Dancecast

Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance seeks to investigate stereotypes often used to describe professional dancers with disabilities. Spearheaded by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen with illustrations by visual artist Liz Brent-Maldonado, the team interviewed 35 professional dance artists with disabilities around the country and world, asking about training, access, and press, as well as looking at the state of the field.Purchase your print copy of Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Herringbone Books, Green Apple Books, Walmart, and other online retailers.Purchase your ebook copy on Kindle, Kobo, Scribd, and other platforms.Purchase your audiobook copy on Audible.Details: Authored by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen, illustrations by Liz Brent-Maldonado, design by Christelle Dreyer, edited by Donne Lewis and April Adams, audiobook narrated by Sami Kekäläinen.

Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance seeks to investigate stereotypes often used to describe professional dancers with disabilities. Spearheaded by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen with illustrations by visual artist Liz Brent-Maldonado, the team interviewed 35 professional dance artists with disabilities around the country and world, asking about training, access, and press, as well as looking at the state of the field.Purchase your print copy of Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Herringbone Books, Green Apple Books, Walmart, and other online retailers.Purchase your ebook copy on Kindle, Kobo, Scribd, and other platforms.Purchase your audiobook copy on Audible.Details: Authored by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen, illustrations by Liz Brent-Maldonado, design by Christelle Dreyer, edited by Donne Lewis and April Adams, audiobook narrated by Sami Kekäläinen.  

Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance seeks to investigate stereotypes often used to describe professional dancers with disabilities. Spearheaded by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen with illustrations by visual artist Liz Brent-Maldonado, the team interviewed 35 professional dance artists with disabilities around the country and world, asking about training, access, and press, as well as looking at the state of the field.Purchase your print copy of Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Herringbone Books, Green Apple Books, Walmart, and other online retailers.Purchase your ebook copy on Kindle, Kobo, Scribd, and other platforms.Purchase your audiobook copy on Audible – coming soon!Details: Authored by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen, illustrations by Liz Brent-Maldonado, design by Christelle Dreyer, edited by Donne Lewis and April Adams, audiobook narrated by Sami Kekäläinen Spearheaded by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen with illustrations b

Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance seeks to investigate stereotypes often used to describe professional dancers with disabilities. Spearheaded by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen with illustrations by visual artist Liz Brent-Maldonado, the team interviewed 35 professional dance artists with disabilities around the country and world, asking about training, access, and press, as well as looking at the state of the field.Purchase your print copy of Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Herringbone Books, Green Apple Books, Walmart, and other online retailers.Purchase your ebook copy on Kindle, Kobo, Scribd, and other platforms.Purchase your audiobook copy on Audible – coming soon!Details: Authored by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen, illustrations by Liz Brent-Maldonado, design by Christelle Dreyer, edited by Donne Lewis and April Adams, audiobook narrated by Sami Kekäläinen Spearheaded by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen with illustrations b

Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance seeks to investigate stereotypes often used to describe professional dancers with disabilities. Spearheaded by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen with illustrations by visual artist Liz Brent-Maldonado, the team interviewed 35 professional dance artists with disabilities around the country and world, asking about training, access, and press, as well as looking at the state of the field.Purchase your print copy of Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Herringbone Books, Green Apple Books, Walmart, and other online retailers.Purchase your ebook copy on Kindle, Kobo, Scribd, and other platforms.Purchase your audiobook copy on Audible – coming soon!Details: Authored by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen, illustrations by Liz Brent-Maldonado, design by Christelle Dreyer, edited by Donne Lewis and April Adams, audiobook narrated by Sami Kekäläinen Spearheaded by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen with illustrations b

Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance seeks to investigate stereotypes often used to describe professional dancers with disabilities. Spearheaded by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen with illustrations by visual artist Liz Brent-Maldonado, the team interviewed 35 professional dance artists with disabilities around the country and world, asking about training, access, and press, as well as looking at the state of the field.Purchase your print copy of Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Herringbone Books, Green Apple Books, Walmart, and other online retailers.Purchase your ebook copy on Kindle, Kobo, Scribd, and other platforms.Purchase your audiobook copy on Audible – coming soon!Details: Authored by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen, illustrations by Liz Brent-Maldonado, design by Christelle Dreyer, edited by Donne Lewis and April Adams, audiobook narrated by Sami Kekäläinen Spearheaded by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen with illustrations b

Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance seeks to investigate stereotypes often used to describe professional dancers with disabilities. Spearheaded by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen with illustrations by visual artist Liz Brent-Maldonado, the team interviewed 35 professional dance artists with disabilities around the country and world, asking about training, access, and press, as well as looking at the state of the field.Purchase your print copy of Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Herringbone Books, Green Apple Books, Walmart, and other online retailers.Purchase your ebook copy on Kindle, Kobo, Scribd, and other platforms.Purchase your audiobook copy on Audible – coming soon!Details: Authored by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen, illustrations by Liz Brent-Maldonado, design by Christelle Dreyer, edited by Donne Lewis and April Adams, audiobook narrated by Sami Kekäläinen Spearheaded by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen with illustrations b

Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance seeks to investigate stereotypes often used to describe professional dancers with disabilities. Spearheaded by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen with illustrations by visual artist Liz Brent-Maldonado, the team interviewed 35 professional dance artists with disabilities around the country and world, asking about training, access, and press, as well as looking at the state of the field.Purchase your print copy of Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Herringbone Books, Green Apple Books, Walmart, and other online retailers.Purchase your ebook copy on Kindle, Kobo, Scribd, and other platforms.Purchase your audiobook copy on Audible – coming soon!Details: Authored by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen, illustrations by Liz Brent-Maldonado, design by Christelle Dreyer, edited by Donne Lewis and April Adams, audiobook narrated by Sami Kekäläinen Spearheaded by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen with illustrations b

“I Have Terrible Anxiety but I Love Being Onstage” In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews her intern Emily Heath, a dance student at Bennington College. As a young person, Emily reflects on the economic uncertainty of pursuing dance and their desire to learn more entrepreneurial and marketable skills in addition to somatic-based curriculum. Emily reflects on their ongoing experience of anxiety, and how they now feel supported in dance environments but acknowledge that getting a diagnosis and treatment can be a privilege. Their future goals feel tempered by the pandemic, but they describe their interest in exploring digital spaces and developing a movement vocabulary to process emotion. Finally, Emily expresses how showing up with anxiety in dance spaces is an ongoing negotiation.Text by Emmaly WiederholtEmily Heath is a dancer and student at Bennington College. They have studied many different styles for more than 10 years. The work they are doing now is centered around understanding their internal la

Exploring How Performance is ExperiencedIn this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews Jess Curtis, an award-winning choreographer, performer, and scholar based in San Francisco and Berlin. Jess reflects on his entrance to dance through skiing and how he was immediately hooked to being onstage. He shares how his career took a turn when he accepted a job in an interdisciplinary nouveau cirque company in France, and how he later established himself in Berlin while still running his company Jess Curtis/Gravity in the Bay Area. A pivotal working relationship with Scottish disability dance artist Claire Cunningham turned Jess’ focus toward integrating access accommodations like sign language interpretation or audio descriptions into performance. This work also informed his PhD, which looked at phenomenologies of perception and how vision is over-utilized in performance.Text by Emmaly Wiederholt Jess Curtis is committed to an art-making practice informed by experimentation, innovation, critical discourse, and socia

How Dance is Taught / Daniel Levi-Sanchez. In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews the dance educator Daniel Levi-Sanchez. Daniel reflects on his formative years teaching himself street forms as well as eventually receiving more traditional training from the Inner-City Ensemble Theatre and Dance Co., from Juilliard, and from Twyla Tharp herself. Daniel advocates for a teaching style that empowers students instead of isolates them. He muses on how a ballet or jazz class will lose a lot of students if the class is presented in the public schools, or how students who go to a studio often end up dropping out after high school or college. In 2019, Daniel was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and acquired a disability. After successfully completing a dance challenge from an old colleague, Daniel began to revisit dance with a focus on dance teachers with disabilities.Text by Emmaly WiederholtDaniel Levi-Sanchez, from Paterson, New Jersey, received his formal dance training from the Inner-City Ensemble Thea

In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews Tebandeke Joseph, an African contemporary dance artist based in Uganda. He shares how athletics led him to contemporary dance, and how he sees dance as an engine for change. Tebandeke aims to change the community perspective on disability through street performances and through the schools. He dreams of eventually opening an accessible dance center with an adjoining library about dance and sports so people with disabilities can have more support and exposure. Tebandeke describes how the village mindset in his country believes dance isn’t valid, and the effects of the pandemic have hurt the existing dance scene even further. He believes a center for dance in Uganda would go a long way to rectifying many of the problems he perceives. Finally, Tebandeke discusses the need for role models because the experience of disability in Africa is much different than in Europe, and more role models would normalize and empower people with disabilities in Uganda.Text written by

 In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews Magda Kaczmarska, a dancer, researcher, and creative aging teaching artist based in New York City. Magda describes how her path as an immigrant with a background in dance and the sciences shaped her interest in and commitment to community based dance in the field of creative aging.  She revisits how exposure to Dance for PD®, a program by Mark Morris Dance Group for people with Parkinson’s led her to eventually leave her research career in pursuit of an MFA in Dance. An injury during grad school reinforced her career focus to expand access to creative aging for all communities. In NYC, she worked with the company Dances for a Variable Population with whom she supported 100s of diverse older adults in exploring their creative expression through movement. Now, as an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health, she is working to expand creative aging programs globally, building programs that support brain health across the life span and allying with communities of p

