"I've always chased that thrill." - Adele Myers on her lifetime in dance
Today's guest is Adele Myers. Adele is a Miami based dance maker and Artistic Director of Adele Myers and Dancers (AMD), a national touring contemporary dance theater company made up of female athletes of the heart.
For over a decade, AMD has been presented throughout the U.S with funding from the New England Foundation of the Arts, National Dance Project, and National Performance Network. Since relocating to Miami, she received commissions from Miami Light Project, Live Arts Miami and South Miami Dance Cultural Arts Center. She was an Assistant Professor of Dance at Tulane University and Connecticut College and has taught on faculty at New World School of the Arts in Miami.
For more on this episode: Movers & Shapers: A Dance Podcast
To learn more about The Moving Architects upcoming performances and events: The Moving Architects
"We are the carriers of the culture." - Ranee Ramaswamy
Today's guests are Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy, the Artistic Directors of Ragamala Dance Company, a pioneering company rooted in the South Indian dance form of Bharatanatyam. Over the last four decades, Ranee and Aparna have forged a path for culturally rooted performing arts organizations and made Ragamala a standard-bearer within the American dance landscape. The New York Times says, “Ragamala shows how Indian forms can be some of the most transcendent experiences that dance has to offer.”
Ranee and Aparna’s choreographic work has been commissioned and presented extensively throughout the U.S., India, and abroad, highlighted by the Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C.), Joyce Theater (New York), Lincoln Center (New York), Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival (MA), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), American Dance Festival (Durham, NC), Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), Just Festival (Edinburgh, U.K.), Bali Arts Festival (Indonesia), Sri Krishna Gana Sabha (Chennai, India), and National Centre for Performing Arts (Mumbai, India), and others. Among their many individual honors, Ranee serves on the National Council on the Arts, appointed by President Barack Obama.
For more on the artists and this podcast episode: Movers & Shapers: A Dance Podcast
To learn more about The Moving Architects upcoming performances and events: The Moving Architects
"This is who I am. I am a dancer and this is what I have to offer the world." - Gloria McLean
Today's guest is Gloria McLean. Gloria is artistic director of LIFEDANCE/Gloria McLean and Dancers. LIFEDANCE is dedicated to the integration of body, mind and spirit through the creative process. Gloria's dances often collaborate with new music, art, language and the environment. Her choreography has been presented in NYC and internationally, including the American Dance Festival, festivals in Ireland, Paris, Montreal, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Korea, and China. She first received acclaim as a leading member of the Erick Hawkins Dance Company from 1982-1993, performing major female roles in the repertory, teaching at the Hawkins School, and touring the U.S. and internationally. Currently McLean is President of the American Dance Guild producing festivals live and online. She teaches and performs from her base in New York City and Andes, NY.
For more on this episode: Movers & Shapers: A Dance Podcast
Today’s guest on Movers & Shapers are Joan Myers Brown and Kim Bears-Bailey of Philadanco.
Joan is the founder of Philadanco which was created in 1970 out of a need to provide performance opportunities and training for Black dancers. PHILADANCO! has since grown into a professional dance company that is recognized around the world for its artistic integrity, superbly trained dancers, and captivating performances. Of her many honors, she is the honorary chairperson for the International Association of Blacks in Dance (IABD), an organization she established in 1991, and she received the prestigious National Medal of Arts Award and 2019 Bessie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Dance for her choreographic influence on black dance in America.
Kim joined Philadanco in 1981 and its current Artistic Director. She is a Bessie's award recipient and Associate Professor of Dance at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Kim is one of few artists granted permission to remount the works of many world-renowned choreographers including Talley Beatty, Pearl Primus and Gene Hill Sagan.
For more in this episode of Movers & Shapers: themovingarchitects.org/podcasts
Today's guest is Lar Lubovitch. Lar is one of America’s most versatile and widely seen choreographers. He founded the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company in 1968. Over the course of 54 years, it has gained an international reputation as one of America’s top dance companies, produced more than 120 dances and performed before millions across the U.S. and over 40 countries. Many other major companies throughout the world have performed the company’s dances, including American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Joffrey Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, and more.
