Toward and Away: Strengthening Family Bonds Through Creative Dance

At a community resource center in Berkeley, a young child and her mother are dancing together, playing the “freeze dance” game with the rest of the class. The young child […]

A Journey into Chaos: Creating Healing in Homeless Shelters

My work with the homeless didn’t start out as a brave act. It started as a necessary act. The adventure began when I moved myself and my dance company, Pythia, […]

SPEAK By Kathleen Hermesdorf

“This is the beginning of the future” I thought, as I awoke this past January 1. 2009 is the year of the Ox in the Chinese calendar, a year of […]

Glimpses of Nijinsky…100 Years Later

Much celebrated this year is the 100th anniversary of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, the Paris-based company that changed the face of dance in the twentieth century, as well as having […]

Z Space Breathes New Life into Theater Artaud

The tall cathedral-like room at the north end of the Theater Artaud lobby is being used as make-shift office space for Z Space and its affiliate companies. My first thought […]

Glancing at the Stars

On October 2nd Humanities West opens its 25th Anniversary Season with “Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler: Redefining our Place in the Universe,” a two-day program of lectures, discussions, and the premiere […]

Bold New Strokes: The Inauguration of the Performing Diaspora Festival

California has a very rich traditional dance and performance community. The Bay Area alone has over 300 ethnic dance groups. Along with this rich diversity comes support for traditional art […]

ODC’s Kaleidoscope of Outreach

When I sat down to talk about outreach with ODC artistic director KT Nelson, school director Kimi Okada, and outreach coordinator Annie Jupiter-Jones on a sunny morning at ODC’s Shotwell […]

Notes From a Suitcase

MAY 2009 – In A Dance Studio In America During a recent rehearsal I rediscovered a recording of my young Ethiopian students singing. It transported me back to the village […]

Editor’s Note, Dec 2009

I am a creature of habit. I love having a structured routine, knowing what to expect and seeing the next step before I take it. But it’s the deviations and […]