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 […]

What’s in a Name: The Legacy of Everybody’s Creative Art Center

The 1970s were a time in America when black people awakened to their African heritage and were taking on new names more fitting their history and characters. For dancer and […]

In The Know: Gaining Confidence with Arts Advocacy

As I sat in the back of an almost-full Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Novellus Theater for the SF Mayoral Arts Forum this past August, I felt a palpable […]

Dance Film Review: Teenagers Asked to Take on Pina Bausch

Dancing Dreams documents the collaborative journey between forty non-dancing teenagers and Pina Bausch as they set forth to re-stage Bausch’s 1978 work, Kontakthof. One of Bausch’s final projects before her […]

SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT

THE FIRST TIME I WORKED with the teens of YBCA’s Young Artists at Work program (YAAW), I watched them navigate Keith Hennessey’s Turbulence: A Dance About the Economy after discussing […]

Critical Dialogues: Heather Desaulniers and Katherine Hawthorne

What if, rather than writing a review, a critic sat down with a choreographer to have a two-way conversation about the work? that’s the experiment behind critical dialogues. For this […]

Dance, Protest and Identities: A Book Review

Embodied Politics: Dance, Protest and Identities Stacey Prickett Published by Dance Books, 2013 IN THE LAST DECADES, we have begun to feel a seismic shift in western understanding of the […]

Welcome, Apr 2014

Encountering a creative voice that grasps me, makes for vibrancy. Words, sounds, images, and assuredly, movement crafted in the right manner, seduce me by their singular vision– voice. Their emphatic […]

Welcome, May 2014

Well-placed words of encouragement brighten any day. The timing in which a teacher releases nuggets of wisdom and kindness has the ability to motivate and even alter a person’s life path. […]

Building Digital Parallelity for the Performing Arts: In Conversation with Stephen Backer, Co-Founder & CEO of 2ndline.tv

 (left to right) Stephen Backer, Lucas Gonze, Jacob Ritvo / Photo Courtesy of 2ndline.tv Creativity permeates the entire San Francisco Bay Area. Its tech startup culture attracts smart, driven individuals and encourages risk-taking, experimentation […]