what your partner likes, then you’re going to be able to lead or follow in a way they feel comfortable with.”

Sharing Weight

Ballet Nepantla dancers Martín Rodríguez and Maria Gracia Perez Munoz recommend this exercise to get comfortable communicating with your partner nonverbally.

The post How Working on Communication Skills Can Strengthen Your Partnering appeared first on Dance Magazine.

More than 500 dance medicine and education professionals gather each year, both in person and virtually, to share and learn how to better achieve health for dancers, and health for our communities through dance. The most recent conference, held in Columbus, Ohio, in October 2023, hosted 121 presentations and movement/interactive sessions and 22 poster presentations by practitioners from all over the world. Here is a small sampling of the remarkable breadth of work presented and topics discussed.

• Strength and conditioning had a heightened presence, with practitioners emphasizing that dance practice and physical therapy alone will not fully support a dancer’s needs. “A physical therapist can only get you back to baseline, legally, and there is a gap between your baseline and your best, strongest self to avoid injury,” said Catherine Cullen, DPT, in a panel about optimizing training and development.

• A study of dancers at the English National Ballet School looked at the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on musculoskeletal injuries (those that affect bones, joints, ligaments, muscles, or tendons) in pre-professional ballet dancers. Overall, dancers have a 76% injury risk, which is higher than in traditional sports. The total number of injuries sustained by dancers pre- and post-COVID lockdown was similar, but there was a significant shift from overuse injuries (such as stress fractures) pre-lockdown to acute injuries (such as sprained ankles) post-lockdown. Proportionally, there were more acute injuries in male and first-year dance students post-lockdown. (Manuela Angioi, Emily Gordon, Juncal Roman Pastor)

• Understanding and supporting neurodivergent dancers was an emerging topic. Research suggests that the link between neurodivergence and hypermobility demands more research to better understand dancers. Dr. Jessica Eccles presented her extensive research on the hypermobile population and correlations to the neurological aspects of a dancer’s experience. “Hypermobility is so much more than just having hyperflexible joints. It is having a difference in the building blocks of the body that affect almost everything,” she said. Dancers are more likely to be hypermobile than the general population. There has been research demonstrating that if a person has symptomatic hypermobility, they are seven times more likely to be autistic, and five times more likely to have ADHD. Eccles challenges practitioners that, “If we are seeing neurodivergent people, we must think about hypermobility, and if we are seeing hypermobile people, we must think about neurodivergence.”

• One study looked at coping strategies and flow state (a state of optimal experience arising from intense involvement in an activity that is enjoyable) in 293 dancers with and without post-traumatic stress disorder. 64% of the dancers had experienced significant trauma, and the prevalence rate of PTSD among those dancers was 20.8%. Dancers with suspected PTSD had increased anxiety, depression, disassociation (a state of being disconnected), and difficulty regulating negative emotions. However, despite the negative factors, dancers with PTSD experienced flow states like those dancers who had no trauma exposure, indicating the potential supportive nature of dance practice. (Paula Thomson, Sarah Victoria Jaque, Mariko Iwabuchi)

• Dancers’ use and trust of available medical support was the theme of several presentations. One study looked at the prevalence of dance-related injuries in 141 commercial dancers in the U.K., the U.S., and Europe, as well as their access and use of medical support. The primary injuries reported­ were to the lower extremities and the neck. 17% of the dancers reported five or more injuries over five years. 87% of the dancers experienced an injury and required­ health care, but 74% of the dancers with an injury did not seek health care. The most commonly cited reason for not accessing health care was that the dancer could not afford it. Many of them expressed that they did not seek care because they didn’t think that the medical providers would understand their needs. (Jeffrey A. Russell, Stephanie Petery, Leanne Hodgson, Rithiely Pereira)

IADMS’ 2024 conference will take place in Rimini, Italy, October 17–20. The 2025 conference will be held in Las Vegas, Nevada, September 25–28. n

The post The 2023 International Association for Dance Medicine & Science Conference Explored Dancers’ Physical and Mental Health appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Olivia Boisson – Corps de ballet dancer, New York City Ballet

Having the right pointe shoe is so important. It should be an extension of your body, and that takes work and patience to find. I’m so happy that Freed has come out with a bronze color, so that my shoes don’t only fit my foot but also match my skin tone and my line. NYCB made the move to flesh-tone shoes during the pandemic, and I think it’s been wonderful.

I remember getting my first pair of pointe shoes at Capezio when I was 11 years old. I was super-excited but had no idea how hard it would be to articulate the feet, or even just be up on pointe. I think my first pointe class was half an hour long, and after just 10 minutes I wanted to take them off. They looked pretty, but they really hurt!

I’ve worn the same shoe maker since I was at the School of American Ballet: Maltese Cross. The specs of my shoe are a size 6, 1X, heel pin with forte-flex, and a 3/4 shank. I could go through a pair of pointe shoes every rehearsal, but I try to wear them for about two days each. (I remember wearing my first pair of pointe shoes for an entire year!) I spend every spare minute I have sewing so I don’t end up in dead shoes. It’s actually kind of meditative and strengthens my connection with the shoes.

Michelle Dorrance – Tap dancer and artistic director of Dorrance Dance

My shoes are my voice. They’re responsible for the tone, texture, and essence of my sound, and my sound is one of the most important parts of my artistry. Tap shoes can either be supportive or troublesome. When you break in a new pair, they don’t sound like you yet, and you have to put significant time into getting them to the right place. You wear them until they become part of your body.

My first pair of tap shoes were Mary Janes. Now, I wear customized Capezio K360s in charcoal gray because I think they sound the most like my voice. I wore my most recent pair for four years, and they are finally done. The heel cap is done, I can fold the heel down to the base of the shoe—you shouldn’t be able to do that—and there is a leather support structure that is now gone. I’m finally breaking in a new pair.

The worst thing is when you get your taps worn down to the perfect place, but the holes that the screws go in are stripped. I will use anything from a matchstick to a toothpick to tiny pieces of metal mesh and super glue to hold the screw in place. That becomes what you carry around with you, in addition to a screwdriver, to make sure you don’t lose a tap during performances or rehearsals. Otherwise, that’s the fastest way to put a huge gouge in the floor!

Hector Invictus Lopez – Heels dancer, teacher, and choreographer

The first time I danced in heels, I was told it was a waste of my time. It was 2014 and most people thought that I should focus on my masculine energy. But I couldn’t get it out of my mind, so I went shoe hunting with a friend and bought a pair of strappy black heels—the only ones in the store that came in size 12. Surprisingly, I felt very comfortable in them from the jump. I’m hyperextended with a slightly swayed back, which works well for heels, and I felt really confident and secure.

I wear shoes from the brand Burju—in fact, I have my own collection with them called Pump with Pride. They have sizes up to 15 readily available, which is amazing because when I first started out I struggled to find shoes that fit me. My favorite is a pair I designed that has an open-heel backing with the zipper on one side, and laces that go up the back and wrap around your ankle. It gives you the security of a boot with the freedom of a pump.

Dancing in heels has forced me to confront how I view gender expression. I’m Latino and grew up in the Bronx, so I’ve had a lot of layers of machismo to shed. I used to wear my heels and perform in the club and then want to take them off as soon as possible so I could be comfortable in my masculinity. Now, I’m so much more confident in exploring all the shades of who I am. I am very grateful to heels for giving me the chance to explore my identity more fully.

The post A Ballet, Tap, and Heels Dancer Each Share Their Profound Relationships With Their Signature Shoe appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Theodore has been dancing with A.I.M ever since, bringing groundedness, fluidity, spontaneity, and precision. She’s also a presence elsewhere in the New York City dance world, teaching beginner house at Ailey Extension and deeply immersed in the house scene. Such a full plate might sound overwhelming, but it’s by design. “Dance brings me joy, so much so that it can be hard to decide which path I want to go down,” Theodore says. “But the one thing I know is that I want to continue to find newness in as many aspects of this art form as possible.”

New York or Nowhere

“There is no place like NYC. I love the street style scene—it’s so raw and beautiful. I attend many dance battles, including Battle 101, which is run by my friend Huu Rock. It’s a beginner battle, so you’re able to watch dancers grow over the years as they continue to participate, which is really inspiring. Battle events are a total party. Everyone’s dancing between each round, and the love of dance is palpable.”

A Eureka Moment

“In 2020, Kyle [Abraham] set the solo ‘Little Girl Blue’ on me, part of the full-length work If We Were a Love Song. It was one of my favorite moments. I loved performing something so true to Kyle’s art form, but also so true to me. I was able to find my voice and portray very real emotion. The process allowed me to investigate the role and figure out what I wanted people to feel while I was dancing.”

Student and Teacher

“When I’m teaching, I often say that I don’t feel ready to teach just yet—I feel like I’m still at the beginning of my dance career! I began teaching because I’m really passionate about house dance and teaching helps expand on that. I often teach for A.I.M, too. I learn so much about the dancers through teaching. I just love dance so much, so to transmit my love in this educational way is both challenging and fulfilling.”

The post A.I.M Dancer and House Teacher Gianna Theodore is Letting Joy Lead the Way appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Expect to Adapt

Willow Dixson, a current junior at Union County Academy for Performing Arts and a student at Rahway Dance Theatre in Rahway, New Jersey, had studied ballet, tap, modern, and jazz before her teacher suggested she try a five-week musical theater intensive in New York City. “I’m a shy person at heart, so having to sing, act, and really emote while dancing was far out of my comfort zone,” Dixson says. She learned choreography from a range of shows, including Hamilton, Moulin Rouge!, and The Prom. “It showed me how I could apply my previous training to something new, like my jazz background helping me with the sharp movements and isolations in Hamilton.”

Unexpectedly, Dixson walked away from the summer with a passion for musical theater and newfound confidence. “Adapting to a new environment over the summer made the transition into high school smoother, and I later pursued dance captain and choreography roles in my high school’s theater productions,” she says.

Only Take What You Need

While throwing yourself into a new style or environment over the summer can be a great way to reinvigorate your training, for some students, it can also be confusing. “It depends on the age and maturity level of the student, but it can be frustrating for someone to tell them to do something—like a turn preparation or port de bras—differently than how they’ve practiced at home,” says Racheal Nye, director of Oklahoma City Ballet’s school and studio company. “That’s where studio owners or mentors should come in to help students keep an open mind before they go, and when they return, sort through what they’ve learned to fit it into the larger picture of their training.”

Reed Neuser dove into the life of a Radio City Rockette during a week-long summer intensive, her first experience with precision dance. “There were so many new layers on top of the choreography that I had never had to consider before, like spacing, details, and dancing in a uniform group,” she says. Although Neuser’s now primarily a contemporary and modern dancer in New York City, she still operates on principles developed over that summer. “It taught me how being strong can help you in any dance style, as well as the importance of discipline and attention to detail in a professional environment,” she says.

Stay Realistic

Although branching out into a new style can improve how you approach your core style, it’s important to manage your expectations after a hiatus from your regular training regime. For advanced students on the brink of a professional career, “ballet is so refined and specific that even taking a couple weeks off can set you back,” says Erica Fischbach, director of Colorado Ballet Academy. “Many of our students pursue intensives in slightly different styles, like Alonzo King LINES Ballet or Complexions Contemporary Ballet. But if they want to try a totally new style that’s going to broaden their artistry, we encourage them to tack that onto the beginning or end of other summer studies.”

No matter what reason you choose to attend a certain summer intensive, keeping your “why” in mind can help you get exactly what you want out of the experience. “Our year-round students work really hard for long hours, so summer may be the only time to try something new simply because it’s fun, or it’s important to them culturally, and not necessarily to achieve something,” says Nye. “And who knows—students may draw upon a summer experience they had way down the line in their professional careers.”

The post Should You Try a Summer Intensive in a New Dance Style? appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The Backstory

First things first. Harrell grew up in Douglas, Georgia; his family was part of a Southern, land-owning Black elite—educated and well-established for generations despite segregation and its discontents. The Harrells have a singular sense of history. Harrell explains that his godmother named him Trajal after the Roman emperor Trajan, and his father chose Aurelius as his middle name after the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. “It was funny being born in Southeast Georgia with this Roman namesake heritage!” Harrell says. 

In his youth Harrell was a gymnast and an avid learner, excelling in school and participating in “history day” competitions, a staple in many secondary school districts nationwide. He remem­bers that he “was kinda the leader—writing, directing, and performing with a group of other students. We won group performance statewide for six years. Clearly, this making performances based on history is still with me.”

At Yale University he majored in American Studies with a concentration in creative processes, thinking he would focus on theater and acting. However, once introduced to the embodied stagecraft of director Anne Bogart and Mary Overlie’s “Six Viewpoints” system of movement research, he felt “it was like coming home, coming back to my body,” and he claims that he “didn’t want to speak onstage anymore. I started making movement-based work.” Around this time a friend said that perhaps he was trying to be a choreographer.

After graduating, he gravitated toward dance and moved to New York City, having also touched down on the West Coast for a short stint in San Francisco. He studied briefly at the Martha Graham School and took composition workshops “with Trisha Brown, herself, and with Yvonne Rainer, herself,” he says. He also found his way to Harlem’s voguing balls and the runway culture of the city’s fashion district—and, later, to butoh, which he studied in Tokyo.

The Inspirations

Harrell cites history as “a way to enliven the imagination.” His repertory is full of historical “what ifs,” beginning with the now-legendary Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church. Between 2009 and 2017, this project was staged numerous­ times in, as he describes it, “various sizes,” nationally and abroad. His witty historical proposition explains­ the long title: What if the largely Black, queer voguing community—brought to mainstream attention by the 1990 film Paris Is Burning—came “downtown” and brought its expressive, glamorous, “over-the-top” genre to Judson Church, Greenwich Village’s temple of minimalist dance?

Many of Harrell’s evening-length works create spaces for different eras and philosophies to converge. Take, for example, these excerpts from the program note for The Romeo, which premiered in 2023:

Picture a dance. Let’s call it the “Romeo,” after Shakespeare’s young lover who, in ignited enthusiasm, believed he could conquer death…. [I]magine this dance that people of all origins, genders, and generations, of all temperaments and moods, dance when they face their tragedies and only dance. 

A Harrell dance named after a Shakespearean character will not restate that famous play. Instead, his aesthetic foundations and his personal conceptual scaffolding foreground choreography that is imaginatively wide-ranging, transcultural, intersectional, and futuristic.

Consider the artists Harrell cites as influences. “Sigmar Polke, the visual artist, blew my mind,” Harrell says. “The writer, theorist, and filmmaker Trinh Minh-ha changed my life. I have been inspired by the architecture of Tadao Ando.” Polke produced paintings focused on historical events and perceptions; Minh-ha theorized postcoloniality and feminism; Ando’s architecture reflects Japanese spirituality and Zen-like simplicity. Similar elements can be found in the themes, stage design, costumes, visual richness, and overall “architecture” of Harrell’s creations.

The Movement 

Although his work has evolved since its beginnings, Harrell’s movement vocabulary engages two central motifs. There’s the walking—dancing—on relevé, as though wearing stiletto high heels, while leaning, tilting, sliding, turning, sometimes teetering, yet remaining upright. It’s a challenging balancing act, and his dancers excel in creating character nuances within this limitation. A kick-up-your-heels, dance-till-you-drop, bacchanal “folk” dance is another leitmotif. These modes persist in works as different as Twenty Looks and the recent Monkey off My Back or the Cat’s Meow (2021). 

In Harrell’s universe, nothing is rushed, regardless of rhythm or tempo. Each work takes its time. The present moment­ is his friend, and he invites us to languish and breathe in the heady spaciousness of his vision. He shows a visual artist’s sense of stagecraft, props, and costuming. The floor design in Monkey off My Back… is a stunning rectangular grid of Mondrian-like colored blocks spanning the length of the performance space, with white platform modules set in sofa-like shapes at the center. The audience is seated lengthwise both sides. This longitudinal stretch is used as a catwalk, a dance floor, a showplace. 

Harrell’s self-created pop/rock/new music choices speak tropes of love, loss, tumult, and even trance. These elements add up to a repertory of elegance, passion, and compassion, with the dancers delineating their personal constellations in Harrell’s galaxy, in what he says is “a sharing of style, not a mimicry of my movement.” The ensemble is keenly adept at inhabiting this style while adroitly making it their own. The results are exquisitely poignant embodied portraits, including the characters elicited in his sensational Köln Concert, choreographed in 2020, during the pandemic—the first work made in his role as director of the Schauspielhaus Zürich Dance Ensemble. Other portraits, as in the poetically zany Caen Amour, explode with the wily wit and arch humor that Harrell uses to restore popular entertainment varieties to contemporary theater, as it had in ancient Greek and Shakespearean times.

