BODY AND SOUL: Stephan Koplowitz: History in place

Stephan Koplowitz (photo: Lynn Lane)

 

Award-winning choreographer and writer Stephan Koplowitz discusses the importance of thorough research into the history of a place--and knowledge of one's own relationship to history--in the making of site-specific performance. He describes site work as disruptive and all performance as political.

Listen to Stephan's episode of Body and Soul podcast here. And scroll down to learn more about his own history and work! 

 

Occupy by Stephan Koplowitz (photo: George Simian)

Mill Town by Stephan Koplowitz (photo: Jonathan Hsu)

 

Stephan Koplowitz is an award-winning artist/educator who creates site-specific and staged
dance performances, interactive media installations, and short films. His site performances aim
to alter people’s perspectives of place, site, and scale, infused with a sense of the human
condition, and concerned with the intersection of natural, social, and cultural ecologies within
urban and natural environments. His productions have been produced by performing arts
venues domestically and abroad having created 93 works (66 commissions) in the US, Europe,
and Asia. He received a 2017 Rockefeller Bellagio Fellowship, a 2004 Alpert Award, a 2003
Guggenheim Fellowship, 2000 “Bessie,” and 6 NEA Choreography Fellowships (1988-97). He
was named a Distinguished Alumni by Wesleyan University (BA in Music Composition) and the
University of Utah (MFA, Choreography). In April 2022, Oxford University Press published his
critically praised book On Site: Methods for Creating Site-Specific Performance. Koplowitz lives
in New York City. https://www.stephankoplowitz.com

BODY AND SOUL: Thomas Ford: For love of Black queer identity

Thomas Ford (photo: Angelo Soriano)

A person with brown skin wears a gray cap and a gray sleeveless shirt tucked into black athletic pants. His torso bends to the side, and ears hang over his shoulder in the same direction. The fingers of his right hand gently reach to the camera, while his knees bend and legs spread in a wide position.

In today's episode of Body and Soul podcast, dance artist and writer Thomas Ford reflects on his research into the violent colonial history at the root of homophobia in Black families and community.

Listen to Ford's talk here.

Thomas Ford is a dance artist, writer and scholar whose research examines the mechanisms of identity and culture through an exploration of embodiment, choreography, and Black, queer, critical and performance studies. https://www.thomasfordnyc.com/

BODY AND SOUL: Kate Mattingly: Troubling the silence

 

 

Kate Mattingly

Above: a white woman's face with curly, honey-colored hair, smiling and tilting her head slightly left. No photographer credit. Courtesy of Kate Mattingly.

This Spring, author Kate Mattingly published Shaping Dance Canons: Criticism, Aesthetics, Equity, an analysis of many decades of dance criticism in the US (University of Florida Press). As a white woman, she accepts responsibility to speak out about white supremacy. In her talk today, she shares thoughts on how white supremacy has historically defined and dominated dance criticism and continues to silence women in academia.

Dr. Mattingly has written for The New York Times, The Village Voice, Dance Magazine, and Pointe Magazine and is associate editor of Dance Chronicle. She is assistant professor of dance at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.

Listen to Dr. Mattingly's talk on Body and Soul podcast here.

Below: two dancers, a Black man and white woman, seen in profile, with his right hand holding her right hand as she leans away from his body. He stands firmly in a deep lunge while she leans into her left hip. Image of Troy Blackwell and Kate Mattingly from a workshop staging of William Forsythe's Steptext at New York University. (Photo: Peter A. Smith)

Kate Mattingly (she/her) focuses on fostering equity in dance education. As an assistant professor at Old Dominion University, she teaches ballet, dance histories, teaching principles, dance studies, and graduate research methods. Her book, Shaping Dance Canons, interrogates how critics have foreclosed opportunities for certain artists and dance forms while generating validity for others, thereby contributing to a racialized dance canon. Her writing has been published in The New York Times, The Village Voice, Dance and Pointe magazines, The Washington Post, and academic journals. She has a forthcoming anthology, called Antiracism in Ballet Teaching, that will be published by Routledge. Kate’s undergraduate degree in Architecture is from Princeton University, her MFA degree in Dance is from NYU, and her doctoral degree in Performance Studies with a Designated Emphasis in New Media is from University of California, Berkeley.

Shaping Dance Canons: Criticism, Aesthetics, Equity (University of Florida Press, 2023)
Dance Chronicle, Executive Editor
Special Issue: "Interrogating Histories and Historicizing Dance Studies"