Dancecast

In this episode I spoke with Kati Raatikainen, choreographer, performance artist, dance and yoga teacher, and a thinker that likes to write. We spoke about Kati's interests and her latest work Kvartetto that will be performed at the X Dance Festival on the Wednesday the 9th and Thursday the 10th of June, Thursdays performance is also being live streamed.  You can get your tickets to Kvartetto here: https://tinyurl.com/kvartettoXDF-2021tickets Here are links to things that Kati was mentioning on the podcast:https://www.erkkajooga.com https://www.facebook.com/erkkajooganvertaiset https://www.valokeilassakoillinen.fi/tapahtuma/koillisesta-koilliseen-osaprojektissa-syntyy-paikallisten-taidetekoja/ http://www.liikekieli.com/tanssitaide-ekososiaalisesti-kestavassa-yhteiskunnassa-1-2020/

In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews Kat Rampackova, a choreographer, performer, and dance activist based in Barcelona, Spain. Kat shares her journey finding herself as a freelance dance artist after studying theater, contemporary dance, and improvisation across Europe. She is the co-founder of Priestor Súčasného Tanca (PST), a place for developing contemporary dance in her native city Košice in Slovakia. Kat describes PST’s emphasis on access, not elitism, and how that led her into the world of inclusive dance. Her recent piece, Mirage, is a collaboration with Finnish dance company Kaaos and is inspired by the artistic work of Catalan visual artist Joan Miró. Another international project Kat is involved with, Sound in the Silence, takes young people to places of historical significance for educational and artistic workshops. She talks about how learning history and transforming a place through art and dance can be a cathartic experience.Follow Kat on Instagram at @katrampackova.Here are links to h

In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews Finnish artist/theater director Teemu Mäki and Finnish dance artist Maija Nurmio about their collaborative work Éliane, which is based on the French composer Éliane Radigue's composition L'Île Re-Sonante. Teemu describes why he was drawn to Radique’s experimental music and how a collaboration sprung up between himself and Maija. Maija shares how Radique’s music had a physical effect on her, how they negotiated creating a work that included choreography, film, visuals and Teemu's spoken-word poem that was influenced by the events of a mass murder that happened in Norway a decade ago. The work wrestles with mortality, the meaning of art, and the purpose of experimental music/art-making.Text by Emmaly Wiederholt. You can find more information about each one of them, by clicking their name Éliane Radigue, Teemu Mäki and Maija Nurmio.This episode was originally recorded to be part of X Dance Festival 2021. DanceCast partners with Stance on Dance .

In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews her collaborators from the Discussing Disability in Dance Book Project: dancer/writer Emmaly Wiederholt, and visual artist Liz Brent-Maldonado. The project has been a four-year process interviewing 25 professional dancers around the world who identify as having a disability. Together, Silva, Emmaly, and Liz discuss the impetus for the project, what themes they've seen emerge, how they've grown in their understanding of disability while working on it, and how they hope the book project serves as a jumping point for other perspectives and conversations regarding disability in dance. To learn more about the Discussing Disability in Dance Book Project, visit http://stanceondance.com/discussing-disability-in-dance/. And to donate to the GoFundMe to cover illustrator, designer, printing and audiobook fees, visit https://gofund.me/1d44d437

Turning Setbacks into Comebacks In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews Zazel-Chavah O’Garra, founder and artistic director of ZCO/DANCE PROJECT, a physically integrated dance company in New York City. Zazel shares the story of her benign brain tumor that left her partially paralyzed and how she began her dance company after performing at the Brain Tumor Foundation’s Awareness Day. She also discusses what her company is doing to stay active through the pandemic, how she works to prepare students with disabilities to pursue a career in the arts, and why she urges dance majors in college to pursue double majors. Photo credit to Meri Greene. Text by Emmaly Wiederholt.

Interview with Karen Daly; Being Seen as A Dancer In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews Karen Daly, a dancer in Eugene, OR with DanceAbility International. Karen shares the story of her entrance into dance in her 40s and some highlights from her career working with DanceAbility. She also discusses the process of creating performances through DanceAbility’s framework, and how the principles of sensation, relationship, time and design serve to augment the performers’ ability to communicate to each other and to the audience. Finally, she reflects on how it’s sometimes still difficult to see herself and be seen as a dancer. Text by Emmaly Wiederholt http://stanceondance.com https://www.bodyshift.org https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Ride-One-Legged-Journey-Self-Acceptance-ebook/dp/B077YB9VVL/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=joy+ride+my+one+legged&qid=1574101046&sr=8-1 https://www.artsparktx.org

