Being Good is OVERrated: Creating a Pray-Ritual

I am remembering my dad when he left me in the parking lot of Tegucigalpaโ€™s tiny airport when I was 14 years old, and he said โ€œalways remember your country.โ€ […]

In Practice: Tonya Marie Amos

In a 1993 interview, Toni Morrison said, โ€œThe people who practice racism are bereft. [โ€ฆ] It feels crazy. It is crazy. [โ€ฆ] If you can only be tall because somebodyโ€™s […]

Cultivating Freedom and Power in the Dance Classroom

Iโ€™m watching my two year old dance. Heโ€™s spinning fast, letting the full skirt of his dancing dress ripple around him, arms splayed, eyes closed. He sometimes spirals into the […]

Looking Ahead to the Indian Choreography Festival

Each of the five senses conjures a particular part of the body. For hearing, the ears; for touch, the skin; and so on. But the senses also draw from complementary […]

Welcome, June 2010

Certain smells elicit a flood of memories and summer seems to hold an inordinate share of these olfactory remembrances. Heat is most likely a contributing factor and this month I […]

SPEAK: Dialogues in the Diaspora

Photo by Leo Resplandor As a dancemaker, my chosen form of expression is bharatanatyam, a traditional dance form of South India. Like many traditional art forms, bharatanatyam feels precious, like […]

Welcome

Here we are. Have you figured out your superpowers yet? During hard times Iโ€™ve discovered that Iโ€™m able to call upon something unknown. I call this discovery my superpower. I […]

Did You Know?: Khala Brannigan

Khala Brannigan is a native of Santa Fe, New Mexico and alumna of the LINES Ballet Training Program. She founded Brannigan Dance Works in 2013 and has shared work at […]

Deep Roots, Many Branches: Black Choreographers Festival, Jan/ Feb 2008

It is 1992 and Katherine Dunham, the renowned dance artist and anthropologist has begun a hunger strike. The woman whose performing career is synonymous with theatricalizing African dance for the […]

Shawl-Anderson Dance Center: Celebrating a Half-Century of Making Dance and Community

In 1958, dance class was $2 at the studio Frank Shawl and Victor Anderson started above a liquor store on College Avenue in Berkeley. Adjusted for inflation, that means they […]