A Journey Home with Mamady Keita: How Codification of Dance Changes the Form

In December 2007, I had the opportunity to travel with Mamady Keita to his native village of Balandougou in Guinea, West Africa. Mamady Keita is the most celebrated djembe player […]

The Problem of “Culturally Specific” Dance: The Search for a Critical Multiculturalism in Dance, Apr 2009

One of the blessings of Bay Area living is our access to a rich variety of dance—a choreological panopoly often summarized, for the sake of convenience, as “modern, ballet, and […]

SPEAK: A Community Perspective

One of the more interesting facets of having a company is that the members change and new performers must figure their way through repertory developed on other bodies, with other […]

Reinventing Emily: A Choreographer

With my company, Danse Lumière (formerly Anima Mundi), a small-scale dance-theater group, I delve into large themed projects that lead me into deeper engagement with the subjects: I create unique […]

Director’s Note

I feel restless, maybe even a bit complacent. Believe me, I have plenty of tasks to accomplish and paperwork that I avoid addressing. The feeling has nothing to do with […]

SPEAK By Isabel Von Rittberg

I grew up in Wuppertal, Germany, home of Pina Bausch. As a girl I took ballet lessons with one of her dancers, also a close friend of my mother’s. Summers […]

Love ONSITE: Finding Love Everywhere in San Francisco

Anyone lucky enough to be at San Francisco’s City Hall on February 12, 2004, witnessed something extraordinary: The legal marriages of same-sex couples as well as heterosexual ones—along with the […]

Speak: Supporting Spirit through Bomba and Philanthropy

I was making my way home from the Financial District to the Mission on BART after work; feet pinched by the not-so-comfortable shoes I wore that day as part of […]

How to Work Abroad: Demystifying the Tanzmesse

The Internationale Tanzmesse NRW, a biennial festival in Düsseldorf, Germany, is either a bonanza of work opportunities or an exercise in “body fascism,” depending on whom you talk to. Listen […]

Across State Lines—New Direction, Comes New Information

Currently, I am an Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and after three years of focusing on navigating the rocky shores of academic life, I have […]