A Dance To Be Free class with incarcerated women. Photo courtesy Dance To Be Free
"I put on Lorde for a warm-up song," says Lucy Wallace, recalling a dance class she was giving to a new group of students. "As soon as I started moving—literally just stepped to the right and moved my arm—this woman behind me said, 'Oh! This is spiritual.' "
But she wasn't the typical dance student, nor was this a typical studio. This woman is serving a life sentence at Denver Women's Correctional Facility.
As a dancer with hemiplegia cerebral palsy, Jerron Herman has never been far from the physical therapy room—or an occupational therapist or some kind of medical interventionist. "I'm almost always in deep conversation with that kind of practitioner," says Herman, who performs with Heidi Latsky Dance.
It's part of keeping his body ready to dance—and to move throughout his daily life. Herman shared his routine with Dance Magazine.
"Weirdo. Pervert. Disgusting." These are just a few of the insults—and the milder ones at that—often directed at pole dancers. Perhaps more than any other dancers, its practitioners are constantly fighting for recognition that they are indeed athlete artists. Now, they're getting major support from a surprising source: Sprite.
At first I didn't consider the possibility of becoming a dance major. In high school, I wanted to be a doctor. I started college on the pre-med track, but found myself waking up in the middle of the night with an urge to express myself physically. I would get out of bed and go dance on top of the parking garages on campus.
Maria Kochetkova knows you can't have everything. So the international ballet star is prioritizing one thing: Freedom.
"The perfect company doesn't exist," she says. "For me, it is most important to have freedom as an artist. Our career is so short and I want to have opportunities that exist outside of companies. I want to know and learn everything about my craft from classical to contemporary."
Hala Shah in a workshop performance of Calling: a dance with faith. Photo by Idris Ademola, Courtesy Shah.
Growing up, I never saw a problem with my dancing and neither did my Muslim-Egyptian dad or my non-Muslim, American mom. They raised me to understand that the core principles of Islam, of any religion, are meant to help us be better people. When I married my Pakistani husband, who comes from a more conservative approach to Islam, I suddenly encountered perceptions of dance that made me question everything: Is it okay to expose a lot of skin? Is it wrong to dance with other men? Is dance inherently sexual? What guidelines come from our holy book, the Quran, and what are cultural views that have become entwined in Islam?
When Catherine Wreford found out that she had brain cancer in June 2013, with doctors predicting she had only two to six years left to live, there was one thing she knew she wanted to do: dance.
She had grown up training in the recreational division at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School, then went on to perform on Broadway and in musical theater productions around the country. She eventually left the stage to find more stable work, running a mortgage company and later getting a nursing degree because, she says, "I knew that I could do that for a long time."
But a diagnosis of anaplastic astrocytoma meant she didn't have a long time left.
Lately, there has been much ado about diversity, equity and inclusion in ballet. While it's clear what increased diversity would look like (having more dancers, teachers, choreographers and administrators of color working in the field), equity and inclusion are a bit more nebulous. Yet Nashville Ballet's new ballet Lucy Negro Redux might give us a glimpse of what inclusion could look like.
Choreographed by artistic director Paul Vasterling, the ballet derives its provocative title from poet Caroline Randell William's book, which explores the woman behind Shakespeare's "Dark Lady" sonnets. Through her research, Williams came to discover that Lucy Negro was in fact an Elizabethan era black brothel owner who enchanted the Bard.
Marinda Davis. Photo by Louise Flores, Courtesy Davis
When Marinda Davis was named second runner-up at the 2015 Capezio A.C.E. Awards, she dove headfirst into choreographing and producing a full-length show for her company, marInspired; the storytellers. But as her career was booming, Davis' body was breaking down. Behind the scenes, she was dealing with eight very serious illnesses, one of which led to a months-long hospital stay. Now, as she prepares a piece for Giordano Dance Chicago (debuting in March), Davis reflects on how she's powered through it all.