Interview with Roman Baca; Dancing the Veteran Experience In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews Roman Baca, who is an Iraq War veteran, the director of EXIT12 Dance Company, and an MFA candidate in Choreography at Trinity Laban Conservatoire in London. He describes his upcoming MFA final performance, which seeks to choreographically share the experiences of five veterans on the lawn at Trinity Laban. He also shares his transition back to civilian life after serving in the Marine Corps, how finding dance again was necessary to overcome his internal anger and frustration after serving in Iraq. Text by Emmaly Wiederholt http://exit12danceco.org https://vimeo.com/312834658 http://www.stanceondance.com http://www.bodyshift.org

There’s No Such Thing As “We Can’t Do Something” In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews Karenne Koo, a dance artist in Tucson, AZ, committed to developing and practicing multidisciplinary approaches to encourage and stimulate the art of inclusive dance as an instrument for building community. Here, she discusses her involvement with the Mettler-based dance community and the breadth of her outreach work – from working with survivors of trafficking and abuse, to children with severe medical issues, to low income families, to adults and children with diverse abilities, to horses. She reflects on how her own community makes all the facets of her work possible. https://www.karennekoo.net https://www.dancesequences.com https://www.barbaramettler.org https://www.artsparktx.org https://www.bodyshift.org https://www.stanceondance.com

Interview with Michaela Knox: Expanding the Dance Community In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews Michaela Knox, a DanceAbility instructor who recently initiated an inclusive dance program in Maine. Michaela looks back on her early desire to work with people who don’t identify as dancers. She discusses her time working with schoolchildren through the National Dance Institute of New Mexico, and how she eventually felt like she couldn’t effectively teach or integrate students who might be Deaf or non-verbal. Since training in DanceAbility, Michaela shares more about her budding inclusive dance program in Maine and her longer-term goals. Text by Emmaly Wiederholt http://stanceondance.com http://bodyshift.org http://www.sparkdanceprogram.org

A Philosophy of Inclusion In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews Olivia O’Hare and Veronica DeWitt, her colleagues at Body Shift in Austin, TX. They each share their entry points into improvisational dance and DanceAbility in particular, as well as discuss the strengths of DanceAbility, its philosophy of inclusion, and how Body Shift was built on that foundation. They also share how they’ve applied the methodology to other areas of their practice like theater and fitness. https://www.bodyshift.org http://stanceondance.com http://stanceondance.com/discussing-disability-in-dance/

“It Comes Down to Loving Movement” Text by Emmaly Wiederholt In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews Ginger Lane, a Chicago based dancer, teacher and choreographer. Ginger shares how the themes of dance and disability activism have come together in her career, specifically through her involvement with Access Living and MOMENTA Dance Company. She discusses the struggle that physically integrated dance faces in being seen as a legitimate art form, the slow progress in the US as compared to Europe, and the difficulty building repertoire in physically integrated dance. https://www.accessliving.org http://momentadances.org https://3arts.org/artist/ginger-lane/ https://stanceondance.com https://bodyshift.org

Interview with Sally Davison; The Language of the Body is the Oldest Language. In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews Sally Davison, a dancer, choreographer, and master DanceAbility teacher in the UK and Finland. Sally discusses the strength of DanceAbility as valuing participant-led knowledge and making inclusion possible. She asserts that DanceAbility is not just about disability, but about the beauty of giving space to others and moving beyond one’s own patterns to listen to someone else’s vocabulary or timing. Silva and Sally also discuss how embryology and birth, as well as basic movement patterns, can affect a person’s sense of body and self. Text by Emmaly Wiederholt https://www.bodyshift.org http://stanceondance.com http://www.danceabilityfinland.com http://danceabilityfinland.com/kaaos/

Access is Good for Everybody Text by Emmaly Wiederholt In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews Aaron Wheeler-Kay, creative director of Echo Theater Company in Portland, Oregon. Aaron, a master DanceAbility teacher, shares how he applied DanceAbility to create an accessible circus arts space, as well as leverage his privilege to feature and support other voices. After teaching DanceAbility to his staff, he describes the shift in culture at the company and how creating an accessible space isn’t a checkbox but an ongoing process and continuous reassessment. Aaron Wheeler-Kay lives in Portland, Oregon, where he is the creative director of Echo Theater Company, a non-profit with a focus on combining different performance disciplines including circus arts, dance and devised theater to produce original performance works. Aaron teaches dance, acrobatics and aerial arts to people of all ages and abilities. He became certified to teach DanceAbility in 2016. https://www.bodyshift.org http://www.echotheaterpdx.org

