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