BODY AND SOUL: Melanie George: The art of returning

Melanie George (photo by JD Urban)

The bright, cool-toned photo features Melanie George in the foreground and a blurred white door ajar in the background. Melanie, a Black woman with brown skin and coily hair, is photographed from the chest up. She is turned slightly to the left and gazing toward the camera with a playful, reserved smile. She is wearing bright red lipstick and nail polish, and her fingertips are lightly touching her sternum. Melanie is wearing a long-sleeve jumper zipped up at the center, with a white base and lively plant-like print. The print consists of multiple solid colored shapes--red, silver, navy and burgundy--each emanating from a central point with long, thin strands. She sports hexagon earrings of a thin metal material dangling an inch below her earlobes.

Listen to Melanie George: The Art of Returning on my Body and Soul podcast here.

Melanie George is Associate Curator and Scholar in Residence at Jacob’s Pillow, and guest curator for the 2024 American Dance Platform at the Joyce Theater. As a dramaturg, she has contributed to projects by Raja Feather Kelly, Helen Simoneau, Alice Sheppard, Urban Bush Women, and SW!NG OUT among others. Melanie is featured in the documentary UpRooted: The Journey of Jazz Dance and a contributing to scholar to Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches, and Rooted Jazz Dance: Africanist Aesthetics and Equity in the Twenty-First Century. Melanie is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Rutgers University and has guest lectured at Harvard University, the Yale School of Drama, and The Juilliard School. In 2021, she was named one of Dance Magazine’s 30 over 30, and is the recipient of the Outstanding Leadership Award from the National Dance Education Organization. She is a performer/dramaturg with The Jazz Continuum. https://www.melaniegeorge.org

BODY AND SOUL: Bhumi B Patel: This world needs queerness

 Bhumi B Patel (photo: Lydia Daniller)

A brown-skinned dancer, Bhumi B Patel, with long black hair in a black v-neck shirt, looks directly at the camera with a wide smile and slightly squinted eyes.

(photo: Robbie Sweeney)

A single brown-skinned dancer, Bhumi B Patel, is surrounded by a semi-circle of onlookers in chairs in a dance studio with a gray marley floor and brown beams across a white ceiling. Sunlight streams in from the windows while the dancer is crouched on the ground in all black, with both hands flat on the floor in front of her.

 

Listen to Bhumi B Patel: This world needs queerness on my Body and Soul podcast here.

Bhumi B Patel directs pateldanceworks and is a queer, desi, home-seeker, science fiction choreographer, movement artist, and writer. She has presented her choreography in the Bay Area, Manoa (Hawai’i), Los Angeles, New York, and Columbus (Ohio). Bhumi was a 2022-2023 Dance/USA Fellow and a 2023 YBCA 100 Honoree. She has presented at Dance Studies Association, Popular Culture Association, National Women’s Studies Association, and Asia Pacific Dance Festival, and has published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Contact Quarterly, and InDance. Her research on queer decoloniality and improvisation intersects with her performance-making as a way of tracing the deep connections of past, present, future to build communities of nourishment and care. pateldanceworks.org