Explaining that he isn’t “the kind of choreographer who can sit back and watch the picture,” Harrell generally dances in his creations. “It must go through my body,” he says. “The choreographer in me has ideas, but I don’t believe in them until the dancer in me signs the contract.”

A tradition that reflects Harrell’s respect for the audience begins before the performance itself. He sometimes stands onstage to greet the audience, who might find him watching with detached though friendly interest as they enter. This reminds us that we are about to see a presentation—that he and his dancers are real people, that performance is mindful artifice. He is intentional with this because, he declares, “I’m in love with my audience. I don’t discriminate. I just love them all, that’s the only way. I usually can’t wait for the opening night: standing onstage, watching them enter. I love that. I love them.”

The Next Steps 

Later in 2024, Harrell will conclude his successful tenure as director of the Schauspielhaus Zürich Dance Ensemble. In his five years there he created six major works and trained a sterling cadre of ensemble artists. He contemplates his next steps, musing that Zürich “is where I’ll change to the next period of my work: After runway/early-postmodern dance was the first phase, and then butoh/modern dance, now the third phase is coming.” In addition to continuing to develop his company, it may well involve visual arts and opera work. 

Fasten your seatbelts for the takeoff, dance lovers!

Butoh Mind

Trajal Harrell is deeply stirred by butoh. “My big inspirations now are Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata,” he says. With these forceful influences, a title is more than a name, and a dance event is a special meeting place unlike any other. It is a moment of what Harrell calls “butoh mind.” “Butoh mind is invigorating—where you show the things about yourself that aren’t beautiful,” Harrell says. “When you allow yourself to dance from that place where you can never be perfect, something else happens. People feel that. People recognize it. They know it’s inside them. That becomes beauty!”

In 2013 he first visited Tokyo to study butoh in its birthplace. “I am looking at butoh through the theoretical lens of voguing and voguing through the theoretical lens of butoh,” he says. The result is a deft interfacing of voguing’s glorious pageantry and elaborate flourishes with the guttural, visceral passion of butoh, widening the lens on both genres and creating a captivating hybrid. 

What the Dancers Say

Ondrej Vidlar and Thibault Lac began working with Trajal Harrell in 2010. Early on the three dancers worked in duos or trios, “touring from one gig to the other with costumes and set in a suitcase,” Lac says, describing this period as “a process of unlearning, in a way, an emancipation from certain tastes and values about dance learned in school.” 

Vidlar enjoys working with the mosaic of performers Harrell brings together, and is grateful that Harrell grants them “the freedom to express his ideas through their own understanding.” He and Lac have a “like family” relationship with Harrell, having developed professionally in and through his artistic vision. 

Nasheeka Nedsreal has worked with Harrell since 2018, in Maggie the Cat (2019), Monkey off My Back or the Cat’s Meow (2021), Deathbed (2022), and The Romeo (2023). She cites her admiration of the choreographer’s “subtlety and the delicateness and precision of his approach. Even though we work in the conceptual, there’s deep emotional expression that’s often required, and I appreciate that.” 

As an African American woman who, like Harrell, grew up in the American South, Nedsreal sees similarities in their aesthetic processes. “Though I’m not sure where this lust of ours for freedom and improvisation comes from,” she says, “I’m certain there are links to the music of the South, jazz and blues, as well as from the traditions of the church and Black families.” She concludes, wisely: “You can take us out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of us!”

The post Enlivening the Imagination: Trajal Harrell’s Rich Repertoire of Transcultural, Intersectional, and Futuristic Works appeared first on Dance Magazine.

A Taste of Undergrad Life

The college dance student experience encompasses much more than just studio time. It also includes residential and social life, interacting with nondance students, relationships with faculty, and approaching dance from an academic lens. Like many college intensives, “our summer program is based off of, and structured in relationship to, the BFA program,” says Boston Conservatory at Berklee associate professor of dance Kurt Douglas. “It emulates what a first-year student would experience.”

Students in Berklee’s Summer Dance Intensive, for example, are offered a range of technique classes as well as the chance to work with visiting choreographers. “The students get a chance to really immerse themselves in the choreographic process, which is one of the big elements of the conservatory program,” says Douglas. At Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, in addition to movement-based classes and improvisation, students at its Summer Institute are exposed to “workshops focusing on critical dance studies, speaking and writing, formulating feedback, and looking at contemporary artists,” says UArts School of Dance associate dean Jen McGinn. “There’s a larger understanding of dance as an academic subject that a lot of them are not as familiar with from their previous dance training.”

As in college, hard work is tempered with socializing. At both Berklee and UArts’ summer programs, dancers live in dorms alongside students participating in other arts programs, and partake in planned trips and activities together in the evenings and on weekends. McGinn says that the residential life at UArts pushes high school students to gain an important sense of independence and responsibility that will help them prepare to move away from home. “We’re in the center of Philadelphia, and they’re treated like adults in the sense that though they have an RA and a curfew, they’re walking from building to building down the city streets, and making sure they’re making it to mealtimes,” she says.

Preparing for the Future

The question on many students’ minds when considering a college summer intensive is if it will increase their chances of getting into that school. “It definitely helps us know them differently and better, just because we have so much more time with them,” says McGinn. For rising high school seniors attending UArts’ Summer Institute, participation in the program itself counts as an audition to the BFA program. Berklee handles things a bit differently, holding an audition for the BFA program during the summer intensive’s third week. “The first two weeks they’re able to use studio space to rehearse, and this way they don’t have to come back to reaudition during the year,” says Douglas.

While some students attend a college summer intensive with the goal of matriculating into that school, others might have their sights set on getting a BA outside of dance or auditioning for companies. Summer students in UArts’ program attend a mandatory two-hour seminar called Dance After High School, which helps them figure out the options available to them after graduation. “We get in as much as we can,” says McGinn. “Do you even need to go to college? What’s the difference between a BFA and a BA, the difference between being on a dance team versus being a major or a minor? It’s less to steer them in any one direction than to be a resource.”

Douglas agrees that whatever your dance goals are for the future, a college intensive can help. “In this collegiate space, the goal is to educate students so that it’s not just about this particular technique, or this choreographer’s style,” he says. “You’re getting a 360-degree experience of what it means to be a dancer in the world today.”

The post Why High Schoolers Should Consider a College Summer Dance Program appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Why Now?

There was one week this past fall in which there were five separate Equity chorus calls that I was dying to attend. I had previously sworn off ECCs—auditions that can be grueling and discouraging for nonunion dancers—but because these were dream shows, I made an exception. Nearly every time, my hopes of being seen were dashed. Three of the auditions chose not to see any nonunion performers at all. I was seen for one singer ECC, but when they asked me to come back later for the dance call, they opted not to see nonunion dancers.

The frustrating week of (non-) auditions made me reconsider my plans. I recognize that attending ECCs isn’t the primary reason to get your Equity card—the ultimate function of the AEA is to negotiate wages and secure working protections—but it’s a major benefit I was missing out on. And it was becoming apparent that my personal circumstances aren’t conducive to most nonunion opportunities. For example, many nonunion gigs would require me to quit or pare back my “day jobs,” like teaching and writing, while often not paying enough to offset the lost income. As wonderful as these jobs can be, I’m just not in a good position to take them.

So, after a lot of conversations with friends who are both in and out of the union, I decided to take the plunge. I contacted my agent and told her what I was thinking. She responded with support and told me to trust my gut.

The Process

On November 29, after I made my decision, I logged onto the Equity website and filled out a questionnaire to inquire about joining. On December 12, I received an email requesting proof of previous professional experience. My former director sent over an employment verification letter, and two days later I was sent an official membership application to fill out.

On December 20, I got an email requesting my first payment of $600. I was told that it would take a couple of weeks to officially be processed, but by January 2, I got the confirmation that I was indeed a member. The whole thing took just over a month from start to finish.

My First ECC as a Union Member

After that, things moved fast. I looked up upcoming casting calls, saw three within a week that I wanted to attend, and registered. Two days later, I went to an ECC for The Great Gatsby and had a positive experience. I had a good night’s sleep the night before, woke up at a reasonable hour, and got to the audition space just 30 minutes before the audition began. They read off a list of names, and when mine was called, I showed the monitor my newly minted Equity card. I danced in the third group of the day, and was able to finish the whole audition by 12:15 pm. I was so relieved! What’s more, I didn’t have to stress about my odds of being seen, and I felt confident knowing the casting team was expecting me there.

The truth is, there is no right way to navigate this journey. So many dancers feel really great about staying nonunion for a long time. It’s always possible there will be moments I will regret my decision, but at this point in time, I’m happy and relieved. I’m a proud new member of the Actors’ Equity Association!

If you’d like to see more of my journey, or hear the details about my experience at this particular ECC, check out my latest video on Dance Magazine’s YouTube channel.

The post Dancer Diary: I Joined the Union! appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“I’d call it musical-comedy dancing,” Marge recalled of their style in the July 1976 issue of Dance Magazine, “somewhere between ballet and ballroom, with a little hoofing thrown in!” The couple’s kids-next-door charm made them an in-demand act, booking nightclub, television, and film appearances, including the Jack Cole–choreographed Three for the Show, a slew of movies under the auspices of a seven-year contract with MGM, and a short-lived 1957 sitcom loosely based on their careers.

Gower was also a successful Broadway director and choreographer (with Marge acting as his assistant when not busy raising their children), earning a 1963 Dance Magazine Award and eight Tonys for musicals like Bye Bye Birdie, Hello, Dolly!, and, posthumously, 42nd Street.

The post TBT: Marge and Gower Champion’s First <i>Dance Magazine</i> Cover appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“I like everything natural,” says Chandrashekar of her cooking habits. “I don’t like coloring, and I believe a lot in fresh food. Nothing preserved, nothing too refrigerated or overheated. I think we all need to be conscious that we don’t shock our systems.” A vegetarian, she emphasizes vegetables, lentils, and lots of fluids. “I can tell you I cook quite tasty food,” she says, adding that the friends she’s made while touring around the world all appreciate her Indian cooking. “They really love it,” she says. “Because each recipe comes with a very exquisite combination of spices and herbs.

A Holistic Approach

For Chandrashekar, practicing classical dance and yoga seeps into every aspect of her life—including the food she consumes. “Yoga is not just about wearing yoga pants and doing some asanas, and dance is not just about wearing a costume and coming up onstage, butto live that experience even offstage,” she says. When deciding what to eat, Chandrashekar keeps in mind the Ayurvedic principle of sattva, which she translates as purity of mind. “We need activities and food that trigger that compassion in us, the feeling of love for everybody,” she says. “So when you eat calming food, or something that’s very pure, you trigger that sattva in you.”

Ingredient Key

asafoetida: Known as hing in Hindi, asafoetida is a gum resin extract from ferula, a celery-like herb. It’s purchased in a powdered form, and small amounts of it are commonly used in Indian cooking. If you don’t have an Indian grocery nearby, it’s available on Amazon for under $6.

tamarind: A common flavor in Indian, Mexican, and Thai cooking, whole tamarind pods can be purchased at most specialty or Latin markets. They’re also available online, as is tamarind pulp, which can be watered down for use in this recipe.

pigeon pea: Also called toor dal, pigeon peas are a dried legume similar to yellow lentils. Puerto Rican and Filipino cuisines also make use of pigeon peas. The Latin brand Goya, which is available in many grocery stores, sells them. They’re also available from a number of online suppliers.

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp ghee
• 1 tsp mustard seeds
• 1/2 tsp asafoetida (hing), divided
• 35–40 fresh curry leaves, divided (“I take them from the plant in my garden,” says Chandrashekar. “All the Indian stores sell curry leaves, but during the summer they grow quite well in a pot.” While not Chandrashekar’s preference, dried curry leaves are also available for purchase online.)
• 2 cups tamarind water (Chandrashekar makes this herself by soaking tamarinds in hot water and squeezing the juice out. “But if you don’t have time, you can get it in Indian stores,” she adds, or you can buy compressed tamarind pulp and dilute it in hot water.)
• 2 tbsps dried pigeon peas (toor dal)
• 1 tbsp cumin seeds
• 1/2 tbsp black peppercorns
• 2 dried red chilies
• salt to taste

Instructions

1. Heat the ghee over medium heat in a stainless-steel pan with a copper bottom (Chandrashekar stresses that any stainless steel pot or pan will do, it should just not be nonstick). Add the mustard seeds and let them splutter.
2. Add 1/4 tsp asafoetida and 10–15 curry leaves to the pan and sauté for a few seconds.
3. Pour in the tamarind juice and let it come to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and let the mixture simmer.
4. In the meantime, prepare the powder. Grind the toor dal, remaining curry leaves, cumin seeds, black peppercorns, dried red chilies, and 1/4 tsp asafoetida in a mortar and pestle until you achieve a fine powder.
5. Add the prepared powder to the juice mixture, and stir well to combine.
6. Season with salt according to your taste, cover the pot, and let the jeera rasam continue simmering for about 5 minutes.
7. Remove from heat and serve hot with rice, bread, curried vegetables, or on its own as a soup .

The post Bharatanatyam Dancer Bala Devi Chandrashekar Shares Her Indian Soup Recipe appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The Virtual Advantage

Before the coronavirus pandemic, auditioning in person was the norm. But now, many summer programs offer a video option. “We’ve always looked at video submissions,” says Michelle Manzanales, director of Ballet Hispánico’s School of Dance. “But during COVID time we sharpened our skills, because we went from just a few video submissions to a lot of video submissions.”

While nothing will replace being in person, Manzanales says, there are certainly advantages to auditioning via video. “You can do multiple takes, and really try to send your best,” she says. Robert Fulton, co-founder of the audition, training, and job database The Ballet Scout, adds that if you do decide to go the video route, spending money on a professional videographer isn’t necessary. “You can use apps for editing, and you can use your phone for the photos and videos,” he says.

Maximize Your Time

If you do have your heart set on auditioning in person, there are plenty of ways to get the most out of your investment. “There are a lot of different group auditions coming out nowadays,” says Fulton. “There’s the National Summer Intensive Audition tour, and the National Master Audition, which has 13 different companies attending.” Manzanales adds that Ballet Hispánico participates in the Regional Summer Intensive Audition at the Center of Creative Arts in St. Louis and Scouting Dance México, just a few of the other opportunities out there to be seen by many schools at once.

Manzanales also says that you may already be attending events throughout the year—like competitions, conventions, and master classes—that can count as summer intensive auditions. For example, last year New York City Dance Alliance handed out scholarships for Ballet Hispánico’s summer programs at each of their conventions, and Manzanales gave out scholarships after teaching a master class for the American College Dance Association Northeast Region. “Sometimes those things aren’t as widely publicized,” she adds. “But look and see if there are opportunities for things you’re already going to with your school that you can take advantage of.”

Travel Smart

If you’re not used to life in a big city but have your heart set on a four-week program in Miami or Toronto, Manzanales believes that there can be a lot of value in visiting a location before committing. If you do plan on traveling a long distance to audition, Fulton recommends carpooling and sharing a hotel room with a friend or classmate to cut costs.

If you know you’ll be in a certain city on a given weekend, find out what other auditions are happening then that you can attend. Some websites, for example, can help you search for auditions by time frame and location. “You are totally fine to do multiple auditions in one day and in one weekend,” says Fulton. “If you are used to dancing three or four hours a night, that’s two audition classes back-to-back.”

Be Your Own Advocate

When planning your summer intensive audition season, both Manzanales and Fulton suggest using your networks—and asking for help. “You can reach out to a school. It does not hurt,” says Fulton. “A lot of times they’ll waive an audition fee, or maybe connect you with a helpful family who would be able to provide housing.” Manzanales also frequently sees dancers make their own peer-to-peer connections on social media.

Manzanales says students have more power than they think. “Exercise your student voice,” she says. “Let your current directors know the schools you’re interested in, and even if they don’t have a connection, if the director reaches out, that might be a new relationship for them to forge for their students that can be very beneficial.”

The post Cost-Effective Planning for Summer Audition Tours appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Ayodele Casel and Arturo O’Farrill

“It’s frightening and glorifying at the same time.”

To hear tap dancer and choreographer Ayodele Casel and jazz musician Arturo O’Farrill talk about their artistic partnership is a lot like watching them improvise together onstage: You sense their joy, gratitude, faith, and, perhaps most importantly, Zen-like connection. “The thing that’s boggled my mind the most and also settled me right away in working with Arturo is that feeling of familiarity and home and trust and play,” says Casel.

That rush of seemingly contradictory feelings is something O’Farrill experiences during performance, too. “When I get in front of Ayodele and next to a piano and throw down, it’s frightening and glorifying at the same time,” he says. “It’s like playing in a cosmic sandbox.”