Rachel describes how she had always wanted to teach special education, but her path led her on a professional dance track first. She eventually switched careers to public education through the New York City Teaching Fellows Program. To her surprise, her principal (no “s”) requested she teach movement and dance across multiple school sites instead of general education serve as a classroom teacher, so she became a dance educator to students with severe disabilities. That experience restructured how she thought about movement, what movement means to students, and what goals benefit them. The inquiry led Rachel to become passionate about writing dance curriculum that infuses academics and developing creative assessment tools.Text by Emmaly Wiederholt Rachel McCaulsky (MSEL, MST, BFA) is the arts coordinator, remote learning unit coordinator, and movement teacher at P396K, a New York City Department of Education District 75 school servicing students with severe to profound disabilities. She incorporates movement i

Advocating for Inclusive Dance in the Public SchoolsIn this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews New York-based dance educator and advocate Sandi Stratton-Gonzalez. Sandi shares her dance beginnings and describes how she always identified as a teacher, even as she pursued performance opportunities, which directly led to her career as a dance educator in the public schools. She ended up working for 20 years at the first fully inclusive public school in the country, where there was also a robust performing arts program. Sandi reflects on the value of those experiences and how they informed her later work in city-wide efforts to represent dance educators and advocate for students with disabilities. She talks about how she’s staying active in the field post-retirement and adapting to online spaces.Text by Emmaly Wiederholt, founder of Stance On Dance. Sandi Stratton-Gonzalez taught dance to children with special needs in inclusion and self-contained classrooms for more than 20 years at PS 372 in Brooklyn. Recen

In this episode he describes how he reluctantly came to dance after learning about it from another wheelchair user, and how he found integrated dance to be radically different than the dances of his culture. Kadar reflects on the therapeutic and social benefits of dance, and how performing boosted his confidence as both a person with a disability and as an immigrant. He shares more about his involvement with an all-wheelchair group that improvises about the environment and accessibility, as well as why he decided to become a member of DanceAbility Finland’s board to promote dance to other disabled immigrants.Text by Emmaly Wiederholt.This episode was originally part of X Dance Festival. This episode was published also at Stance on Dance.  

You can see Perch on Tuesday the 8th of June 2021. This performance is donation based and you can register here. Perch is part of the X Dance Festival 2021.  You can find out more about Amy Voris and Katye Coe and about their impressive work in the field of dance and Somatics. 

 In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews Tali Wertheim and Hai Cohen, artistic directors of Vertigo Power of Balance, an Israeli based inclusive dance company. Hai describes how he came to dance almost by accident, meeting Tali in a workshop led by Adam Benjamin that culminated in a performance. Tali shares how she and Hai felt that contact improvisation and inclusive dance needed to continue in Israel. They fervently studied Adam Benjamin’s exercises, and within a year Vertigo Power of Balance was born. Tali and Hai speak about how they developed their teacher trainings for one teacher with and one teacher without a disability, as well as their summer intensive programs. They also share the process developing their most recent piece, Shape on Us, choreographed by Sharon Fridman, through a pandemic and war. Hai describes how he was struck by the raw and real way in which Sharon chose to display disability in the piece.Text by Emmaly Wiederholt. You can learn more about Vertigo Power of Balance on this

In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews Georgie Goater, a dance artist and pedagogue based in Helsinki, Finland where she moved from Aotearoa (New Zealand). Georgie describes her early attraction to dance as a place of nonverbal communication where she discovered through improvisation that there is no right or wrong. She reflects on her introduction to integrated dance through Touch Compass Dance Company in New Zealand. Later, her path led her to Helsinki, Finland, where she concentrated on pedagogy and immersed herself in the Finnish dance community. Silva and Georgie contemplate the importance and impossibility of acknowledging one’s dance lineage and who shaped them along the way. Finally, Georgie reflects on her experience performing in choreographer Kat Rampackova’s recent work and her hopes for the future.Text by Emmaly Wiederholt.  Georgie Goater is a white, non-disabled dance artist and pedagogue from Aotearoa (NZ) based in Helsinki. She gained her MA in Dance Pedagogy from the Helsinki Theatre

Today my episode is with a dance student Ida Mokki who talks about her journey to the dance world and her dreams after graduating in December from Live Vocational College. Ida is teaching with her fellow student two of the Daily Dances that are happening for the first seven mornings (6-12.6.) during the X Dance Festival at 11-11.30am EEST. Check out this awesome promo for the Daily Dances here. This episode is mostly in Finnish."Olen 25-vuotias ja opiskelen Ammattiopisto Livessä viimeistä vuotta tanssijaksi.Rakastan tanssimista, koska sen avulla pystyn tutustumaan itseeni ja siihen mitä kaikkea voin olla. Tanssijana hyödynnän paljon sisäisyyttäni ja tanssin omia tunteitani näkyväksi. Tanssin muodoista eniten lähellä sydäntäni on improvisaatio. " -Ida Mokki