Thoughts on gender have evolved since Louis XIV's era. Maybe it's time training evolves too. Photo by Matthew Murphy for Pointe.
Next semester, there'll be a new course name on the syllabus of Boston Conservatory at Berklee: "Constructed Gender Identities in Classical Ballet: Men's Variations."
But this is not a new course, just a new title. The old name is one you might recognize: "Men's Class."
Judith Lynne Hanna in a still from "Partying Alone." Image courtesy Fox Force
Egg Drop Soup's "Partying Alone" video turns a run-of-the-mill dance team audition on its head with a vision of female power from a mature woman. The panel is stunned when a gray-haired, red-lipsticked 80-something tosses aside her cane and lets loose, flipping her hair—and the bird.
Egg Drop Soup - Partying Alone (Official music video)
Take a second look at that head-banging grandma—she is none other than renowned dance researcher and anthropologist Judith Lynne Hanna. An affiliate research professor in anthropology at the University of Maryland, College Park, the author of numerous scholarly books and an expert witness in trials for exotic dancers, shehas spent her career getting us to think about dance's relationship to society. Hanna, 82, said she hadn't performed since college when she got a call from a music video producer, who caught a video of her dancing with her 13-year-old grandson. The rockers of Egg Drop Soup loved her energy and flew her out to Los Angeles for a day-long video shoot. We spoke to Hanna about the experience.
A still from the new documentary, DANSEUR. Image courtesy DANSEUR
According to the new documentary DANSEUR, 85% of males who study dance in the United States are bullied or harassed. A quote in the film from Dr. Doug Risner, faculty member at Wayne State University, states, "If this scope of bullying occurred in any activity other than dance, it would be considered a public health crisis by the CDC."
So why is it allowed to persist in ballet? And why aren't we talking about it more? These are the questions that DANSEUR seeks to answer. But primarily consisting of dance footage and interviews with male dancers like ABT's James Whiteside, Houston Ballet's Harper Watters and Boston Ballet's Derek Dunn, the film only addresses these issues superficially, with anecdotes about individual experiences and generalizations about what it's like to be a male dancer.
Anna Rogovoy in her dual roles of toy shop manager and dancer/choreographer. Left photo by Olympia Shannon; right photo by Kathryn Butler
Few dancers are able to make a comfortable living from their creative pursuits alone. Many rely on non-dance freelance work or multiple part-time gigs, fearing that a full-time job would take too much time away from their dancing. However, plenty of artists manage to balance full-time day jobs with fulfilling dance careers, opting for the security, benefits and opportunity to learn new skills.
Sarah Reich has turned her tap shoes into instruments. Photo by Christopher Erk
Perhaps the most precious tradition in tap dance is honoring the elders, reflecting a belief that dancers cannot tap a sound without re-sounding the steps of the masters. This show of gratitude is not nostalgic but regenerative: the practice of realizing the future from the past while making one's own inscription on the tradition.
And so it is with Sarah Reich and the release of her debut album, New Change, a mix of original tunes composed of percussive tap rhythms performed by Reich and an ensemble of jazz musicians. The tunes are dedicated to and named after jazz tap masters—from Harold Cromer, the tap dancer/vaudevillian who was Reich's decade-long mentor, to such notables as Ted Louis Levy, Arthur Duncan, Ivery Wheeler, Jason Samuels Smith, Brenda Bufalino and Dianne "Lady Di" Walker.
What is "new" in New Change is the common-sense idea that tap dance is music—and that it can be composed by tap dancers.
Seyi Oluyole uses dance to radically change children's lives in Lagos. Via DreamCatchersDance on YouTube.
In Ikoradu, a part of Lagos, Nigeria, "The parents here don't believe in education," says Seyi Oluyole, in a video for Great Big Story. "They just want their kids to just sell stuff." Instead of watching the cycle continue, Oluyole took it upon herself to change these children's lives in a radical way.