When Casel was filming Chasing Magic, a 2021 virtual performance at The Joyce Theater with O’Farrill (and several other collaborators), she was confident enough in their improvisatory mind-meld to not meticulously plan what their contribution to the concert might be. “I said, ‘Arturo, do you want to come to The Joyce in, like, 10 minutes?’ ” she remembers. “He came onto the stage, we had a brief conversation, and then we jumped right in. Fourteen minutes later, [director] Torya [Beard] was like, ‘Okay!’ ”

Casel cites an ability to deeply, meditatively listen to each other as necessary for that kind of extraordinary encounter. O’Farrill likens it to a letting go of expectation and orchestration. “When you first meet somebody, you think, Let’s fill in every dot,” he says. “You have to get past the ‘Oh my god, what are we doing?’ Now, we know that we don’t know what we’re doing. But as you get older you’re like, ‘Wow, this is exactly what art is supposed to be.’ ”

David Roussève and cari ann shim sham*

“We’re wielding our swords together.”

Choreographer, writer, and director David Roussève and multidisciplinary artist cari ann shim sham* have a nearly 25-year artistic relationship that could perhaps best be described as fluid. They met when shim sham* was a student of Roussève’s at the University of California, Los Angeles. Since then, shim sham* has been, at different times, his cinematographer, his film editor, and even a one-time performer in Roussève’s choreography. But she’s also been his teacher, as when Roussève first forayed into dance film and needed help finding his “sea legs,” as he puts it, as well as his creative collaborator in more recent projects, like 2018’s Halfway to Dawn, with choreography and text by Roussève and video by shim sham*.

“What I appreciate about cari ann is that she’ll say, ‘I don’t know if this is going to work. Let’s just try it,’ ” says Roussève. That kind of experimental ideation fuels their partnership in a way Roussève had never experienced previously. “I used to think, I need a collaborator who can execute my vision,” he says. “Over time, you realize a good collaborator is going to have better ideas than you.”

Shim sham* credits their chemistry to the ways in which they balance each other. “David is a wordsmith,” she says. “I’m not strong with words, but I’m very strong with visuals and imagery. David is so good at setting up metaphors that I can then visualize through imagery.”

At the root of their ease and trust is a shared belief in art’s ability to provoke. Roussève describes their aesthetic as “socially interested” and “askew.” “We both have really strong activist standpoints in our work,” agrees shim sham*. “We’re wielding our swords together.”

Cynthia Oliver and Jason Finkelman

“It’s magic. It is sleight of hand.”

Unlike most artistic collaborators, choreographer Cynthia Oliver and composer Jason Finkelman don’t get the downtime that comes from being able to say goodbye at the end of a long day. That’s because Oliver and Finkelman, who have been working together for almost as long as they’ve known each other, are married.

That relationship can sometimes lead to, say, freer discussion than what might take place between two artists still learning each other’s sensitivities. “There’s the moment in rehearsal when I tell the dancers that Jason is coming in, and we’re going to have little conversations in the corner,” says Oliver. “I tell them there’s going to be tension—we might even fight a little bit—but don’t be alarmed. This is what we do.”

Their process has taken many shapes over their decades together­, but Finkelman always demands that the score be in service to Oliver’s space-devouring, nuanced movement. “I’m always looking for what the choreography is calling for,” he says. “Something to drive the dance? To underscore the text? To propel or emphasize the silence?”

Despite its longevity, their partnership shows no sign of stagnation or fatigue. “It’s magic. It is sleight of hand,” says Oliver. “We don’t even know how it manifests, but ultimately something comes out of the fairy dust of these conversations—a commitment to making something together.”

Raja Feather Kelly and Michael R. Jackson

“It feels like we were always together.”

Months before they started working together on the musical A Strange Loop in 2018, choreographer Raja Feather Kelly and playwright-composer-lyricist Michael R. Jackson kept hearing from mutual colleagues that they needed to collaborate. They chalk this up partly to their similarities as people and artists—“We’re both Black gay men, both queer artists who have a similar iconoclastic, experimental, counterculture point of view,” says Jackson—but also to their immediate, uncanny connection. “I can’t recall a time before our collaboration or friendship began, or what it was like in the early parts of it, because it feels like we were always together,” says Jackson. “Raja just came in, and he was magical.”

That magic helped them communicate easily despite their admittedly­ different artistic disciplines. “We both really love popular culture,” says Kelly, as an example. “In the moments where it might be difficult to find a common language, we’ll find analogies for each other: ‘This is a Kanye-Kardashian/OJ Simpson kind of thing’ versus ‘This is Mean Girls meets Heathers meets [Beetlejuice’s] Lydia Deetz kind of thing.’ ”

They stretch each other, too, which leads to an occasionally challenging but ultimately deeper collaborative practice. “On A Strange Loop, I had come late in the process with an entirely rewritten opening number,” says Jackson. “Raja was like, ‘I need a dance break,’ which I had not planned for—I’d never written a dance break. But his provocation to me was that that was important, so he sent me home and I worked on it. And then we had a dance break in the opening number.”

The end result is always something neither could have conceived of without the other. As Kelly says, they are “artists who are influencing one another because of our desire to understand art better.”

The post 4 Choreographers and Their Go-To Nondancer Collaborators on Making Magic Together appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Not necessarily. “Dancers need a variety of experiences and perspectives in order to fuel their artistry,” says Jonathan E. Alsberry, director of summer intensives at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. That said, any summer study program is already a way of stepping out of your year-round training comfort zone, and there are benefits to returning to a familiar setting. Here are a few considerations to keep in mind as you make your summer plans.

The Case for Returning

“It’s an adjustment to go away for the summer, especially when you’re young,” says Denise Bolstad, managing director of Pacific Northwest Ballet School. “Attending a program you’ve been to before can help you feel comfortable, and perhaps less homesick. You can be more confident in your dancing because you know your surroundings and what’s expected of you.”

There are also interpersonal benefits. “Going back helps you solidify relationships,” says Jordan Lang, co-artistic director of Westside Dance Project in Laguna Hills, California. “When you work with someone for a second or third time, you know each other better.” Faculty members may be able to offer you more targeted feedback, and when you’re in a cohort with many of the same dancers, you can dig deeper in rehearsals and onstage—as well as in your friendships. In other words, returning to the same intensive “isn’t only about showing your face again,” Lang says. “It’s about reconnecting with people and fostering relationships.”

The Case for Branching Out

“It’s important to gain information from different places, especially if you want to join a mixed-rep company,” Alsberry says. He cautions young dancers against keeping their focus too narrow: “Interacting with different artists and trying different styles helps you find your unique voice.”

Bolstad encourages students to look at what might be missing from their year-round studies, as well as from prior summer intensives, so they can find ways to fill the gaps. For example, “If you need stage experience, look for a summer course that has a big final performance.”

Leaving your comfort zone can pay dividends down the line. “As dancers, we embody all of the voices that have influenced us,” Lang says. “When you’re auditioning, it reads in a room who has had exposure to many voices. Companies take notice when you’ve given yourself the ability to jump from work to work and to navigate different environments.”

The Gray Areas

You don’t have to sacrifice familiarity for the sake of diversity. “It’s okay to have your ‘summer spot,’ as long as you have a sense of progression,” Lang explains. “Is there a rotating faculty? Will you work with new choreographers? Are you moving up to the next level?” If a beloved program is no longer facilitating your growth, it may be time to study elsewhere.

Alsberry notes that should you choose to spend multiple summers at the same intensive, they don’t have to be consecutive. “Come to us as a teen, and then go try a different city or style of dance,” he says. “Whenever you return, we’ll remember you and recognize how far you’ve come.”

If you specialize in one dance genre, that may impact your summer intensive choices. For example, ballet dancers may only have five to seven years of summer study before they begin auditioning for trainee programs and the like, Bolstad says. She feels that by their late teens, serious ballet students should home in on one training path—“but with a plan B, should plan A not work out,” she advises. “Keep a couple doors open.”

Regardless of genre, Alsberry recommends looking beyond technique and artistry when assessing what each program offers. “What type of community do you want to be a part of?” he asks. “Do you see yourself growing in this space?” As you decide whether to go back or to branch out, put your development—as a mover, as an artist, and as a human being—first.

The post If You Love a Summer Intensive, Should You Go Back Year After Year? appeared first on Dance Magazine.

But the art that I loved didn’t dependably love me back. As I got older, it was impossible to ignore that my Blackness quietly dictated what others in positions of control—teachers, friends, parents of dancers—believed I was capable of. That prejudice became more and more central to my relationship with dance and threatened to eclipse the joy it brought to me.

Nonetheless, I persevered. I applied and was accepted to the SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance. I was almost immediately grounded with a serious knee injury that kept me from dancing for my first semester. It was an unexpected blessing: Because I could not dance, I spent hours in the dance library. I suddenly had the capacity to read and watch the history of modern dance unfold. As I was introduced to the art’s most important names, a determination gripped me. I emerged from my recovery with a clearer understanding of contemporary dance as a uniquely American art form, no less than jazz or rock and roll. The Americanness of modern dance inspired a surprising patriotism within me and a drive to add my own contributions to a legacy I had been previously told wasn’t mine to share.

The realization of modern dance as cultural birthright, not just pure entertainment, gave me permission to bring my full self to the art. My Blackness, my womanness, my muchness (even my too muchness!) all came out as an expression of freedom that has expanded my artistry. As I have transitioned to the front of the room, this epiphany has helped me empower my dancers to bring their cultures and full selves to bear inside the space. Twenty-five years of experience have changed what dancing feels like for me. Now, when I dance, I am whole. I feel expansive. I am joyful and I feel proud.

Dance is power personified. My hope is that the next generation of dancers can start where I’ve arrived: knowing that our art form gives us the tools we need to acknowledge we are important and we belong.

The post Tiffany Rea-Fisher, Artistic Director of EMERGE125, on How She Grew to Embrace Modern Dance—and Herself as a Black Woman appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Dance often takes inspiration from music. But what happens when your creativity is stirred by an art form that is less straightforward to translate into dance? Or what if you’d like to create based on another form, but aren’t sure quite where to begin?

Deepen Your Understanding

Stefanie Batten Bland, a multi-hyphenate dance artist and the founding artistic director of Company SBB, encourages dancers and choreographers to invest time and energy into learning about the medium they’re inspired by. Or, when creating work inspired by or in collaboration with another artist, to learn as much about that artist and their unique process as possible. “Reach out. The first step is contact,” Batten Bland advises. “Take the chance. Call them up, send them an email, find them on the ground, send them a DM.”

Duckler has been creating site-specific work since 1985 and uses sites themselves as inspiration. She says the learning phase is also an important part of her process, explaining that her research needs change based on the source of her inspiration and the site where her work will take place. Her creative process prioritizes getting to know the local community and learning about the history and use of the sites. “All of the content that we create is always made on site,” she says. “We don’t create something in a studio and then move it to a different place, so we really mine the location and the site for its content.”

Look Carefully

When generating inspiration, it’s important to observe with a keen eye and an open mind. Duckler says that “acts of noticing” are a key element of her creative process. This practice helps her to “develop awareness and consciousness of ourselves, of each other, of our relationship to where we are in space, and the objects that are in space.”

Particularly in site-specific works, Duckler recommends doing a 360-degree scan of the space you’re creating in, taking time to notice things that you may have glossed over. Then, talk with fellow dancers, choreographers, or collaborators about what they notice, acknowledging differences in perspective and seeing where inspiration can grow. This skill can also be useful with cross-disciplinary collaborations, as it can help you to understand and appreciate different points of view.

“Active observation is something that can be really developed, and then harnessed,” Duckler says. “And then to have conversations about those things, too, is really helpful.” Continue having these types of conversations throughout the creative process, Duckler urges, and even through the performance phase. Hearing different audience perspectives can be illuminating, and even creatively generative.

Clarify Your Why

For Batten Bland, a key element of making an interdisciplinary work inspired by multiple art forms is understanding your reasoning for creating in this way. “The maker should really know why they’re outsourcing and how that will benefit them,” she explains. “If they realize that [a particular form] is the complementary medium, dive in feet first and get as wet as possible.”

Being clear on why you’re creating a work with multidisciplinary inspirations can bring clarity during the creative process, too. Not only will you be able to collaborate more effectively with other artists or with their artwork, but you’ll also be more in touch with your own goals and what you hope to accomplish with the work. “If the maker knows why they’re doing it, then that symbiotic alchemy manifests naturally in the research,” Batten Bland says.

The post How to Draw Inspiration From Nondance Mediums appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Now, Patrick strives to bring her firsthand knowledge of mental health into the classroom—to support her students not only in their dance technique and performance, but also as they cope with the challenging emotions that can arise in the studio and onstage.

What Is a Panic Attack?

Josh Spell, MSW, LICSW, consulting therapist for Pacific Northwest Ballet and owner of Flexible Mind Counseling, describes a panic attack as a state of “overwhelm, in terms of your nervous system,” adding that panic attacks are tied to the body’s fight-or-flight response, an evolutionary reaction designed to keep us safe from danger.

Individuals having a panic attack might experience heart palpitations, sweating, trembling, shortness of breath, feelings of choking, chest pain, nausea, dizziness, lightheadedness, chills or sensations of heat, and/or numbness and tightness. Spell also says panic attacks can cause depersonalization or derealiza­tion, which means a person feels out of touch with their body and/or the current moment. “Dancers and clients that I have worked with have said, ‘I feel like I’m having a heart attack, I feel this immense pressure and weight,’ ” Spell says. “It is very destabilizing and individuals often freeze.”

Although sometimes panic attacks can have seemingly no cause, a stressful environment or a fear of losing control can be potential triggers. People can be triggered by situations ranging from an upcoming performance to a concern about their health.

How Do Panic Attacks Affect Dancers?

Although panic attacks can be incredibly scary and debilitating for anyone, the performance-based nature of dance introduces additional challenges. For Patrick, the intense anxiety that sometimes resulted in panic attacks inhibited her from attending auditions. “I felt, because of my anxiety, I wouldn’t be able to make it through auditions,” she remembers.

Spell adds that panic attacks can also lead to avoidance or an increase of anxiety in situations that precipitated an episode in the past. For example, if a dancer experienced a panic attack prior to a performance, they might develop increased performance anxiety, or they might even avoid a certain step due to fear.

“Overall, this can affect a dancer’s sense of self, and it can definitely affect their confidence,” Spell says. “It shows up as a barrier to being able to put yourself fully in and take those risks that it takes to be a dancer. It’s sort of this conditioning that starts to evolve into a more paralyzing state.” 
 

Tools for Treatment and Coping

For dancers experiencing panic attacks, Spell recommends seeking professional assistance. Mental health professionals can provide tailored guidance to help navigate the best treatment options. Spell says that providers will usually start by explaining the biology of a panic attack. Then an exposure-based treatment, which helps decrease the body’s fear response when approaching a trigger, might be used. Distress-tolerance skills, like mindfulness and grounding techniques, are often taught along with treatment.

The lessons learned in therapy can be implemented whenever panic and anxiety begin to take over. For example, exercises that divert attention toward noticing the five senses can be helpful in times of distress. Spell recommends sensory items, like fidget spinners or squishy balls, and Patrick suggests aromatherapy, as well as a visual exercise called “find your rainbow,” which involves identifying one item in your surrounding environment that corresponds to each color of the rainbow. She also highlights the importance of taking breaks during class or rehearsal for dancers who need time to use these skills to address challenging emotions.

Understanding what’s happening in the body can be impor­tant as well. “Sometimes that fight-or-flight response gets taken out of context,” says Spell. “There’s not a saber-toothed tiger chasing after an individual anymore, but maybe stepping into an audition or getting ready to go onstage feels like you’re being chased. You can remind yourself, ‘Okay, this is my body’s way of protecting me, but I don’t need it to protect me right now. There are other ways that I can experience and cope with my anxiety.’ ”

Panic Attack vs. Panic Disorder

According to therapist Josh Spell, MSW, LICSW, about 20 percent of the population will experience a panic attack in their lives. A smaller subset, however, will experience panic disorder, which is characterized by recurring panic attacks, for one month or more, and an accompanying fear of having another panic attack in the future. Panic disorder can also cause individuals to avoid certain stimuli or situations that they think might trigger an episode. 

The post A Dancer’s Guide to Managing Panic Attacks appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Now in his 13th season with Houston Ballet, Watters, who was promoted to first soloist in 2021, has found himself in a position to help create a sense of belonging for others. He started a video series, “The Pre-Show,” in 2015. “I was starting to peel back the curtain on what it was to be a classical ballet dancer, and I was breaking the mold and shifting peoples’ perceptions of what a classical ballet dancer looks like, who they love, how they act, what interests them,” he says. That sometimes called for dancing in sky-high heels on a treadmill, and other times shining a light on the work of Black, queer dancers Watters has been inspired by. “If I authentically share the work that I’m putting into the roles I’m dancing, and the dancers who inspire me, and the things that I love, then my hope is that maybe that inspires others to advocate for themselves or other people who need it.”