Recent awards: 2011 designated a Ford Fellow by United States Artists and received the Dance/USA Honors Award; 2012 his dance “Crisis Variations” awarded the Prix Benois de la Danse for outstanding choreography at the Bolshoi Theatre; 2013 honored for lifetime achievement by the American Dance Guild; 2014 awarded an honorary doctorate by The Juilliard School; 2016 received the Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement and the Dance Magazine Award, named one of America’s Irreplaceable Dance Treasures by the Dance Heritage Coalition and appointed a Distinguished Professor at UC/Irvine. In honor of his company’s 50th anniversary, in 2018 he was presented with the Martha Graham Award for lifetime achievement.
For more on this episode: Movers & Shapers: A Dance Podcast
Today's guest is Nadia Adame. Nadia is a Spanish multidisciplinary award-winning artist with a spinal cord injury and the Artistic Director at AXIS Dance Company. She was a company member with AXIS (2001-2003) and Candoco Dance Company (2007-2008). In 2004, she co-founded and was the Co-Artistic Director of Compañía Y in Spain, a multimedia and performance collective. Nadia’s credits include dance, theatre, commercial, and independent film projects in the UK, Spain, US, and Canada. As a performer, she has been featured in works by Stephen Petronio, Bill T. Jones, Arthur Pita, Rafael Bonachela, Davis Robertson, Sonya Delwaide, Marc Brew, Chevi Muraday and Asun Noales, among others.
For more on this episode: Movers & Shapers: A Dance Podcast
Today's guest is Erica Hornthal. Erica, a licensed clinical professional counselor and board-certified dance/movement therapist, is the CEO and founder of Chicago Dance Therapy. Since graduating with her MA in dance/movement therapy and counseling, Erica has worked with thousands of patients from age 3 to 107. Known as “The Therapist Who Moves You,” Erica has truly changed the way people see movement with regard to mental health: moving people toward unlimited potential, greater awareness, and purpose by tapping into their innate body wisdom. In addition to her passion for working with cognitive and movement disorders, neurologic conditions, anxiety, depression, and trauma, she is an advocate for the field of dance/movement therapy. Erica created the Dance Therapy Advocates Summit in 2020 in order to spread awareness and inspire and connect individuals and practitioners from all over the world.
For more on Erica and this episode: Movers & Shapers: A Dance Podcast
Today's guest is Shamel Pitts. Shamel is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, as well as performance, conceptual, and spoken word artist. Since 2019, he is the artistic director/founder of TRIBE, a New York-based multidisciplinary arts collective which was a 2020-21 Artist-In-Residence at 92Y Harkness Dance Center.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, he started his professional dance career with Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Hell’s Kitchen Dance and BJM_Danse Montreal. Between 2009-2016, he was a company member of the Batsheva Dance Company, led by Ohad Naharin where he studied Gaga movement language, of which he is now a certified teacher. Since 2015, Shamel has created a triptych of award-winning multidisciplinary works known as “BLACK Series,” which has been performed and toured extensively to many festivals around the world. He is the recipient of a 2018 Princess Grace Award in Choreography, a 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship Award winner in Choreography, and a 2020 Jacob’s Pillow artist in residence, a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, and the cast member of the 2021 Bessie Award-winning production of “The Motherboard Suite” at New York Live Arts.
For more on Shamel and this episode: Movers & Shapers: A Dance Podcast
Today's guest is Cara Hagan. Cara is a mover, maker, writer, curator, champion of just communities, and a dreamer. Cara's adventures take place as live performance, on screen, as installation, on the page, and in collaboration with others in a multitude of contexts.
In recent years, Cara and her work have traveled to such gatherings as the Performática Festival in Cholula, Mexico, the Conference on Geopoetics in Edinburgh, Scotland, the Loikka Dance Film Festival in Helsinki, Finland, the Taos Poetry Festival in Taos, New Mexico, and to the Dance on Camera Festival in New York City. Extended residencies have taken place at Thirak India in Jaipur, India, Playa Summer Lake in the dynamic outback of Oregon, Roehampton University in London, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the University of North Carolina, School of the Arts.
Since becoming a parent and navigating a global pandemic, Hagan’s work takes place a bit closer to home these days. She is working on a new book titled, Ritual is Both Balm and Resistance.