Dance Applied to Real Life In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews Margot Greenlee, a choreographer, theater director and artist educator based in Washington DC. Here, Margot discusses her involvement with Jacob’s Pillow’s Curriculum in Motion® and her own project, BodyWise Dance, which provide dance classes and workshops for individuals and groups in healthcare, education and corporate settings that offer movement as a way of learning and processing information. She details one program of BodyWise wherein dance and theater practitioners work with a group of people with intellectual disabilities to create and perform an original show with the goal of using performance as an opportunity for community integration. Text by Emmaly Wiederholt http://stanceondance.com http://www.bodywisedance.com https://www.jacobspillow.org/programs/community/jacobs-pillow-curriculum-in-motion/ https://www.bodyshift.org

Experiencing the Democracy of Dance In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews Connie Vandarakis, a master DanceAbility teacher in Philadelphia. Connie shares her unusual entrance to dance, her experience in academia, how chronic hip pain and a hip replacement led her to DanceAbility, and why she deeply believes in the curriculum of DanceAbility. Her drive to serve in the arts felt answered by DanceAbility’s mission and vision. She describes how the use of improvisation calls for everyone to be responsible in the moment, both in and out of the dance studio. https://www.danceability.com http://stanceondance.com http://www.bodyshift.org https://www.who.int/disabilities/world_report/2011/report.pdf

Interview with Jana Meszaros; Promoting Freedom and Equality In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews Jana Meszaros, a DanceAbility instructor in Eugene, OR. Jana describes her small-town upbringing, how she discovered DanceAbility through contact improvisation, and her road to becoming a Master Teacher. She shares her belief in DanceAbility as a tool for creating experiences where disabled and non-disabled dancers can dance together, as well as her preference for the term ‘facilitator’ rather than ‘teacher’ because everyone in the room can always learn from each other. Text by Emmaly Wiederholt and photo by Jennifer James Long http://www.danceability.com http://www.bodyshift.org http://stanceondance.com

Exploring Her Own Access and Excellence PODCAST BY SILVA LAUKKANEN TEXT BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews India Harville, a dance artist and teacher in the Bay Area. India shares her journey to inclusive dance through yoga, body work, and her ongoing experience with temporary paralysis. She also describes her recent one-woman show, Enough, which explored a recovery process for her recurring feelings of not feeling black enough, disabled enough, or able-bodied enough, as well as her future goal of making a video piece about dancers who cannot regularly and easily leave their homes. She discusses how to track progress and measure rigor when common assessments cannot apply to her. http://lovingtheskinyouarein.com http://www.stanceondance.com http://www.bodyshift.org http://www.danceability.com

Maylis was visiting me here in the US after dancing and studying with Axis Dance Co in their annual summer intensive. While we were finishing our lunch we chatted about her work and future plans. Maylis shared her visions for her next choreographies and where she is currently with her own work. Thank you Maylis for being so open and willing to share. MAYLIS ARRABIT I took my first class / dance class in 2011 with AXIS in Oakland, California. It's there that everything has changed! In 2012, after finishing my Masters in organizational psychology and returning to my native region, I joined Co&ciedanse (Biarritz) as a student and dancer, a contemporary dance company for amateurs led by Deva Macazaga. Thanks to her, I have learnt a lot for two years in contemporary dance and contact improvisation, grew a lor as a dancer, each time discovering new possibilities of movement and I even participated in the creation of BoxFloor, for Biarritz dance festival, Le temps d'aimer la danse (2013) . Following the depar

Choreography for An Arm and A Half PODCAST BY SILVA LAUKKANEN; PHOTOGRAPHY BY TIM ISOM AND TEXT BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews Julie Crothers, a freelance dancer and emerging choreographer in the Bay Area. After dancing with AXIS Dance Company for three years, Julie began exploring her own choreographic voice. She describes the impetus of her piece Secondhand, which explores alternate uses of her collection of prosthetic arms. Julie shares stories and perspectives of what prosthesis has come to mean for her, and how she came to the decision in her early 20s to not use a prosthetic arm day-to-day. She goes on to explain how she feels able to dance more freely without filling in that space, and her growing curiosity about what her body uniquely does.

In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews Gretchen Pick, executive director of Young Dance in Minnesota’s Twin Cities region. Young Dance offers youth classes and performance opportunities, and started to include dance classes for children and adults with disabilities in 2010 after realizing nothing else was being offered locally. Gretchen shares her belief in recognizing the uniqueness of individual bodies and supporting that expression, her passion for teaching, and how she’d like to expand and build upon Young Dance’s All Abilities program in the future. http://www.youngdance.org http://www.croiglan.com http://www.bodyshift.org http://stanceondance.com