The Initial Spark

“My love of dance actually started from watching the Olympics and seeing Dominique Dawes on the balance beam. And then one of the first gifts my parents got me was the New York City Ballet production of The Nutcracker with Macaulay Culkin on VHS. That inspired me to put on little shows in my living room, and the curiosity about dance and what it was led me to taking classes.”

An Eye-Opening Moment

“My dad was an English professor at the University of New Hampshire, and we would go see the touring companies that performed there. When the Alvin Ailey second company came, that was a big moment for me because I had loved dance, I had obsessed over dance, but I had never seen anybody the way that I looked dance. It felt natural to say, ‘Oh, I have to be a modern dancer, and that’s where I’m supposed to be,’ but I think that is somewhat limiting. The second that I came to Houston in 2009, that’s when classical ballet felt attainable, because I felt like I had one foot in the door.”

A Memorable Part

“I had never really thought I was a prince or embodied what a prince was, so the journey of dancing my first Prince in Stanton Welch’s The Nutcracker was a big moment for me. It’s also a great opportunity to lead a ballet, and I was promoted to demi-soloist during that time.”

A Dream Role

“Roles like Romeo that are of the human experience and you’re dealing with loss and telling a story, they were quite intimidating to me. But having danced in and kind of touched on roles that are very character-driven recently, I’d love to dance Romeo in Romeo & Juliet.”

A Piece of History:

“Every time I revisit Stanton Welch’s Clear, I discover new things. I’ve danced it with dear friends like Chun Wai [Chan], and now I’ve danced it with Naazir [Muhammad] and Eric Best in New York. With Julie [Kent], who originated the role, now being our co-director, it’s really special to have her in the studio working with us.”

His Pre-Performance Routine:

“I used to be someone, because of my age, where I could sort of walk into the show and just hit it. But over the past few years, I really need to get my body ready for what it’s about to do, and Pilates has been a big part of my routine. I like to do it in the morning, and if we have shows, I’ll go in about two hours before and do my Pilates warm up to really set my body up.”

The post How First Soloist Harper Watters Creates Community at Houston Ballet appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Relocating can be par for the course in any career, but in as unpredictable a field as dance, it is especially common. And while packing up is always a large undertaking, there are some specific realities unique to dancers, as well as considerations to keep in mind when moving—from professional and personal needs to finances, timing, and more.

Moving On

After over a decade dancing in Toronto, former National Ballet of Canada principal Skylar Campbell and his wife, Jaclyn Oakley, also an NBoC dancer, realized it was time for a change. “The natural progression for dancers [in NBoC] is that if you’ve been there for over five years, you get your permanent residency,” Campbell explains. “We tried, but because we were missing certain academic qualifications, we never got it. It was a sign: retire or move on.”

Without permanent residency, Campbell wouldn’t be able to work in dance education—a career he is interested in exploring in the future. The couple stuck it out through most of the COVID-19 pandemic, but in 2022 they moved to join Houston Ballet, Campbell as a principal and Oakley as a corps member. While there were logistical reasons for the move, Campbell found that a change in environment benefited his dancing. “I’m much more aware as an artist,” he says. “I think that’s due to the change of pace and opportunities to pursue other facets of our life here.”

Sometimes, artistic priorities are the motivator. Javares Selby, a former Dallas Black Dance Theatre dancer, made a snap-decision move when Visceral Dance Chicago offered him a contract. He landed from his flight and headed straight to the studios for the first day of the season. Despite the quick turnaround, Selby knew it was the right choice. “DBDT had a certain aesthetic which I did uphold,” he says. “But there was another side of me that wanted to release a little bit more. I’ve found that at Visceral already.”

Whether the decision is personal or professional, “I think we always know the answer deep down—to move or not,” says Selby. “Our minds can get in the way. But if your gut feeling is saying yes, do it, because that’s the push you need.”

Staying Grounded: When Dance Is Home

“When people ask, ‘Where are you from?’‌ I say I have no idea!” Florrie Sésé Geller, 24, relays this with a laugh, but she is earnest. She’s relocated more than nine times since leaving home at age 10 to continue her training and launch her professional career. Most recently, she started her first season with Oakland Ballet Company in California.

“When dance feels like it’s your home, it doesn’t necessarily matter where you are,” says Geller, sharing the approach that has helped keep her grounded through multiple moves. Her relocations have been spurred by a variety of reasons, from last-minute job offers to the pandemic lockdown, and—perhaps most challenging—the abrupt bankruptcy and closure of American National Ballet, her first professional job, in 2017. “You can do all the research possible, but there’s so much that’s out of your control in this profession,” says Geller.

The reality of being a young professional, she continues, often requires frequent moves during the career-building process; it can be tough to put down roots. But while it’s practical to pack lightly, Geller suggests making room for some reminders of home. Bringing a treasured dish set or coffee maker can offer a sense of security amid the unfamiliar.

“Everything is a culture shock when you go somewhere new,” says New York City–based choreographer Grace Yi-Li Tong, who moved from her home in Seattle to attend New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2018. “I wanted to be in the middle of it all, where I could go for more opportunities,” she says, but the drastic change of pace from the Pacific Northwest took some getting used to. Focusing on the excitement of pursuing further training and launching her choreographic career helped Tong deal with the newness, as did connecting with family members in New York City.

Do Your Homework

With any relocation, planning ahead can minimize stress and financial strain, especially for dancers who are busy juggling multiple jobs or performance schedules. Planning sooner is always better, suggests Geller, as it’s easy to overestimate the amount of time realistically available to working artists. Geller finds that maintaining as close to a usual routine as possible helps her avoid being overwhelmed when the cardboard boxes appear.

When looking for a new place to live, consider the secondary job opportunities available, the volatility of a city’s housing market, and how accessible an area is—in many cities, more affordable housing is farther away from the hubs where studios and performance opportunities are located. Selby’s move was so quick that he wasn’t able to secure an apartment before moving, due in part to the city’s tight housing market. “I’d apply, but almost immediately the place would be snapped up!” he says. Fellow Visceral dancer Alessandra De Paolantonio offered Selby a place to stay in the interim (a not uncommon act of generosity among empathetic dancers).

Campbell, Geller, Selby, and Tong all agree: Finances trump all. “Money is definitely the hardest part,” says Campbell. “We lost a ton of money through taxes and the currency exchange. We also had to import our car. It was more than we expected.” On the plus side, less expensive property in Houston allowed him and Oakley to invest in a house—a life goal they hadn’t been able to accomplish in Toronto. If possible, Campbell recommends working with a financial advisor to stay as organized as possible through the move.

Money can also limit the opportunities dancers can feasibly pursue if a move is involved­. “Whenever I get an offer,” says Geller, “finances are always number one on my mind. I’ve had to turn down opportunities because they wouldn’t have worked financially.”

Selby suggests spending time scouting neighborhoods online, and Tong advises dancers to lean into their connections. “If you have family, friends, or friends of friends who have ever lived there, reach out,” she says. They may be able to advise on areas to live, unexpected costs, or opportunities to expand career goals.

Above all, the decision to move is highly individual. Campbell recommends listening to your internal voice: “You have to really look in the mirror and understand yourself. That’s when you’re going to know if the place is still right for you or not.”

The post What to Consider Before Relocating for Your Career appeared first on Dance Magazine.

My dance journey has been inspired by countless performances and artists, each providing a unique perspective. But all roads, no matter how beautiful, are fraught with challenges, and I faced two great ones throughout my career. The first was my recovery from a torn ACL during a performance—an ordeal that challenged me physically and mentally long after my surgery and rehab. The support of fellow dancers was my beacon through uncertainty as I worked my way back to the stage. The second test came with the onset of COVID-19. Virtual classes, masked rehearsals, and an uncertain future gripped the dance world, yet my commitment remained unshaken. I took the initiative to create, connect, and share my knowledge through choreography, video projects, and unconventional collaborations, keeping myself immersed in movement in any way that I could.

Personal obstacles have also marked my dance path. Growing up in poverty, enduring bullying for being a male ballet dancer, and navigating identity complexities within the dance world presented daunting hurdles. Yet, these challenges forged my commitment to self-discovery and advocacy for my art. I continue to draw inspiration from others. Sorella Englund’s mentorship accelerated my growth. More recently, I have been moved by the magical storytelling of Johan Inger’s Carmen.

Stepping onto the stage brings me an unparalleled sense of calm. It’s where I breathe, shine through roles, and connect with the energy of an audience. Every choreographer brings a unique approach, but the stage remains where my love for dance is rekindled. In the studio, my work has evolved, especially as a father of two boys. It’s my sanctuary for wholeheartedly perfecting my craft.

In moments of exhaustion, my loving family, energetic kids, and close friends remind me of life’s joys beyond dance. Over time, my relationship with dance has deepened. I’ve embraced the transformative power of movement and its impact on others. Even on the toughest days, I find strength to face self-doubts and cheer myself on onstage. Sharing extraordinary ballets with fellow artists and acknowledging the passage of time has led me to appreciate the choices in my dance career.

Being a dancer has defined my life profoundly. It’s taught me the power of inspiring others through authentic narratives. It’s molded me into the person I am today, allowing me to overcome adversity, experience the full spectrum of emotions, and ultimately thrive. Dance has granted me the opportunity to explore, understand, and shape a rich tapestry of human experiences, for which I am eternally grateful.

The post Boston Ballet Principal John Lam Shares the Challenges He’s Overcome in His 20-Year Career appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Natalio has joined the teams of operas and immersive productions, choreographed the hit Pyer Moss Couture fashion show in 2021, and led the movement vision of multiple new musicals. Following her 2022 role as associate choreographer on Broadway’s for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, this month her own choreography hits Broadway in How to Dance in Ohio, a story of seven autistic young adults preparing for a spring formal.

For Natalio to effectively work with different types of artists—from professional dancers to actors with little to no movement experience—she’s had to fine-tune her communication skills and develop a clear way to make everyone feel safe to explore.

I always want to make the company feel like I’m one of them, that we are peers, and that I’m learning from them just as much as they’re learning from me. Even though I may be the one in the front of the room, their voices are just as important as mine. I want them to feel comfortable honestly expressing what feels good and what doesn’t. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll change something every time there’s an opinion about it, but I might be able to teach it differently or make a modification.

When I’m initially generating new material, there’s room to make mistakes and for things to be muddy. But when it’s time to teach choreography to a new group of people in a rehearsal process, I need to come in with clarity. My tendency is to move quickly, but the key is to slow down, teach steps in small chunks, and have patience while going over it multiple times.

I pride myself on pushing people to step out of their comfort zones and do things they wouldn’t normally do. But for that to happen, they have to feel safe and not judged. I try to avoid comparing performers to one another or singling people out to demonstrate, because that can lead to unnecessary self-consciousness or even stunt someone’s personal breakthrough.

Working with actors has definitely made me a better storyteller. Actors need a reason. If they’re invested in their character, they need to know why they’re doing something. So it creates a beautiful opportunity for me to lean into that and not just teach steps, but teach the intention behind them. If I can tie the choreography to the story or to a particular emotion, it helps the actors find texture and dynamics in their movement.

I can tell when things are landing, when things are not, when I’m losing people. I can tell when we need to go over a step again, and I can also tell when something is becoming stale and we need to switch gears. I try to learn how each person receives notes and adjustments most successfully—one artist welcomes a lot of notes, I might need to whisper them to another, and someone else might get overwhelmed quickly and I recognize when they’re at capacity.

I like rigor, I like hard work. I like to drill and push and make people sweat, that’s all good. But it’s important to pair that with humor and levity. We can’t always be too serious!

In all genres, you’re going to get great performances when the people onstage are proud of what they’re doing. As the choreographer, sometimes I need to sacrifice a move I thought was fierce in order to be more mindful of what the performer is actually best at. It’s a collaboration.

The post How Choreographer Mayte Natalio Tailors Her Approach to the Artists in the Room With Her appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Company: American Ballet Theatre

Age: 25

Hometown: Cincinnati, Ohio

Training: With his parents, former professional ballet dancers Meridith Benson and Mario de la Nuez, at their Cincinnati studio, de la Dance Center

Accolades: 2018 Grand Prix winner, Youth America Grand Prix Pittsburgh semifinals

Late starter: De la Nuez was initially into activities like skateboarding, gymnastics, diving, and soccer and didn’t start dancing until he was almost 15. But once he did, he took to it with great intensity. “My parents didn’t force me, they let me find it for myself. And because of that, I found the drive,” he says. “I was really eager to improve and take corrections, and I still am. That’s the superpower of starting late.”

All in the family: “The studio was in our house,” says de la Nuez. “Right after school, and all weekend, sometimes until 10 o’clock at night, I was there dancing and watching YouTube videos and trying to imitate what I saw.My parents really molded the training around me, and made it such a comfortable environment for me to work.”

Ballet idol: De la Nuez’s father fostered his son’s admiration of the Cuban-born dancer Carlos Acosta. “His dancing is masculine but sensitive, and so sincere, and his partnering is beautiful,” de la Nuez says. Acosta’s memoir, No Way Home, is his favorite book, and Cuba, the birthplace of his father, is the place he most dreams of visiting.

Discipline and abandon: “Onstage he’s willing to go far and beyond,” says Carlos Lopez, the director of repertoire at ABT that de la Nuez has worked with the most. “He has that fearlessness and freedom, and he’s also technically very strong.” But Lopez also sees his discipline and drive. “He is very internal in terms of the work. You can see he really fights for perfection.”

Challenges: De la Nuez was born with a cleft palate, which means that the roof of his mouth was not fully formed before birth. This affected his ability to breathe and eat normally, and he’s had several surgeries, the last of which took place in November. “This will help a lot with my breathing when I’m onstage, because now I have to breathe mainly through my mouth,” he said before the surgery. As a kid, he was bullied for his condition, but he says it also helped to form his personality. “It made me figure out how to be social. It’s easy for me to be super-friendly and funny with people.” Lopez agrees: “Everyone loves Mikey, because he’s such a nice guy.”

A dedicated follower of fashion: Outside of the studio, de la Nuez has a passion for fashion. “I like to wear clothes that are a little bit more original, and I spend a lot of time researching­ on YouTube and Instagram,”­ he says. His favorite designer­ at the moment is Rick Owens.

The full package: “I really believe in his potential,” says Lopez. “He’s a bravura dancer. He can do all the technical roles, like Basilio in Don Q, but at the same time, he can be a prince. Honestly, I think he can do anything.”

The post Introducing American Ballet Theatre’s Michael de la Nuez appeared first on Dance Magazine.

These are some of the questions of the moment in the ballet program at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, which is staging new productions of The Nutcracker and La Bayadère this school year. Both ballets have come under fire for resorting to reductive, Orientalist caricatures—with La Bayadère all but disappearing in its full-length form from American stages.

There’s a perceived “zero-sum game, where it feels like we either respect the heritage and the canon and the tradition, or we respect the experience of people of color,” says Phil Chan, co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface. “Both of those things can happen at the same time.” Chan, who has long advocated for eliminating outdated and offensive Asian stereotypes from ballets, will stage the reimagined Bayadère in Bloomington with dance historian and musicologist Doug Fullington. “It is through this process that the work can remain alive and radical and relevant,” adds Chan.

That concept resonated deeply with Sarah Wroth, a professor and chair of the ballet department at IU. It couldn’t be more fitting for these projects to find a home at an academic institution, Wroth says, that sits at the intersection of scholarship and stage and has the time and resources to experiment. And the new productions offer an educational opportunity that students are thirsting for. “Young dancers today know what they want to be doing with their art form,” says Wroth. “They know what they want it to be creating in society. And I think it’s hard for them if they don’t get to see and feel that progress.”

A New Nutcracker

When Wroth returned to her alma mater as an educator after a 14-year career with Boston Ballet, the department was still using the same Nutcracker sets and costumes she remembered from the early aughts. The faculty decided their Nut needed a revamp—and that their colleague Sasha Janes was the choreographer for the job.

Janes’ vision bridges the acts so that they feel like one whole rather than two separate ballets, as is often the case in The Nutcracker. The Act I Christmas party is set in an embassy. The guests are delegates from various countries, wearing traditional dress and bearing gifts from home. “Rather than seeing this Victorian thing where all the men are in brown suits and women are in the same dress but different colors, I think we see individuals,” Janes says. “Because that’s the world we live in, right?”

Drosselmeyer—who in Janes’ production is a woman—helps stir Marie’s imagination. The rest of the ballet brings back characters from the party. The severe butler becomes the Mouse King. The ambassadors from Norway become the Snow King and Queen. Mother Ginger brings her charges from the local orphanage. The Chinese divertissement eschews upturned fingers and racist makeup and becomes a dance revolving around the delegates’ gift of silk.

