Dancing Happens in Strip Malls Too

My first memories of learning dance were at the Strip Mall Dance Studio near my house in Lawrence, Kansas. The strip mall was creatively named “The Malls Shopping Center.” I don’t remember what the studio itself was called but I know exactly where it was—tucked in the corner of a row of single-story beige buildings that also housed Pet World (my favorite place on earth as a 4-year-old), an Ace Hardware (my second favorite place), and a Godfather’s Pizza.

A Turning Point

A bounty of generous resources from our dance community and the San Francisco Bay Area is how I found my way through a return of breast cancer and the death […]

The Abundant Season: Fall Performance Preview

The Bay Area welcomes a bounty of shows this fall, from outdoor aerials to free festivals and avant-garde dance-theater – this preview offers just a taste of what’s to come. […]

WestWave Dance Festival Artists Speak

In addition to our interview with Joanna Haigood, we asked the 45 artists participating in this year’s DanceWaves and Film Night to offer up a first person perspective—or in grant-speak, […]

Presence and Liveness in Online Learning: A Lesson in Choreographing Students from Afar

For the past year, I have been working on a new choreography that premiered this past April 17-26 as a part of the annual Berkeley Dance Project (BDP) directed by […]

Community Calendar

Dancing Archivists: A Conversation

Hallie Chametzky and Sarah Nguyen are archivist dance-makers who met at the Mark Morris Dance Group Archives, where Sarah was working and Hallie was visiting, in the fall of 2019.

Moving Across Cultures: Transmitting cultural knowledge through movement language

The effects of dance on the brain have been studied using Western dance forms like ballet, but not with less known forms like Persian/Iranian dance.

MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE: Jo Kreiter Brings Attention to Older Homeless Women

Isadora Duncan Award-winning choreographer Jo Kreiter draws from a variety of disciplines and lenses: gymnastics, Chinese pole acrobatics, social justice and urban revitalization, to name a few. Along with her apparatus-based aerial dance […]

Just Out of Reach: The Art of the Company History, Mar 2008

Capturing dance, if not purely impossible, is at least like hunting butterflies: a fragile art, with many beautiful frustrations. Once you pin it down, its motion has been stilled, and […]