For more on this episode: Movers & Shapers: A Dance Podcast
Today's guest is Peggy Baker. Peggy Baker has been a vivid presence in contemporary dance since 1973, performing internationally in the work of Lar Lubovitch, Mark Morris (with Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project), Doug Varone, Tere O’Connor, Molissa Fenley, and Charles Moulton (NYC); with Fortier Danse-Creation (Montreal); and Dancemakers, Toronto Dance Theatre, and James Kudelka, (Toronto). She established Peggy Baker Dance Projects in 1990, and for the first 20 years she dedicated herself to solo performance, winning rapturous praise for the eloquence and depth of her dancing, and accolades for her collaborative partnerships with extraordinary choreographers, directors, musicians, and designers. Since 2010 her choreography has focused on works for small ensemble. Over its 32-year history Peggy Baker Dance Projects has been presented at major festivals and dance centres in North America, Asia and Europe, including Danspace, The Kitchen, Symphony Space, and the Harkness Festival in New York; the Luckman Center in Los Angeles; Jacob’s Pillow; the Copenhagen International Dance Festival; the Time Festival in Ghent, Belgium; The Holland Dance Festival; the Cervantino Festival in Guanajuato, Mexico; MoDaFe in Seoul, Korea; Landmark Tower in Yokohama, Japan; the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa, the High Performance Rodeo in Calgary, Tangente, L’Agora de la danse, and Danse Danse in Montreal, and Canadian Stage and Fall for Dance North in Toronto. Her evening-length multi-disciplinary work who we are the dark, created with composer/performers Sarah Neufeld and Jeremy Gara of Arcade Fire, toured across Canada and internationally from winter 2019 to early in 2020.
For more on Peggy and this episode: Movers & Shapers: A Dance Podcast
Today's guest is Moses Pendleton. Moses has been one of America’s most innovative and widely performed choreographers and directors for over 40 years. A co-founder of the ground-breaking Pilobolus Dance Theater in 1971, he formed his own company, MOMIX, in 1980. Mr. Pendleton has also worked extensively in film, TV, and opera and as a choreographer for ballet companies and special events. Moses is an avid photographer with works presented in Rome, Milan, Florence, and Aspen. Images of his sunflower plantings at his home in northwestern Connecticut have been featured in numerous books and articles on gardening. Momix at Staller Center for the Arts, Stony Brook, NY on April 2, 2022
For more on this episode: Movers & Shapers: A Dance Podcast
Most recently recognized with a 2022 United States Artists Fellowship, Netta has also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, Princeton Arts Fellowship, Research Fellowship from New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Toulmin Fellowship for Women Leaders in Dance at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University, New York City Center Choreography Fellowship, Jerome Robbins Bogliasco Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants-to-Artists Award, National Dance Project Grant, LMCC’s Extended Life, Six Points Fellowship, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship.
For more on Netta and this episode including her upcoming work with Peak Performances at Montclair State University: Movers & Shapers: A Dance Podcast.
Today's guest is Hannah Kahn, founder and artistic director of the Hannah Kahn Dance Company. Hannah is a master teacher with fifty-two years of experience creating over one hundred and forty dances. Some of the strongest influences on her choreography were her childhood classes in Ithaca, New York with Iris Barbura, her studies of the techniques of Jose Limon and Martha Graham, and her performance of dances by Doris Humphrey and Anna Sokolow. The practice of Tai Chi has also influenced her movement style.
After graduating from the Juilliard School in 1972, Kahn founded the Company in New York, and directed it there for twelve years before moving to Colorado in 1988, where she has directed the company ever since. In addition to her own company, her works have been in the repertories of over a dozen other dance companies.
For more on this episode: Movers & Shapers: A Dance Podcast
Catch The Moving Architects at Green Space, NYC March 18-19, for premieres of new work. For more info: The Moving Architects
Today's guest is veteran choreographer and dance educator, JoAnna Mendl Shaw.
JoAnna has been devising performance works for stage, rural and urban landscapes since the 1980’s. Her body of interspecies work initiates visceral engagement with the natural and cultural environment. Redefining the possibilities for dance-making, Shaw’s research into the human-equine dialogue began in 1998. Her company, The Equus Projects, tours throughout the States and Europe creating site-specific works through immersive collaboration with local equine and arts communities. An internationally recognized dance educator, Shaw has taught on faculty at NYU, The Juilliard School, Alvin Ailey, Princeton, Mount Holyoke, and Montclair State. Shaw is the recipient of NEA Choreographic Fellowships and multiple NEA grants for Interdisciplinary Performance. She has brought her somatic practice of Physical Listening into elementary schools and academic think tanks, into the Strategic Studies group at the Naval War College and NYU Medical school. She is a certified Laban Movement Analyst. She is the author of the 2021 book, Physical
Listening, A Dancer’s Interspecies Journey.
For more on this episode: Movers & Shapers: A Dance Podcast