This Nutcracker also uses technology, combining physical sets with projections, to transport its audiences and push the ballet forward. “Nutcracker is our one stronghold on American tradition,” Wroth says. “We just need to keep making choices for the betterment of it.”

A Better Bayadère

As soon as The Nutcracker wraps, IU students will dive into Bayadère rehearsals. Chan mentioned his and Fullington’s concept—which has been brewing for at least five years—when he gave a lockdown-era Zoom talk for the department. Wroth jumped on it: Could they bring that Bayadère to life at IU?

“My favorite creative prompt is asking myself the question: ‘What else could it be?’ ” Chan says. “Like when you’re a little kid and you have a pen, but it’s not just a pen. It could be a rocket ship or a lightsaber or magic wand. How can we apply that kind of thinking to a work like Bayadère?”

Instead of reproducing a French-born, St. Petersburg-based ballet master’s imagined India, Chan and Fullington are setting their love triangle during the golden age of Hollywood. Though they’ll re-create much of Marius Petipa’s choreography based on notations from 1900, the tale is reminiscent of quintessential American musicals like Singin’ in the Rain, Chan says, “if Nikiya was like Debbie Reynolds and Solor was Gene Kelly, and Lina Lamont, the sort-of princess, was this Gamzatti character.” In this telling, Ludwig Minkus’ score is reorchestrated in the style of a Gershwin musical, the Golden Idol is a dancing Oscar statue, and the iconic Kingdom of the Shades becomes an Art Deco fantasy à la Busby Berkeley.

“With the flip in the storyline, the beauty of the dance remains and the questionable plot dissolves,” says senior Ruth Connelly. Fellow senior Aram Hengen adds that IU’s learning environment is the perfect place for this change to begin:­ “It’s a lab, basically.” Both are excited to see ripple effects­ beyond their campus.

Chan, Wroth, and their colleagues are too. “All I’m saying is, ‘Let me show you just one other way to do it,’ ” Chan says. “Everybody benefits if we get more Bayadères. That’s the beauty of this form. It can take reimaginings.” The stories we tell have to reflect us, even when it comes to the classics, Chan says, and the stakes are high: “We’ve got to figure out a new way to do that for this new, more diverse, younger generation—or else we are doomed.”

The post Indiana University Removes Offensive Caricatures in New Productions of <i>The Nutcracker</i> and <i>La Bayadère</i> appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Although shin splints have presented a challenge for Hoy, she says she’s learned ways to manage the condition and curb flare-ups so she can continue to perform. With an intentional, prevention-focused approach, dancers can get ahead of shin splints so they don’t put a damper on dancing.

What Are Shin Splints?

Shin splints, or medial tibial stress syndrome, refers to “pain in the muscles on the front of the lower leg, below the knee and along the shin bone,” says Joshua Honrado, DAT, an athletic trainer who works with dancers at NYU Langone’s Harkness Center for Dance Injuries. Dancers are particularly prone to shin splints, especially when they experience a sudden increase in rehearsals or performances, such as during Nutcracker season. “Exercise naturally increases blood flow to the muscles, causing the muscles to expand,” Honrado explains. “This is a natural occurrence, but if the body isn’t able to heal efficiently after continuous bouts of intensity, the intramuscular pressure will continue to build up, making it hard for the body to heal properly.”

Getting the Right Treatment

Typically, shin splints are easy for a health-care provider to diagnose, Honrado says, but it’s important to seek professional guidance to ensure you aren’t suffering from a more serious injury, like a stress fracture. Pain on the bone, or a feeling of numbness or tingling, can be indicative of a larger issue.

For dancers who are experiencing shin splints, a doctor might prescribe an X-ray or a compartment pressure measurement test (which gauges the difference in intramuscular pressure before and after physical activity). For shin splints, the first step to recovery is often rest or modification. “Reducing training volume, whether this means decreasing the amount of jumps or relevés, will help decrease the intramuscular pressure,” Honrado explains, adding that “this doesn’t necessarily mean needing to completely stay out of dance.”

Hoy says that icing before and after performances and using tape to “give a little extra security” were key to her managing shin splints. She also recommends finding a health-care practitioner specializing in dry needling to help release the muscles in the shin area.

Preventing Future Flare-Ups

For dancers who are prone to shin splints, it’s helpful to anticipate stressors. When there’s an increase in dance-related demands, such as a busy performance season or learning a new piece of choreography with a lot of jumping, Honrado recommends slowly ramping up exercise to prepare the body. “Gradually incorporating plyometric exercise around two to three weeks before this increased bout of dance is important in order to gradually build up that muscular endurance and flexibility so there isn’t a shock of a rapid increase in intramuscular pressure,” he explains.

If leaps or extended periods of jumping aggravate the shin splints, Honrado recommends starting with a very basic jumping program (he suggests sautés and changements in parallel, first, and second positions, as well as prances in parallel) for about five minutes, three times per week. For those with access to a Pilates reformer, working with the jump board is also a good option. Honrado says that high-intensity interval training (HIIT) might also be an effective way to incorporate muscular endurance and cardio-respiratory exercise, but he tells dancers to be mindful of the intensity, as these classes could aggravate shin splints if they aren’t part of a tiered ramp-up process.

It’s also important to be honest with your teacher, choreographer, or artistic director when you’re battling shin splints. Speaking as both a dancer and member of the artistic staff at Trinity Irish Dance Company, Hoy encourages dancers to be transparent about how they are feeling. “We want to protect [dancers] in the long run,” she says. “As an organization, we need our dancers to be as healthy as they can, but it’s also for their life, as well, because those injuries can carry through whether you’re still in your career or you’ve retired.”

The post Tips For Preventing and Managing Shin Splints appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Clarissa Rivera Dyas

Freelance dancer and choreographer

Clarissa Rivera Dyas thrives most in collaboration with other artists, and layers different art forms with sophistication. She created Something Remains, her 2022 evening-length choreographic debut, with visual artist and composer Jakob Pek. In it, Dyas and her three dancers pushed the boundaries of physicality as they danced with long rolls of paper and paint, serving as both brushes and canvas. Her dynamic movement, which defied predictability as it showcased both strength and vulnerability, served as the perfect counterpoint to Pek’s experimental score.

Dyas, a sought-after performer for artists like Robert Moses, prioritizes disrupting norms, challenging expectations, and embracing the raw, vulnerable, and even sloppy in her work. “How can we involve the idea of failure?” she asks. “As a Black queer artist, there is little room for failure. How can we allow for failure?”

In 2021, after recurring experiences of being tokenized in the largely white-led Bay Area dance scene, she co-founded the nonhierarchical artist collective RUPTURE alongside fellow queer Black artists jose e. abad, Stephanie Hewett, Gabriele Christian, and Styles Alexander. “It’s about being in process with collective rest, play, and somatic experimentation as resistance,” she says, “challenging what it means to be in dance and performance.” A RUPTURE event might include dance, live sound design, spoken word, visual art, multimedia elements, community engagement, improvisation, and play. In June, the cohort will present a new work at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture.

—Rachel Caldwell

Danielle Swatzie

Freelance dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker

If any contemporary dance artist captures the spirit of Atlanta’s up-and-coming generation, it’s Danielle Swatzie. Take her solo The Fleeting Serenade. In the section set to Ella Fitzgerald’s rendition of the jazz standard “Angel Eyes,” Swatzie whirls across the stage, her legs slicing arcs, arms gesturing in staccato bursts as she embodies the emotional turmoil churning beneath the song’s smooth surface.

A graduate of Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, Swatzie is equally compelling in front of or behind a camera. She creates an aura of honesty, thoughtfulness, and fearless compassion combined with a drive to unpack­ inner emotional landscapes. Her dance films, which illuminate a vision of a more equitable world, have been garnering increasing attention. META, a solo reflecting on family, generational trauma, and feminine empowerment, received the 2021 BronzeLens Film Festival Award for Best Music/Dance Video. Her growing roots through concrete was selected for American Dance Festival’s 2023 Movies By Movers festival. The film features seven young women artists, Black and white, who join together in precarious group counterbalances to confront individual experiences with racism and find wholeness as a community—as Swatzie says, through “radical connection and radical love to manifest radical change.”

—Cynthia Bond Perry

Grace Rookstool

Soloist, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre

Last season, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s statuesque Grace Rookstool made a pair of major debuts. The then–corps-member embodied emotional resilience as Mina in Michael Pink’s Dracula and showed off her commanding stage presence and technical prowess as Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty. She dances with an assuredness that artistic director Adam McKinney says got her promoted to the rank of soloist for this season. “She is a consummate professional, a classicist, and has a natural sensibility to embody music,” he says of the 23-year-old.

Born and raised on Whidbey Island, Washington, Rookstool trained at Pacific Northwest Ballet School and in its Professional Division Program. While there, she was selected for an exchange program with Dresden Semperoper Ballett and danced in its production of La Bayadère. She joined PBT’s corps de ballet in 2019.

A truly versatile dancer, Rookstool says she most enjoys high-flying jumps. Expect her career to soar in 2024.

—Steve Sucato

Erina Ueda

Dancer, Giordano Dance Chicago

Erina Ueda’s breakout moment with Giordano Dance Chicago came last April in Kia Smith’s Luminescence. With a cast of 22 dancers filling the cavernous Harris Theater, the piece starts and ends with Ueda completely alone, in a solo showcasing her unbridled facility and unflappable joy. Giordano’s dancers are known for their silky jazz technique balanced with razor-sharp precision. Ueda has that and more, bringing honesty and authenticity to the company’s rep. 

Ueda earned a BFA in dance with a minor in psychology from the University of Arizona, not too far from her hometown of Chandler, Arizona. Born in Japan, she was the first Asian woman to join the 60-year-old Giordano company. She’s upped its digital game, too, as the company’s social media manager and video content producer since her arrival in 2022.

—Lauren Warnecke

Donovan Reed

Dancer, A.I.M by Kyle Abraham

Nature metaphors spring to mind as you watch A.I.M by Kyle Abraham’s Donovan Reed. They seem driven by wind, buoyed by water, licked by fire. They might stop a liquid phrase cold with a thorny angle—not breaking the spider’s thread of movement, but rather snapping it taut. They can make the unlikeliest shapes look organic. (Though these qualities never feel less than authentic to Reed, they are very Abraham-esque: Reed, who’s danced with A.I.M since 2018, can channel the choreographer with uncanny precision.)

But Reed is an unmistakably human performer, too. In Abraham’s MotorRover—a duet that responds to Merce Cunningham’s 1972 work Landrover—they temper Cunningham’s signature formality with playfulness and wit, carrying on a danced conversation with partner Jamaal Bowman that seems full of little inside jokes. Reed’s a force of nature with a soul.

—Margaret Fuhrer

Kaitlyn Sardin

Irish and hip-hop dancer

You might know her as @kaitrock: the artist whose one-of-a-kind, Irish-dance-meets-hip-hop mashups have earned her an avid following on Instagram and beyond. While traditional Irish dance, with its strict verticality, might seem at odds with more full-bodied and grounded ways of moving, Kaitlyn Sardin finds their common thread: rhythm. Through drumming feet, swiping arms, or swiveling knees, she can tease out the intricacies of whatever sound is fueling her. (Beyoncé, Tinashe, and Victoria Monét are a few current favorites.) In every aspect of her short-form solos—including her colorful fashion choices—she is unabashedly herself.

A former competitive Irish dancer with a foundation of razor-sharp technique (she grew up training at the Watters School in Orlando), Sardin broadened her dance horizons as a student at Hofstra University, where she began adding forms like dancehall and vogue to her vocabulary. She has toured with the Chicago-based Trinity Irish Dance Company and is gearing up for new projects in 2024. From February 14–March 3, you can find her performing in Jean Butler’s What We Hold at the Irish Arts Center in Manhattan. 

Being Black and queer in the mostly white, sometimes culturally conservative world of Irish dance, she’s aware that younger dancers who break with convention might see themselves in her. Her advice for them? “Just go for it. Don’t be afraid, and the world will embrace you.”

—Siobhan Burke

Jake Roxander

Corps member, American Ballet Theatre

Watching Jake Roxander as Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet last July, it was hard to believe that he was making his Metropolitan Opera House debut in the role. Without a trace of nerves, the 21-year-old American Ballet Theatre corps member fully inhabited the character—cocky, loveable, magnetic, with flashes of hot-tempered recklessness. Then there was his dancing: Each solo was thrillingly virtuosic and highly musical, with pirouettes that paused momentarily on relevé—just enough time for him to give an impish grin before he was on to the next feat. 

Roxander comes from a family of dancers; he and his brother Ashton, a principal with Philadelphia Ballet, were trained by parents David and Elyse Roxander at their studio in Medford, Oregon. He spent a season with Philadelphia Ballet’s second company before joining ABT’s Studio Company in 2020, where he stood out in Balanchine’s Stars and Stripes and a duet from Twyla Tharp’s Known by Heart.

ABT has wasted no time pushing Roxander to the forefront since he joined the main company in 2022. This fall he danced principal roles in Harald Lander’s Études and Alexei Ratmansky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and debuted in the role of Puck in Sir Frederick Ashton’s The Dream. With his powerful, unforced technique and boy-next-door charm, he is making a name for himself, and fast. 

—Amy Brandt

Jindallae Bernard

Choreographer, filmmaker, and corps member, Houston Ballet

Jindallae Bernard’s portrayal of the jealous Lady Rokujo in Nao Kusuzaki’s Genji, an Asia Society Texas Center commission, exuded chilly charm and understated, seductive sensuality. Her quiet authority and stoic elegance also served her well in Stanton Welch’s neoclassical Tu Tu at Houston Ballet, though she proved equally capable of turning up the voltage in Balanchine’s Stars and Stripes. And her talents extend to choreography and filmmaking, too.

Bernard joined Houston Ballet’s corps in 2022. She’s been with the organization since she was 6 years old, rising through the Academy and Houston Ballet II before landing an apprenticeship in 2021. During her training, she took on several choreographic opportunities. Her whimsical short dance film Phase, created in 2020 during a virtual summer program composition class, so caught the eye of artistic director Stanton Welch that the company showcased it during its first live performance after the pandemic pause. “Her work feels so high-end, from the story to her use of color and light, and her directorial insight,” says Welch. He selected her to premiere a new ballet in December for the company’s annual Jubilee of Dance, for which she created Parodie de l’histoire du ballet. Says Bernard: “My goal is to contribute in as many ways as I can.”

—Nancy Wozny

Kia Smith

Executive artistic director, South Chicago Dance Theatre

Last year’s premiere of Memoirs of Jazz in the Alley proved a perfect showcase for choreographer and director Kia Smith. The evening-length “dance opera” exemplified her choreographic voice—note-by-note precision, fluid torso movement, unexpected gesture, powerful unison—and marked the debut of her 7-year-old company, South Chicago Dance Theatre, at the Auditorium Theatre, its largest venue to date. The work paid homage to Smith’s childhood experiences at her musician father’s weekly Jazz in the Alley gatherings. That background surfaces in the way her dances feel born out of the detail and nuance of jazz music.

Smith’s success lies not only in her artistic acumen but also in the way she considers dance and the business of it on a large scale. The Chicago native is both artistic and executive director of SCDT, which has expanded its presence at home through the South Chicago Dance Festival and abroad with its Choreographic Diplomacy international exchange program. Amidst a growing list of outside commissions—notably including the rousing Luminescence for Giordano Dance Chicago’s 60th anniversary last spring—this year Smith will bring her company on tour to Seoul, South Korea, and return to the Auditorium Theatre with another world premiere.

—Maureen Janson

Hohyun Kang

Sujet, Paris Opéra Ballet

A morbid teenager involved in a murder-suicide isn’t exactly an easy first major role. Yet from the moment South Korea’s Hohyun Kang, who joined Paris Opéra Ballet in 2018, stepped out as Mary Vetsera in Mayerling last season, she found logic and purpose in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s choreography. As she draped herself around Paul Marque, her Prince Rudolf, her lines sizzled with dramatic tension.

It was an arresting breakthrough for the 28-year-old, who had been on balletomanes’ radar for her easy, radiant musicality and technique in ballets such as Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco. A graduate of Korea National University of Arts, she was noticed by William Forsythe shortly after joining POB and landed a soloist role in his Blake Works I, before quietly making her way up the ranks and becoming a sujet (soloist) last season. She is already slated for a Kitri debut in April—and may well follow in the footsteps of Paris’ first South Korean étoile, Sae Eun Park.

