a group of dancers on stage wearing all blue holding their hands outstretched above their heads

How Dance Artists are Fusing ASL With Choreography

For Deaf audiences, watching performances with traditional sign language interpretation can feel like watching a tennis match: Their focus has to toggle between whatever is happening onstage and the interpreter, often off to the side, who might be communicating what the music sounds like or what’s being said. That’s if the performance even has an interpreter, which all too often is not the case.

a female tap dancer front and center with a man playing the piano in the right corner

4 Choreographers and Their Go-To Nondancer Collaborators on Making Magic Together

For choreographers, the name of the game is, frequently, collaboration: with dancers, with designers, with composers. But what about the choreographers who find artistic soulmates, making long-term collaboration central to how they create work? That kind of partnership can transcend disciplines, decades, and dynamic approaches, leading to a distinctly exciting kind of art-making.

a group of female dancers wearing long red dresses and white hats

The Pleasure and Pitfalls of Creating Ballets Based on Contemporary Literature

The weaving together of movement and language into art seems natural and inevitable, given ballet’s long history as a narrative art form, and our current cultural infatuation with visual storytelling as a means of communication. Yet choreographers’ interest in tying ballet directly to literature is a notable turnaround from the 20th century’s Balanchine-influenced rise of abstract, plotless ballets.

How Tomorrow’s Choreographers Are Cultivated at Marymount Manhattan College

Most students major in dance seeking rigorous training and career-focused knowledge to succeed in the professional world. But the team at Marymount Manhattan College doesn’t just help students land their dream dance job—they give them the tools to create it. With a degree program unmatched in its flexibility, dance students at Marymount can craft a course of […]

a male dancer kneeling on a bed of rice with rice falling down on him

How Dance Artists are Taking Inspiration From What They Eat

Food has played a role in Jay Carlon’s work since 2020, when the pandemic prompted his deep reflection into what it would look like to decolonize performance. “I wanted to do that with feeding the audience,” he remembers. “If you ever go to a Filipino household, the first thing that they will make you do is eat, and if you don’t eat, it’s rude. So I was trying to infuse that into my practice.”