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.

Tracing Roots: A Perspective on Indian Contemporary Dance

I came to the US from India in 2003 to attain my BA in Dance from San Jose State University.

Jazz: Digging Deeper

If I want to educate dancers about Jazz, I need to create the space for the Early Jazz experience to transpire within my classes.

My Roots of Movement

Navigating a career in a Eurocentric, White-centralizing, contemporary dance world as a lesbian Latinx woman of mixed Indigenous blood never felt complicated until it started to.

Beyond Aesthetics: Bachata, Politics, Praxis

Originating among the (predominantly Black) rural poor in the Dominican Republic in the latter half of the twentieth century, bachata music and the accompanying dance steps were stigmatized by the sociopolitical elite as vulgar, low-class forms of entertainment unsuitable for polite society.

We Write Ourselves as We Move

I was born in the early 1980s in the coastal city of Durban, South Africa, to a nurse and a lawyer.

The Women in White

It was not until my first year of college that I asked myself why women were always dying in classical ballets. Now entering my senior year, this question still haunts me.

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Bliss Dance Festival

Bliss Dance Company proudly presents our 3rd annual Bliss Dance Festival (BDF)! BDF celebrates women’s sexual empowerment by showcasing women choreographers through this virtual event. Choreographers will express what they […]

FRESH MEAT FESTIVAL – 20th Anniversary

The 20th annual FRESH MEAT FESTIVAL of transgender, gender-nonconforming, and queer performance, showcasing dance, theater, music, poetry, and comedy – expands to two weeks of FREE online performances, presented from […]