—Laura Cappelle

Karla Puno Garcia

Musical theater choreographer

When last year’s Tony Awards had to go without a script and instead lean on dance to set the scene, host Ariana DeBose knew just the choreographer who could pull it off: Karla Puno Garcia. The resulting opening number brought viewers on a danced journey through the United Palace theater, using Garcia’s spunky, sassy movement to amp up excitement for the night. Later, Garcia’s unapologetically feminine flair and super-satisfying musicality showcased DeBose and Julianne Hough in a duet that felt both timely and timeless.

Garcia was the first woman of color to choreograph the Tonys. But it’s far from her only brush with the event. A Broadway vet who’s been dancing on the Great White Way since her college days at New York University, she previously performed with the casts of Gigi and Hamilton at the Tonys and was a dancer and associate choreographer in 2021 when Sergio Trujillo choreographed the opening number. Soon, she may even be up for a Tony herself: She’s making her Broadway choreographic debut this January with Days of Wine and Roses, which she co-choreographed with Trujillo.

For his part, Trujillo thinks she’s “unstoppable” as a choreographer: “Karla’s like a musician that can play all the instruments with her feet and arms and body,” he says. “She comes across as incredibly gentle, but she’s a force to be reckoned with.”

—Jennifer Heimlich

Kuu Sakuragi

Soloist, Pacific Northwest Ballet

With a raw physicality matched with bighearted sensitivity, Kuu Sakuragi is quickly heading toward rockstar status at Pacific Northwest Ballet. He creates electrifying spectacles onstage, delivering one jaw-dropping performance after another. His big technical jumps look as if he’s floating on air, an impression only heightened by his gravity-defying turnin David Parsons’ Caught, while his warmth and humility come through as deference to the other dancers onstage, as in Alexei Ratmansky’s Wartime Elegy. A PNB DanceChance student and Professional Division graduate, Sakuragi joined the corps in 2020 after dancing with Alberta Ballet for three years and was promoted to soloist in November. “Certain dancers live more completely in the moment when they’re dancing,” artistic director Peter Boal says. “Nureyev, Wendy Whelan, Carla Körbes come to mind. Kuu is one of them.” 

—Gigi Berardi

Sydnie L. Mosley 

Founding executive and artistic director, SLMDances 

In the spring and summer of 2020, conversations about racial equity and social justice erupted across the dance field. How could exclusionary systems be transformed? How could imbalances of power be corrected? How could people better care for one another?

For the choreographer, performer, educator, and writer Sydnie L. Mosley, these questions were nothing new. The Baltimore-born Mosley has been envisioning a future free from oppression—with dance as one way to get there—at least since 2010, when she founded her Harlem-based collective SLMDances. For people just beginning on that journey, she and her collaborators became a guiding light.

A self-described “creative home for trans, cis, nonbinary, queer, disabled, fat, masculine presenting, Black women and femmes of many generations,” SLMDances takes seriously the term “collective,”operating through a model of shared leadership and responsibility. Their community-engaged, joyfully interactive works have tackled issues like street harassment (The Window Sex Project, 2012) and the economics of dance (BodyBusiness, 2015). Their latest, PURPLE: A Ritual in Nine Spells, honors the Black feminist playwright, poet, and dancer Ntozake Shange, whose legacy Mosley extends through her own intertwining of movement and language. Premiering at Lincoln Center last summer, PURPLE marked a turning point for Mosley in its visibility and scale. Her vision persists; what’s changed, perhaps, is the world’s readiness to join her.

—Siobhan Burke

Laila J. Franklin

Independent dance artist

Contradictions power Laila J. Franklin’s charisma. She can shift from sly comedy to earnest sincerity over the course of an eight-count. She moves with disarming frankness, making even complex gestures look straightforward and open; she also seems to keep part of herself closed to the audience, protective of her own mystery.

That sense of unknowable-ness sits right at the center of choreographer Miguel Gutierrez’s I as another, which Gutierrez and Franklin performed in New York City last spring. The intimate, probing duet suggests we can never truly know each other, or even ourselves—but we can try. In I as another, Franklin showed a kind of virtuosic empathy, living fully inside Gutierrez’s creative vision without erasing herself. Forget walking in someone else’s shoes—she can dance in their feet.

Franklin, who earned a BFA from Boston Conservatory in 2019 and an MFA from the University of Iowa in 2021, is also a choreographer, teaching artist, and writer. Maybe over time we’ll get to know her better through her own work. Maybe she’ll always keep part of herself a mystery. Either way, she’ll be holding our attention.

—Margaret Fuhrer

Lucy Fandel

Independent dancer and choreographer

In the semi-improvised, place-based dance Lucy Fandel creates, the land is something alive, not just a backdrop. “The inhaling clouds, quivering blades of grass, swarms of gnats, or the occasional romping dog pulled us in,” she writes of her and Bailey Eng’s creative explorations during a residency in Spain. In a section of their filmed field notes, Fandel responds viscerally to these movements in the environment while dancing atop a rocky outcropping, at once fluid and angular as she articulates through her hands, rib cage, pelvis. 

A dance artist, writer, and arts outreach worker, Fandel grew up in Concord, Massachusetts, and Beaulieu-sur-Mer, France. “Switching languages forces you to think differently,” she says. She later crossed borders yet again, moving to Montreal to study contemporary dance and sociology at Concordia University. Fandel’s attachment to sociology field work influenced her dance perspective and, today, she’s at the forefront of the burgeoning sustainable eco-dance movement in Canada. She’s right at home engaging with the landscape during her outdoor research (“conversations,” as she calls them), examining the vectors of science and dance while sensitizing people to the natural environment in all its ambiguity and transformation.

—Philip Szporer

Miguel Alejandro Castillo

Choreographer and freelance performing artist

Onstage, Miguel Alejandro Castillo emanates a warmth and wit that creates instant connection. An incredibly committed performance in Faye Driscoll’s whirlwind ensemble work Weathering last April highlighted this generosity. As part of a precarious flesh sculpture that teetered off the edges of a spinning raft, Castillo maintained an active, intense bond with his fellow performers, even as his ponytail swept the ground and it became increasingly unclear whether he was being supported or smothered.

Castillo brings a bright presence and big love into the studio, Driscoll says, alongside an impressive conceptual curiosity. “He’s embracing the full range of human experience,” she says, “connecting the light and the dark.” In his own choreography, the Venezuelan artist, who started in theater, explore­s his native country’s diaspora, blending forms to forge a kind of future folklore.

Castillo recently completed a New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks residency and acted as movement director for the David Lang opera Prisoner of the State. He’ll keep building on that momentum in 2024: In addition to choreographing John Adams’ opera The Gospel According to the Other Mary for Volksoper in Vienna and touring Weathering, Castillo will be a choreographer in residence at both PAGEANT performance space in Brooklyn and Abrons Arts Center in lower Manhattan. 

—Candice Thompson

Naomi Funaki

Tap dancer and choreographer

During the in-person debut of Ayodele Casel’s Chasing Magic, Japanese tap artist Naomi Funaki commanded attention with her clear, confident sounds. She modulated her tones and phrasing to cover a broad emotional spectrum, from contemplative to exuberant, as she floated through a duet, in a role originated by Casel, with joyful ease. “Her technical prowess and rhythmic voice are dynamic and contain so much depth and nuance,” says Casel, who invited Funaki to make her choreographic debut last April during Casel’s Artists at the Center engagement at New York City Center.

Casel is not alone in her sentiments. Funaki was the recipient of a 2023 Princess Grace Award and is an apprentice with Dorrance Dance. She performed in the December premiere of Caleb Teicher’s reworked Bzzz, a tap-meets-beatbox show for which she also served as assistant choreographer, and in January will show off her range in Leonardo Sandoval’s samba-inflected I Didn’t Come to Stay with Music From The Sole.

Ultimately, Funaki’s goal is to bring the spirit and professionalism of the New York City tap community back to Japan. Casel has every faith that she will, and along the way inspire a whole new generation of tap dancers.

—Candice Thompson

Olivia Bell

Corps member, New York City Ballet

Some dancers demand your attention. New York City Ballet’s Olivia Bell politely requests it. But the elegantly understated dancer is no wallflower. A fervent musicality powers her fine-grained technique, giving it a lush, romantic sweep. 

Bell, who only joined New York City Ballet’s corps in May, still has surprises in store. At last summer’s Vail Dance Festival, she danced Balanchine’s Tarantella, a mile-a-minute showstopper that must have been nearly impossible to survive at Vail’s one-and-a-half-mile elevation. Bell handled the challenge with not just polish but sparkle, nailing the work’s witty musical phrasing and showing off the prodigious pirouettes that most of us had previously only seen on her Instagram page. Here’s to more surprises, and soon, on NYCB’s stage. 

—Margaret Fuhrer

Pauline Casiño 

Commercial dancer

Pauline Casiño booked her Broadway debut without an in-person audition. She learned about casting for Once Upon a One More Time, directed and choreographed by Keone and Mari Madrid, after the first round of auditions had already concluded and asked her agent to help find a way in. “I always knew of Keone and Mari,” she says. “As a fellow Filipino, I wanted to be part of something they’re creating.” Even though she had never taken class with the Madrids, let alone worked with them before, she landed the part of Esmeralda through a video submission. Onstage, she brought the ensemble character to life with her unforgettable fluidity, powerful femininity, and magnetic presence.

Casiño, who moved to the Bronx from the Philippines at age 12, grew up thinking dance was extracurricular. While studying chemistry in college, she danced in commercial choreographer Candace Brown’s The Soul Spot and BTS’ Love Yourself: Speak Yourself New Jersey concert, but it wasn’t until she graduated in 2020 that she fully embraced dance as her profession. Since then, she has performed with Anitta and Doja Cat at MTV’s Video Music Awards, as well as choreographed and directed her own dance visual. Only three and a half years into seriously pursuing a dance career, Casiño has already proved she has star quality. 

—Kristi Yeung

Rafael Ramírez

Flamenco dancer and choreographer

With fluid arms, deep, effortless lunges, supple contractions, and rapid, complex footwork, Rafael Ramírez spellbinds. But it is his old soul, which adds sensual vulnerability to his performances, that leaves an indelible impression.

Ramírez’s prowess in both traditional and contemporary flamenco captivates across venues, from Spain’s most prestigious tablaos to international theaters with the companies of famed choreographers such as David Coria and Rafaela Carrasco. He’s also garnered critical recognition: In 2021, he won the highly coveted Desplante Masculino at the International Cante de las Minas Festival and, last year, received the 2023 Best New Artist Award from the prestigious Festival Jerez for his Entorno. He carried that momentum into the 2023 Bienal de Málaga, where he premiered Recelo, a collaborative work with prize-winning dancer Florencia Oz exploring the primal emotion of fear, and into a 10-city U.S. tour of his solo show, Lo Preciso, this past fall. With more performances of Recelo ahead, Ramírez enters 2024 on the road to international recognition.

—Bridgit Lujan

Yuval Cohen

Corps member, Philadelphia Ballet

An elegant carriage and genteel demeanor make Yuval Cohen an ideal storybook prince. But behind that refinement lies impressive power. His explosive, elastic leaps and strong, centered turns had everyone buzzing at last summer’s USA International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Mississippi. The 21-year-old Israeli dancer, a newly promoted Philadelphia Ballet corps member, was the first from his country to medal, taking home the senior bronze.

Cohen’s USA IBC coach was his longtime mentor, Nadya Timofeyeva, with whom he trained at the Jerusalem Ballet School. In 2018, she took him to a competition in Russia, where he won first prize and a spot at the Vaganova Ballet Academy. After becoming the school’s first Israeli graduate in 2021, Cohen joined Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet. But the pandemic created visa complications, forcing him to return home that summer. 

Cohen joined Philadelphia Ballet II in October 2021 and became a company apprentice the following season. He’s already gained notice in a range of featured roles, including a Stepsister in Cinderella, the Gold variation in The Sleeping Beauty, and Escamillo in Angel Corella’s new production of Carmen, which premiered this fall.

—Amy Brandt

Sean Lew 

Commercial dancer and choreographer

In viral YouTube videos, two seasons of NBC’s “World of Dance,” performances with stars from Janet Jackson to Justin Bieber, and his own hour-long dance film, II, Sean Lew has won over millions of fans with his articulate athleticism, honest storytelling, and undeniable charisma. The 22-year-old is far from new to the industry, but he’s still taking his career in new directions. In 2023, he conquered his biggest fear: battling. “It’s not just if you’re good at dancing, then you can battle,” Lew says. “People live, breathe, and eat battling.” He amped up his fitness training and studied freestyle genres such as house and krumping, and, after a humbling early-round loss at his first battle, he went on to win the Red Bull Dance Your Style Los Angeles regionals in April. He then brought home the national title in May and represented the U.S. at the global competition in November.

Despite his newfound commitment to the competitive freestyle scene, Lew continues to grow his career in other areas. Over the last year, he launched his first fitness and dance intensive, Artist Range, with trainer Karl Flores; was a first-time creative director for Jackson Wang’s Coachella performance; and was a first-time co-producer on a Dermot Kennedy music video. “The beauty and curse of my life,” he says, “is I just want to do everything.”

—Kristi Yeung

Solal Mariotte

Independent choreographer and dancer, Rosas

In EXIT ABOVE — after the tempest, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s typically minimalistic world suddenly seemed looser and brighter. The reason? A new generation of dancers, led by French newcomer Solal Mariotte, who got his start in hip hop. The curly-haired 22-year-old acted as a mercurial leader, shifting easily from floor work to the air, launching himself into arresting dives to the floor.

At 18, looking for a challenge, Mariotte applied to P.A.R.T.S., the school founded by De Keersmaeker in Brussels, where he immersed himself in contemporary dance while co-founding a breaking crew, Above The Blood, on the side. In addition to joining Rosas in 2023, he is also developing projects with his crew and as a choreographer. In January, a new version of his solo Collages/Ravages will premiere at the prestigious Suresnes Cités Danse festival in France. With his influences now cross-pollinating­ in captivating ways, a shape-shifting career beckons.

—Laura Cappelle

Kamala Saara

Dancer, Dance Theatre of Harlem

Midway through William Forsythe’s Blake Works IV last April, Kamala Saara transfixed the audience in a soulful, introspective solo. She stretched her long limbs expansively, pulling every inch out of them before retracting dynamically into the next phrase. She seemed to be lost in a dream, her arms sweeping through an unseen atmospheric viscosity. And while the solo is deeply internal, Saara invited the audience at Dance Theatre of Harlem’s New York City Center season into her world. 

Saara, 21, grew up studying at the Yuri Grigoriev School of Ballet in Los Angeles, spent two summers at the Bolshoi Ballet Intensive in New York City, and at 16 was invited to Moscow to perform at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy’s annual gala. She moved to New York in 2019, training first with Andrei Vassiliev before entering the School of American Ballet. SAB’s focus on speed and lightness, she says, made her more versatile.

Meanwhile, then-DTH artistic director Virginia Johnson had had her eye on Saara since Chyrstyn Fentroy invited her to take company class at age 15. Saara joined DTH in 2020, shining in Stanton Welch’s Orange and Balanchine’s Allegro Brillante. This season, she takes on the principal role in Balanchine’s Raymonda-inspired Pas de Dix, adding a glamorous ballerina part to her repertoire. 

—Amy Brandt

Water Street Dance Milwaukee 

Contemporary dance company

In Milwaukee, ballet is king. But funders, dancers, presenters, and audiences are all sitting up and taking notice of Water Street Dance Milwaukee, giving the city the top-shelf contemporary company it deserves. The company, which rehearses in a suburban Milwaukee enclave, launched just as the pandemic hit, but still managed to build a roster of impeccable dancers, create a dance festival, and form pre-professional programs. The city’s dance community is mobilizing around Water Street’s momentum as the company produces new festivals, outdoor pop-up performances, and shared auditions. It performs all over the Midwest, but directo­r Morgan Williams’ goal is to take Water Street international. He sprinkles up-and-coming choreographers, like Kameron­ N. Saunders, Madison Hicks, Braeden Barnes, and Leandro Glory Damasco, Jr., into the rep alongside his own choreography. At just 33, he is a savvy director and choreographer with support from some of the region’s sharpest dance leaders and a long runway ahead.

