In Practice: Photographer Pak Han

little seismic dance company, photo by Pak Han My father is a photographer, and growing up, whenever I was minding my own business, doing my homework or vaccinating my stuffed […]

Finding the Way: Kumu Hula Makuakane Choreographs the Story of Ancestral Navigation

When World Arts West executive director Julie Mushet approached Patrick Makuakane with the idea of commissioning a dance piece based on Hawaiian astronomy and Maui, the ancestral Polynesian navigator, the […]

Sailing Away: Joanna Haigood Choreographs San Francisco History

Flooded with Gold Rush lucre and teeming with the adventurers who hunted for it, San Francisco in the 1850s was a rootin’-tootin’, quick-shootin’, prostitutin’ Wild West boomtown. Halloween in the […]

Tips for Documenting and Preserving Your Dances

The ephemeral beauty and spontaneity of live performance is what draws many of us to dance, and also what challenges choreographers who want to leave a lasting legacy of their […]

In Practice: Christy Funsch

Last December, I took a one-and-a-half-hour “Choreographic Tools” workshop with Christy Funsch at Shawl Anderson Dance Center. One and a half hours is not a lot of time to make […]

Rudolf Nureyev: A Life in Dance

Ballet bookshelves are crammed with countless biographies and novelizations of the life of Rudolf Nureyev attesting to a long-standing public fascination with the iconic ballet star, even some 20 years […]

Being Blurred: Ralph Lemon Interviewed

Ariel Osterweis Scott (AS): The last time I saw you was at a Miguel Gutierrez performance. I remember you said something provocative regarding an explicit performance art piece I hadn’t […]

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 […]

Fua Dia Congo; Dancing Malonga Casquelourd’s Legacy, Dec 2007

Not many small dance companies survive the death of their founders. Started in 1977 by the late master dancer and drummer Malonga Casquelourd, Fua Dia Congo has continued in their […]

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, […]