—Lauren Warnecke

Header collage photo credits, left to right, top to bottom: Ryoko Konami, courtesy Naomi Funaki; Michelle Reid, courtesy Kia Smith; Todd Rosenberg, courtesy Giordano Dance Chicago; Laura Irion, courtesy Karla Puno Garcia; Rosalie O’Connor, courtesy American Ballet Theatre; Angela Sterling, courtesy Pacific Northwest Ballet; Kat Stiennon, courtesy Water Street Dance Milwaukee; Erin Baiano, courtesy New York City Ballet; Jay Spencer, courtesy Miguel Alejandro Castillo; Isabella Herrera, courtesy Kaitlyn Sardin; Julien Benhamou, courtesy Paris Opéra Ballet; Nir Arieli, courtesy Dance Theatre of Harlem; Steven Pisano, courtesy A.I.M by Kyle Abraham; Lawrence Elizabeth Knox, courtesy Houston Ballet; Alex Harmon/Red Bull Content Pool, courtesy Sean Lew; Robbie Sweeny, courtesy Clarissa Rivera Dyas; Anne Van Aerschot, courtesy Rosas; Bailey Bailey, courtesy Laila J. Franklin; C-Unit Studio, courtesy Pauline Casiño; Anita Buzzy Prentiss, courtesy Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre; Nicole Mitchell Photography, courtesy Danielle Swatzie; Gabriel Asensio, courtesy Rafael Ramírez; Camille Augustyniak, courtesy Lucy Fandel; Arian Molina Soca, courtesy Philadelphia Ballet; Travis Coe, courtesy Sydnie L. Mosley.

The post Introducing Our 2024 “25 to Watch” appeared first on Dance Magazine.

1. Be both confident and humble.
“The only thing that really gets in the way of partnering is insecurity or pride,” Rands says. Self-conscious energy can make it difficult for pairs to trust and work together. “There’s a tendency to constantly be apologetic and say ‘It’s my fault,’ when it’s actually trial and error,” Biesinger says of those times partnering goes wrong. While he feels there is a time and a place to give a heartfelt apology in partnering (like when you accidentally hit someone in the nose), more often than not, Biesinger recommends just moving forward patiently.

On the flip side, Rands says artists need to be open to accepting corrections rather than responding defensively to feedback. “With that mentality, it won’t look good, and it won’t feel good,” he says. “If you approach it with an open mind, things will get a lot better.”

2. Communicate.
As with any kind of relationship, communication in partnering is key—starting with consent. “Ask your partner if they are comfortable with where you need to place your hands, or if it’s okay if you stand close,” Duckstein says. Once that’s established, dancers should speak to their partners with kindness, but without pandering. “If I approach a partner who needs to jump a bit more and say, ‘I’m so sorry, I know this is a lot to ask, but could you maybe jump a bit more?’ it becomes a bigger deal and creates friction,” he says. “But if I say, ‘Hey, it would help me if you plié a little bit more,’ it sets a precedent that it’s not personal, I’m not stressed about it, and it’s just part of the game.”

3. Match musicality.
If you study ballet, Duckstein recommends standing behind your partner in class and matching the timing of your barre work to theirs. “It increased my sensitivity as a partner,” he says. “I discovered if my partners had a tendency to move at the front of the beat or the back of the beat, and adjusted myself to match them. It made a big difference.”

4. Maintain physical contact.
According to Duckstein, one of the most important parts of partnering is how you get into and out of each step. He recommends taking special care to maintain physical contact in those moments. “Even just keeping your arm on your partner’s back for a second longer than you think you need to will allow them to know they are supported and can rely on you,” he says.

5. Don’t shorten your plié.
One of the simplest ways to be a reliable partner is to make sure your body’s momentum and, especially, your pliés are clear and easy to read. “It’s kind of like handing someone a cup of tea: You don’t let go until you know they have it,” Duckstein says. “A clear plié lets your partner know when you’re ready for what comes next.”

6. Practice!
Just because there aren’t many partnering classes out there doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to do it on your own. While on tour with Anastasia last year, Rands and his friends used the extra time during their lift calls to research and try new lifts. “Take every opportunity to learn from your friends and figure out what works for you,” he says. For something a little more formal, Duckstein recommends contact improvisation classes, which will familiarize you with weight-sharing and other aspects of partner work.

Head on over to Dance Magazine’s YouTube channel for a look inside our partnering rehearsal, as well as my full interview with Biesinger and Rands.

The post Dancer Diary: The Partnering Predicament appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Pam started dancing when she was in fourth grade and “it just stuck,” she says. At Steffi Nossen­ School of Dance in Scarsdale, New York, she “sponged” as much dance knowledge as she could from her teachers. She started with modern and then took on jazz and ballet, with a brief stint in pointe class. “I was a good dancer, not a great dancer. I could only go up [on pointe] on my right foot. It was weird.” While she may not have excelled in the execution of the steps, Pam’s work now borrows from each of these genres expertly.

At Ohio State, she realized she was more interested in making work than trying to fit into someone else’s mold. After college, she moved right to New York City. From then until I was born in 2000, her work went relatively unnoticed. She acknowledges the frustrations of this time in her career, but, in hindsight, she’s extremely grateful for it.

“It allowed me the time to work when no one was watching me,” she says. “That was invaluable. I just did things and I didn’t think. For better or for worse, I had a nice group of friends who helped me. You have to learn to create yourself with those around you.”

I hardly remember a time when her work wasn’t at the forefront of dance conversations. But after I was born, she tells me, was when good things started happening for her.

“You made me a better artist. I felt like I made better work after I was a mother. I realized that it’s not just about me—there are bigger things. Having a child makes you see that fast.”

“This is a good interview,” my mom tells me, laughing—always encouraging my passions and allowing me the space to explore them. She’s always just wanted me to love what I do, as she does. My writing is a reflection of that.

My friends and I, as young artists in New York City, are always picking her brain and asking her how she did it. She tells me that, as an assistant professor at Rutgers University, all of her students constantly ask her the same question.

“There’s no real formula,” she says. “You just have to love it enough that even if nobody ever sees what you make, you’re still happy.”

The post Why My Mom, Pam Tanowitz, Dances appeared first on Dance Magazine.

How does performing feel now?

Performing has always been my most challenging point. I didn’t live for the show—I lived for class, for rehearsal, being in new choreography, teaching. My “why” is so much more clear now. I don’t want the authenticity of my art to be muddied by anything ego-driven. I asked for that from the universe. Robbie Fairchild and I danced together in Vail this summer—I ended up flat on my butt in our first La Sonnambula performance, and I was trying to figure out why it happened. And what I came down to was: This is exactly what I asked for—humility!

You now feel like you can make art that is yours.

That’s it. I love choreography more than almost anything. Choreography can seem like you’re placing people in certain positions, and you put it to music and it’s great. But it’s even greater than that, because you’re working with live human beings, and they have will of their own, and things they want to say. They surprise you all the time.

What made you feel confident about retiring from NYCB?

During the pandemic, I had time to take a harder look at my life. A lot of the decisions I was making were based on fear or pride. I didn’t know where money would come from, I didn’t have a job, there wasn’t a single person in my life that thought leaving was a good idea. But it could all disappear tomorrow, and I could still stand in myself and say, “I did what was right for me.” I would tell any artist, “I hope that when it comes to your art, you always take a job because it feels true, not because you will take anything you can get.”

You knew people at the highest levels in the dance world, which was an advantage. What else did it take to make this massive change?

I had to rebuild myself emotionally—I went through a big breakup around the same time. Next, it was building a website, reaching out to people I wanted to collaborate with, making connections with people. City Ballet had so many resources, so, you’re right, I had a foundation to build off. But my barometer for everything was: Does this feel true?

How did the Taylor job come about?

[PTDC artistic director] Michael Novak saw Not Our Fate, a piece with a male duet I made for City Ballet, and contacted me. I was terribly nervous to work on my first Taylor commission, Pentimento, but I loved it from the first day. Afterward I went into Michael’s office and said, “I really want to make something else for your company.” I wasn’t met with unkindness, but I wasn’t met with eagerness. I thought, I’m never going to make anything else for this company. Then after I left City Ballet, I got the call.

How do you manage running a freelance business?

I don’t come from the most financially stable upbringing, and I don’t have the education a lot of other people have. So since day one as a ballerina, I was taking every job I could to build savings; I was already doing contract negotiations and emails. The new skills were learning about nonprofits, how to produce shows, marketing. I also have a business partner, Lauren King, who was a soloist at City Ballet. I don’t want anyone to think that I’m doing this alone, because I’m not. Taylor pays for my life. The nonprofit is very small, and neither of us gets a salary.

You have a world premiere, Echo, and a New York premiere, Dreamachine, with Taylor this November.

Echo is my first all-men’s piece for Taylor—the men are beautiful and elegant and strong. The other piece, Dreamachine, is bizarre and fun! It has four movements: In “Da Vinci’s Wings,” a choreographer is making a piece that keeps falling apart. The cartoonist Rube Goldberg inspired the second movement; we use a lot of props, and it’s silly. In the third movement, I wanted the dancers to float, so they’re wearing Heelys and slippery socks. The last movement is inspired by Spock from “Star Trek.”

What are your future plans?

I have three ideas for Taylor, but I can’t talk about them yet! At Taylor, there are no rules. There’s no box I have to fit inside of. It’s so fun to ask the question every day, What is dance?

The post Lauren Lovette on Her Career Pivot From Dancer to Dancemaker appeared first on Dance Magazine.

AMDA’s curriculum is designed accordingly. With classes that place emphasis on every aspect of the dance industry, from technique, performance, and choreography to administration, personal branding, and content creation, graduates emerge fully prepared to navigate the excitement, and challenges—and unpredictability—of a career in dance. 

“In 2023, you need to not only be a dancer and artist, but you also need to be your own content creator,” McHargh says. “You need to also know the business of dance—and how to produce a show. Students are gaining all of that information within the curriculum here.” McHargh adds that the majority of AMDA’s faculty are active within the dance industry, so fostering professional connections—which often lead to work postgraduation—is inherent to being an AMDA dance major.

The importance of self-care and building a sustainable career are also embedded into the curriculum. Students have access to a variety of mental and physical health resources at AMDA’s Center for Health and Performance, and teachers regularly check in with them about their well-being, helping them cultivate healthy habits they can carry into their careers. “It’s embedded in our culture to talk about those things,” says McHargh. AMDA grads know how to craft a viable work schedule consisting of a range of professional opportunities, so they are prepared to find work at any age, any stage, or in any situation.

From start to finish, AMDA’s program is designed to prepare dancers for long, healthy, and diverse careers. Check out these highlights from two alums’ 2023 in review.

Agnes Royster-Stallion

Coaching movement therapy: “I graduated from AMDA in 2017, and I did work professionally in L.A. for a year after that. I wanted to do work that I felt would be more fulfilling, so I did a specialization in movement therapy, and that’s what I’ve been focused on this past year. I started coaching clients in movement therapy, using dance and body movements with breathwork and meditation to help relieve stress, anxiety, trauma, and lack of creativity.”

Working with her Haiti-based company, WAYS: “I was in Haiti for the past three years. I started my dance company, WAYS, and we launched last year. It’s an acronym for ‘With All Your Soul.’ It’s really based on Haitian folklore, Haitian dance, and contemporary. I wanted to showcase quality work in the Haitian community to the world.”

Producing Mastered, an original dance film: “My husband, Marc Stallion [also an AMDA alumni], and I did a short dance film, called Mastered, based on anxiety. He wrote and directed it, and I choreographed and danced in it. We are submitting it to festivals. So far, we have nominations for Film Shortage and the Venice Film Festival.”

Ryan Ruiz

Company member with Diavolo: “I definitely think the push for creativity and creating at AMDA was extremely helpful for me in the work with Diavolo. A lot of the work is not necessarily choreographed steps given to me; it’s more that I’m given a task and then I create something in the moment.”

Performing in music videos: “About a year ago I did the music video ‘Something to Lose,’ by Anna Margo, and choreographed by Mike Tyus. Then I did a music video for Nieri, choreographed by Baylie and McCall Olsen.”

Performing in multidisciplinary artist Sara Silkin’s Still: “It was a weekend of small shows, and it was a very fast process to learn movements in a complicated costume of sheer fabric that is essentially two dresses attached to each other. The piece was about 20 minutes, and we did multiple shows per day, and it also ended with us creating a dance film of the piece.”

Teaching at Los Angeles–based dance studios GENESIS and The Space_LA: “My class is called Contemporary Flow, and I also teach a floorwork-based class, as well. I love referencing teachers from AMDA and giving them credit when I’m teaching.”

Teaching Contemporary Foundations at AMDA: “It was one of the first classes of the morning and it consisted of mostly delving deeper into a more technical space rather than the creative space, honing in on technical aspects of contemporary movement.”

Presenting choreography at SpectorDance’s Choreographers’ Showcase: “The piece was called This didn’t happen overnight. This was my first work presented outside of an educational space. It’s a duet that plays with the ideas of issues of stereotypes within Asian culture.”

The post The Dance Year in Review According to AMDA Alumni appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The December 1958 story—and that month’s cover, above—showcased some of the photos of Goslar that Playhouse Pictures used for reference for a series of animated recruitment trailers commissioned by the U.S. Navy,­ which won a gold medal for the best complete television animated film of 1957 from the New York Art Directors Club. The film is the story “of a young man who wants excitement from life. His Fairy Godmother, bumbling, turns him first into a chicken, then into a horse, then into a medieval knight—and, of course, none of these are what he wants. Then she reaches triple-hard to transform him with a touch of her wand, and in her enthusiasm whacks him, getting him what he wants—a chance to join the Navy. The wand flies wildly off, Fairy Godmother explodes into thin air.” 

The post TBT: Lotte Goslar Modeling a Hapless Fairy Godmother for an Animated Cartoon appeared first on Dance Magazine.

While dancing barefoot may present unexpected challenges, requiring dancers to strengthen different muscles and pay extra attention to foot health, it can also inspire new ways of approaching movement.

Recalibrate Muscles

For dancers accustomed to performing in shoes, dancing barefoot might require engaging less-used muscles. “The way you approach movement is going to be different,” says Khalia Campbell, a dancer with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Dancing barefoot offers an increased connection with the floor that Campbell says has changed the way she shifts her weight, and it can affect balance and alignment, as well.

Dancing without shoes also demands greater engagement from foot muscles, necessitating changes to both warm-up and conditioning routines. Blumenfeld utilizes a series of exercises inspired by a former ballet instructor to get the minuscule foot muscles firing and to find articulation, including stretching each toe individually before pressing each one into the ground with as much strength as possible. She also does foot and ankle exercises with a TheraBand and sequences of tendus. Exercises like arch lifts and doming can also help develo­p the intrinsic muscles of the feet.

Foot Fitness

Shoes provide support and cushioning, so it’s important to take extra care of the feet when dancing barefoot. In the studio, feet should be clean and free of cuts, blisters, or infections that could worsen without shoes. Over time, calluses will naturally develop. While they serve as a protective barrier and can help with turning and gliding, excessively thick calluses may reduce the ability to feel the floor.

The conditions of a studio or stage floor can have a different impact on bare feet. Campbell notes that turning on a sticky floor in bare feet can make a knee injury more likely: “Your foot is going one way and your knee can go the other way because of the friction from the floor.” For a sticky floor, Campbell recommends strengthening the glutes and other turnout muscles, so as to rely on musculature, as opposed to joints and other connective tissue, for support.

A bit more self-care is also a requirement when dancing barefoot. “It’s important that you take the time and learn the things that you need to do to stay well,” Bagley says, adding that a calf stretch is an important addition to warm-up. Rolling out the feet with a tennis ball, massaging them, and/or soaking them in warm water and Epsom salt can reduce muscle tension and soreness after a long day of dancing.

Allow Artistry to Blossom

Dancing barefoot can provide new perspectives on even the most familiar of movements. For So Young An, a dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company who used to be a member of the Korean National Ballet, transitioning to dancing barefoot opened up a whole new realm of creative possibility.

“Graham is about gravity, so you really have to connect to the floor and feel the earth,” she says. “That doesn’t mean always sinking down. I can use ballet technique in the upper body to lift up, but my legs and feet really connect to the ground and it expands my lines.”

Campbell, too, says she feels an increased artistic expansiveness when dancing barefoot. “When I transitioned to dancing barefoot fully, I noticed there’s a sense of connectivity to the floor and to the ground,” she says. “And, also, I feel like when I dance barefoot it gives me access to be more expressive with my body.”

The post Tricks and Tips for Getting Comfortable Dancing Barefoot appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Through RDA’s programs—including its Regional and National festivals, National Choreography Intensive, adjudication, and scholarship offerings—dancers gain invaluable experience. From performing in new styles to making meaningful career connections, the opportunities are as numerous as the unique paths participants may take in the years that follow. After all, a successful dance company alum is not just an experienced artist, but a curious, open-eyed, ambitious individual who can apply skills learned from their youth to studios and worlds beyond.

Ahead of the 2024 National Festival taking place April 24–27, 2024, in Daytona Beach, we asked five RDA alumni to trace their successful careers back to those seeds planted during their early experiences with Regional Dance America.

Kerry Kapaku: Owner of DanceWorks Indy

At the start of high school, Kerry Kapaku made the switch from her previous dance studio to Southern New Hampshire Dance Theater, an RDA member studio. At the time, Kapaku didn’t know how important that decision would be, but the experience ended up shaping her entire career trajectory.

Before attending RDA, she says, “I truly was ballet, ballet, ballet, my whole life. I thought it was going to be my forever thing.” After high school, Kapaku spent a year as a trainee at BalletMet. Soon enough, however, she realized that her passion for dance burned brightest when she had been preparing modern and contemporary pieces for RDA’s adjudicators and training in jazz and African dance as a scholarship recipient at RDA festivals. Kapaku decided to lean into those experiences and went on to major in modern dance at Ohio State University.

Kapaku now owns DanceWorks Indy, an all-adult dance studio in Indianapolis. In DanceWorks’ drop-in classes, particularly in its beginner workshops, Kapaku’s teachers incorporate historical elements, even emailing students videos, articles, and other materials about the dance style so they can further their study outside of the studio. Kapaku absolutely loved it when an RDA teacher had done this for her, and has found that her adult students feel similarly: “We have gotten such good feedback. People think, ‘I’m really invested because I’m learning more than just steps.’ ”

Tommie Earl Jenkins: Award-winning voice, television, and musical theater actor

Tommie Earl Jenkins is an incredible performer. Full stop. Yet the dance world may never have seen his potential without the opportunities afforded by RDA and Canton Ballet during his teenage years in Ohio. “I grew up in a small town where most people relinquish their dreams and aspirations and go, ‘Well, this is my life.’ ” But Jenkins was determined. “I knew from an early age that I was going to get out of this city.” His family could not afford dance lessons, so he worked out a deal with Canton Ballet director Cassandra Crowley to do odd jobs around the studio in exchange for ballet classes.

When the opportunities came through RDA, Jenkins seized them. He performed at multiple Regional festivals and received a scholarship to attend the National Choreography Intensive in New York City. The intensive changed his life in two ways. First, he was spotted by Duluth Ballet of Minnesota’s artistic director, who offered him his first paying dance job. “I felt like, ‘I actually made it. I’m actually earning money doing what I love.’ ”

Second, it gave him the confidence to go back to New York City and reach for even higher performing dreams in musical theater. Today, Jenkins is an award-winning actor with credits ranging from shows on Broadway and the West End, including CATS, Jersey Boys,and A Chorus Line, to TV and voice-acting appearances for NBC, ABC, CBS, USA, The CW, and Netflix. “Dreams don’t have an expiry date on them. They only expire if you let them expire,” says Jenkins. “You just have to keep walking towards them.” Jenkins did the walking; RDA set him on the path.

Elizabeth Yilmaz: Performer with the Metropolitan Opera, founder and producer of Art Bath, and educator

If you had told Elizabeth Yilmaz’s teenage self that she would hold this many titles, she might not have believed you. She’s a dancer with the Metropolitan Opera, a faculty member at 92NY and the Joffrey Ballet School, an alumna and advisory board member of Marymount Manhattan College, and co-founder of the New York City–based art and dance salon Art Bath. And, recently, Yilmaz also started teaching with RDA. “It’s a full-circle moment,” she says.

Yilmaz attended RDA Regional festivals with Roswell Dance Theatre every year throughout high school and was awarded numerous scholarships to train at Atlanta Ballet, Houston Ballet, and Boston Ballet. However, attending a Joffrey Ballet School summer intensive in New York City, through a scholarship earned at RDA, marked her first taste of the dance world in which she’d later be fully immersed.

While she excelled onstage at the festivals, Yilmaz also credits RDA for her first exposure to the behind-the-scenes realm of dance, including accompanists and costume vendors. Now, whether she’s producing experimental works with the likes of American Ballet Theatre principal Devon Teuscher at Art Bath, teaching the next generation of young dancers, or performing in such opera classics as La Traviata and Eugene Onegin, Yilmaz carries her RDA experiences into everything she does.

Gabriella Galati: Sports reporter and producer for 6abc Action News in Philadelphia

Gabriella Galati knows a thing or two about being sidelined. “I actually never wanted my dance career to end. It ended under circumstances that were out of my control,” she says. “Little did I know, my training had already prepared me for life.” She had been involved with RDA from a very early age, attending Regional festivals in seventh and eighth grades as an understudy. “One year, I understudied five pieces and never performed a single one at RDA. As a student that can be frustrating,” she says. However, it was exactly this experience—learning how to stay prepared and motivated from the wings and how to perform at any moment under pressure—that gave her an advantage in sports broadcasting. “TV is similar in that you always have to roll with the punches. It’s not a flawless medium. Things happen all the time, but I know I have it in me to think on my feet, adjust, and continue forward.”

After her dancing days, Galati went on to serve as an on-air personality for the Philadelphia Eagles football team and anchor the NFL’s live draft coverage. In 2023, she joined Philadelphia’s 6abc Action News as a reporter, anchor, and producer. Though she has traded Nutcrackers for touchdowns, Galati credits her dance background for everything from learning punctuality and discipline to being a team player and having a thick skin. She reflects, “I draw a lot of inspiration from the fearless young girl who took the stage at RDA.”

Henry Griffin: Boston Ballet artist

For ballet dancers from smaller regional studios, competitions may seem like the most obvious path to top national ballet schools and, eventually, companies. However, Boston Ballet company artist Henry Griffin, who grew up training at RDA member studio Philadelphia Dance Theatre, never set foot on a competition stage. His foot in the door was the direct result of an RDA festival, at which he was offered a scholarship to train at the Ballet Academy of Texas. There, he met guest teacher Peter Stark, who would later become his first boss as the associate director of Boston Ballet II. When Griffin turned 18 and auditioned for Boston Ballet II, he says, “Peter knew me right away. He fast-tracked my video to the director.” 

Griffin attended the RDA National Festival in 2017 and a National Choreography Intensive in addition to RDA Regional festivals. He finds that he grew more from RDA’s emphases on dancing in a group and artistic development than he would have from a competition. “I distinctly remember coming out of those performances feeling like a different dancer. It’s performing under high pressure without worrying about, oh, first place, second place.” Without that premium placed on winning and scores, he says, “RDA is much more like a festival—a celebration rather than a competition.”

The post These 5 Alumni Prove That Regional Dance America Opens Diverse Doors appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Much of the Western dance world prizes youth. But some dance traditions, including classical Indian dance, flamenco, and tap, value the gifts of the older dancer. Unlike contemporary dance and ballet, which tend to prioritize skills that erode as we age—extreme flexibility, buoyant jumps—these practices enlist skill sets that develop and deepen over time. And their communities support long performing and teaching careers.

A Different Type of Virtuosity

Flamenco, classical Indian dance, and tap “are all percussive forms, where the virtuosity is not about lifting your leg or your body into the air,” says Maura Keefe, an associate professor of dance and director of the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Musicality, another ability that is less dependent on the body and that develops through time, also plays a crucial role in percussive styles.

And storytelling, which involves a large palette of expression that goes beyond the physical vocabulary, lives at the center of these multifaceted traditions. Bharatanatyam, for example, requires a deep understanding of the mythology, poetics, music, literature, and language that the dances are based on. “There’s so much research involved,” says Ranee Ramaswamy. “These are deep stories that involve deep communication. It’s a layered process.”

Gabriela Estrada, a flamenco scholar and choreographer and assistant professor of dance at University of Houston, says the essence of flamenco resides in its actitud, or attitude. “Its rhythm, its legacy, its humanity, its warmth, its opportunities to listen to the deepest thoughts conveyed in the cante [singing]—it is about the essence of humanity, the deepest emotions from the heart and soul of the people,” says Estrada, who is in her 50s. “It’s ageless.”

For tap legend Brenda Bufalino, who at 86 keeps an active schedule of performing and teaching, developing her relationship to her audience has been her life’s work, inspired by her longtime mentor and friend Charles “Honi” Coles. “Tap is storytelling,” she says. “We carry history, we like to hear stories and tell stories, and you need a little age on you to tell a good story.”

A History of Respect

It’s not coincidental that many of the traditions that revere older dancers developed in social settings, rather than formal dance studios and theaters. “We have to consider the community roots of these forms,” says Keefe. “Flamenco and tap are participatory dances, where it’s not an exception to have older performers.” Elders have always been part of these traditions as teachers, performers, and mentors.

“Spanish dance comes from community dance, so the different members of the community, the younger and older, would be present,” says Estrada. “It’s not about a dancer in front of a mirror. It’s about people sharing experiences.” (Estrada recalls the Spanish dancer Antonio Gades’ famous saying: “Flamenco is for everyone.”)

Bharatanatyam’s ancient roots are in courts, salons, and temples of South India. “Respecting our elders grew over generations,” says Ramaswamy. “The Indian culture respects elders; age is associated with wisdom.” It is not unusual to see classical Indian dancers well into their 60s commanding full audiences for their solo shows, like Alarmél Valli, Ramaswamy’s legendary teacher.

Tap, says Bufalino, “is a multigenerational community.” She believes her longevity stems from her endless curiosity about the form itself. “There is just so much to learn,” she says. “The form is so difficult to master, we don’t reach our peak at 19 or 20—more like our late 40s. I was considered young until I was 60.”

Accommodating the Older Body

Even dance traditions that are friendlier to older bodies are still quite strenuous, as is the life of a touring artist. For Estrada, the key includes thinking strategically about dynamic alignment, movement efficiency, and the balance between strength and flexibility. Flamenco’s emphasis on the nuances of the upper body also means the form is more doable for older dancers, particularly women. “Traditionally women would dance from the waist up and men from the waist down, with women focusing on the expressiveness of the upper body through the braceo [movement of the arms] and the floreo [movement of the hands],” says Estrada.

Bufalino is going strong presenting her one-woman shows, but acknowledges there are physical limitations. “Performing is the easy part. I bring something wonderful to my audience,” says Bufalino. “It’s the practicing that’s difficult.” She handles tap’s demands by applying her energy strategically. “I can dance as fast as anyone, but I don’t do it using effort,” she says. “It’s always fluid and it’s always musical.”

Ramaswamy combines hot yoga, Pilates, and walking with daily dance practice in her home-based studio. She made a decision in 2020 to shift how she approaches performing. “I wanted to focus on the expressive aspect of the work, which deals with emotions,” she says. “Acting improves with age.”

Like flamenco, classical Indian dance also emphasizes the expressive power of the hands and arms. With bharatanatyam’s 28 single-handed gestures and 24 double-handed gestures, Ramaswamy has an ocean of possibilities to explore in her hands alone. She intends to continue performing in the coming years while also actively participating in the creation and choreography aspects of the work.

Any form that embraces older dancers benefits from their deep wells of emotional intelligence—the wisdom and nuance that can only come from a life fully lived. “It takes a long time,” Keefe says, “to become an artist.”

The post Golden Age: Dance Traditions That Revere Their Elders appeared first on Dance Magazine.

For Maria Haralambis—a dancer, dance teacher, Pilates instructor, and kinesiologist also known as The Dance Scientist—the answer is an emphatic yes. “Dancers are high-performing athletes,” she says.

According to Haralambis and other experts, dancers have a lot to gain from seeing themselves as athletes—and training more like it. Advances in sports science over the last several decades have revolutionized the way most athletes train. By contrast, dance training has remained relatively unchanged. For many years, the same was true for other “artistic athletes,” like gymnasts and figure skaters. But, recently, they’ve leapt far ahead of dancers when it comes to incorporating science-backed methods into their training programs.

Many in the dance world are resistant to change, and in a way that’s not surprising: When perfection is the standard, and tradition counts for so much, it can feel risky to try anything new. And confusion over whether dancers are athletes also goes both ways. “A lot of people in the sports performance and conditioning world don’t really respect dance,” says Present Tense Fitness co-owner Jason Harrison, a strength and conditioning coach who works with professional dancers from companies including New York City Ballet and the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company.

So, yes, dancers could learn a lot from the field of sports performance. But athletes could stand to learn a few things from dancers, as well.

Dancers Should Be Lifting Weights

It’s time to break the dance-world stigma around strength training. All of the experts interviewed for this article agreed: Adding weight lifting into cross-training routines is one of the most important things dancers can do to increase longevity and reduce risk of injury.

First, let’s bust the biggest myth once and for all: Lifting weights is not going to make you bulk up. “In order to actually increase muscle bulk, you need to train specifically to get larger, and you need to be in a calorie surplus,” says Julia Iafrate, DO, a dance and sports medicine physician at NYU Langone Health who has worked with professional dancers from ballet to hip hop. In other words, to get bigger, you’d have to dedicate a lot of time to weight lifting and eat a lot of protein—so much that it would probably feel difficult. And even the idea that “bulk” is bad is rooted in sexist and racist attitudes that the dance world should work to get rid of, says Harrison.

A common misconception among dancers is that strength exercises need to look exactly like dance movements in order to translate properly to improvements in class or rehearsal. But that’s not the case. “Strength training improves the resilience of your connective tissue throughout your entire body,” says Rena Eleázar, DPT, a physical therapist and sports performance coach who has worked with a wide range of dancers and other athletes, and is a competitive weightlifter and hip-hop dancer herself. Strength training is actually a good opportunity to work muscles that don’t get as much work in dance class, says Iafrate, who notes that it also builds stability, which is especially important for hyperflexible dancers.

That said, there’s always room for some dance-specific movements to help you work toward a particular goal, says Harrison. For example, he recently added some interval-style petit allégro training into his sessions with one client to help her prepare for a season with a new ballet company.

Dancers Should Learn That Less Can Be More

Here’s a statement that might sound sacrilegious but is very likely true: You’re dancing too much.

In dance, “more is better” tends to be the driving ethos. But the truth is that “you do not need to do the exact same jeté over and over again without changing any of your strength or biomechanics,” Iafrate says. “After a certain point, you will not change the dance move.” There’s only so long your body—and brain—can really produce its best effort.

If incorporating better cross-training means replacing or shortening some of your time in class, you might actually find that to be a useful change. Dedicating time to cross-training “is not losing technique time—it’s maximizing what you’re working on in class,” says Haralambis.

You may even need to reduce your overall active time. “Based on the current literature, we know that your risk of injury goes up if you’re doing any athletic activity for more than 16 hours a week,” Iafrate says. “Dance tends to blow that out of the water.”

Dancers Should Taper Before Performance

Sports performance coaches also talk a lot about “periodization,” which refers to a training plan that progresses in a measured way over time, helping to maximize performance and minimize the risk of injury. Athletes’ training plans also generally involve a “taper,” or a reduction in overall workload for a certain period leading up to a big event, allowing time for recovery.

This is pretty much the opposite of how dancers tend to approach training, pushing hardest in rehearsal immediately before, and even the week or day of, a big show. “It’s almost like, if you can survive the process, then congratulations, you get to perform,” says Harrison. Teachers and directors should instead consider having dancers “peak,” or train the hardest, a few weeks before a performance or competition, and then taper.

If all of this sounds like a radical departure from what you know, keep in mind that dance is different these days, too. “We’re asking our dancers to be able to do so much more than they were 20 or 30 years ago,” says Haralambis. “More acrobatic and athletic movements are more and more common in dance.”

Ideally, dancers, teachers, and even directors shouldn’t be on their own to figure all of this out. “A truly modern and progressive approach to dance would have room for strength coaches who think all day about strength, athleticism, resilience, and conditioning for dancers,” says Harrison, pointing to The Royal Ballet as an example of a company that is embracing this model.

What Athletes Can Learn From Dancers

Though dancers may be prone to overdoing it, our attention to detail can also be an advantage. The strong focus on technique in dance training may reduce the risk of some types of injury.

Researchers at the Harkness Center for Dance Injuries, for instance, found that dancers are less likely than other athletes to experience one of the most common sports injuries: tears of the ACL, a knee ligament. That’s despite the fact that dance is full of the kinds of movements most associated with ACL tears, particularly single-legged jump landings. The study also found that, in most cases, there was no difference in the rate of ACL tears between male and female dancers, whereas in other sports, female athletes are significantly more likely to experience this injury. The researchers theorize that dance technique, with its focus on controlled jump landings, reduces the risk of injury and knocks out that gender disparity.

So technique really does matter. And many professional athletes know this, having turned to dance for help improving their agility, coordination, and balance. Numerous professional football players have taken ballet classes to learn to move with more finesse—NFL player Steve McLendon once said that ballet is “harder than anything else I do.” Basketball legend Kobe Bryant even took up tap dancing to strengthen his ankles after a sprain.

Dance has a lot of other sports beat when it comes to our focus on neuromuscular control and technical execution. Where other athletes are ahead of us is in following more carefully designed training plans and prioritizing their recovery. Clearly, we have a lot to learn from each other.

The post What Dancers Can Learn From Sports Performance Training appeared first on Dance Magazine.