Paul Oliver, 90

Paul Oliver, Pre-eminent Authority on the Blues, Dies at 90
by William Grimes, The New York Times, August 17, 2017

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Oliver Sacks, 82

Oliver Sacks Dies at 82; Neurologist and Author Explored the Brain’s Quirks
by Gregory Cowles, The New York Times, August 30, 2015

Oliver Sacks, Casting Light on the Interconnectedness of Life
by Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times, August 30, 2015

Got rhythm?

IN 1890, the American psychologist William James famously likened our conscious experience to the flow of a stream. “A ‘river’ or a ‘stream’ are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described,” he wrote. “In talking of it hereafter, let’s call it the stream of thought, consciousness, or subjective life.”

While there is no disputing the aptness of this metaphor in capturing our subjective experience of the world, recent research has shown that the “stream” of consciousness is, in fact, an illusion. We actually perceive the world in rhythmic pulses rather than as a continuous flow. 

--Gregory Hickok

Read more:

It’s Not a ‘Stream’ of Consciousness
by Gregory Hickok, The New York Times, May 8, 2015

Phyllis R. Klotman, 90

Phyllis R. Klotman, Scholar and Archivist of African-American Cinema, Dies at 90
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, April 5, 2015

Samuel Charters, 85

Samuel Charters, Foundational Scholar of the Blues, Dies at 85
by Larry Rohter, The New York Times, March 18, 2015

So you think you can dance? What science says

Northumbria University conducted a study about the male dance moves that are attractive to women.

Here's what they found!

Report details drop in corporate giving for dance

The most telling thing about this article in Crain's New York Business might be that, since being published a few days ago, it has received no comments.

Support for dance companies takes a tumble
Corporate donations that help sustain dance companies in the city have dropped precipitously.
by Theresa Agovino, Crain's New York Business, December 10, 2014

Read Dance/NYC 's complete report,

State of NYC Dance and Corporate Giving,

here.

Dance/USA: Fall 2014 paid internships, fellowships

Dance/USA, the voice for the professional field of dance, offers internships to aspiring arts administrators based at the national office, located in Washington, DC.

Dance/USA Internships are available in the following departments for the Fall 2014 Term:

·         Communications
·         Development
·         Government Affairs

Fellowships are available in the following departments:

·         Research

To apply, interested candidates must email their resume and a cover letter outlining internship interests, career goals, and availability to Melissa Lineburg, executive administrator.

Dance/USA’s Fall 2014 Internship Application Deadline is Friday, August 1, 2014, and the Fall Term runs September 3, 2014-December 5, 2014.

Recent college graduates, current college juniors/seniors, and graduate students are eligible to apply! Those accepted will receive professional, on-the-job experience that is needed in today’s job market by working with and assisting our national office staff.

Part-time and full-time internships are available. Stipends or university credit are also available.

With questions, email Melissa or call the Dance/USA national office at 202.833.1717.

Melissa L. Lineburg
Executive Administrator
Dance/USA
1111 16th Street, NW, Suite 300
Washington, DC 20036
202.833.1717 ext. 100
mlineburg@danceusa.org

Few women head top art museums

Study Finds a Gender Gap at the Top Museums
by Hillarie M. Sheets, The New York Times, March 7, 2014

New York dancer's migration to Kansas on behalf of butterflies

A story and slide show from this past summer about New York ballerina Gwynedd Vetter-Drusch's dance project in the butterfly research gardens at the University of Kansas for Monarch Watch

Concern For Monarch Butterflies Inspires Dancer To Action

by Julie Denesha, KCUR.org, June 23, 2013

Candace Pert, 67

Candace Pert, 67, Explorer of the Brain, Dies
by John Schwartz, The New York Times, September 19, 2013

What's really behind creativity: teamwork in the brain

The Real Neuroscience of Creativity
by Scott Barry Kaufman, Scientific American, August 19, 2013

Why they swooned for Liszt and Jagger

Musicians' appearances matter more than their sound
Our judgements of quality depend more on how a musician moves than what they sound like.

by Philip Ball, Nature.com, August 19. 2013

A little songbird told me

Finding the brain's common language
by Erin Wayman, Science News, July 22, 2013

Birds do it

Bird Night at the Disco
by Sindya N. Bhanoo, The New York Times, June 10, 2013

Where ideas live and move

Dr. Oliver Sacks (left) in conversation with Bill T. Jones, Executive Artistic Director, New York Live Arts (photo by Ian Douglas). Jones says of the dance community, "I wish we were more curious in the big discussion."

New York Live Arts is where thinking and movement meet the future. -- Bill T. Jones

For a healthy, viable future for the art of dance in American society, that art must meet its potential public--a public that is increasingly diverse; a public continuously plugged into numerous and growing sources of information and entertainment; a public caught up, ready or not, by issues of climate change, malfunctioning government, ruthless abuse of children and women, the devaluation of labor, the rise and risks of cyber-technology and more real world concerns and disasters.

New York Live Arts' visionary festival--launched this season as Live Ideas: The Worlds of Oliver Sacks, in celebration of the 80th birthday of the great neurologist and author--establishes a toehold for this turbulent world-at-large in one of our city's historic, beloved venues for innovative, contemporary dance. I salute this integration of the outside with the inside and, personally, it tickles me to enjoy the possibility of taking in so much of what has always moved my life--from artistic research to scientific inquiry, from informed citizenship to activism--in one convenient location. The mix--which is not strictly new but is newly presented here at the famously former Dance Theater Workshop--excites me and offers hope.

Some of it is just plain fun: Watching a video of NASA astronauts playfully demonstrating how the absence of gravity radically alters execution of everyday movements, while their very funny colleague, Marsha Ivins, shares her own experiences (panel on Disembodiedness: Body Image & Proprioception) or waiting for steam and F-bombs to shoot from artist Miguel Gutierrez while a philosopher torturously labors to define what dance supposedly is and is not (panel on Minding the Dancing Body). Gutierrez  knows that, when it comes to research in consciousness, dance--a mode of perception, as he defines it--has been excelling at this work for a long time now.

Marsha Ivins, retired veteran of five NASA Space Shuttle missions

Imagine spinning and never getting dizzy. 

Or moving a 700lb object with just a touch of your fingers. 

For more fun with zero g, check this out.

Dance artists have information, strategies and even wisdom that the rest of us could benefit from. Jones seems bent on getting this word out to society as well as making some beneficial connections for the dance field. At times, the dialogue seems a little stilted, a little awkward and even prickly, but as long as the various parties are in the same room, talking, who knows what good might come of it?

On the Minding the Dancing Body panel, choreographer RoseAnne Spradlin spoke of making dances as a way to help people see what is usually hard to see, a purpose that Alva Noë and Colin McGinn--the philosophers on hand--readily identified as the goal of their discipline, too. Later that evening, Donna Uchizono's new dance--presented along with her 1999 trio, State of Heads--illustrated this mission.

Donna Uchizono in Out of Frame (photo by Ian Douglas)

Out of Frame, commissioned for the Live Ideas fest, takes as its inspiration the young Dr. Sacks' observations in 1969 of eighty people who survived the 1920s worldwide occurrence of a brain inflammation called encephalitis lethargica. Working from Sacks' accounts of these "recovered" patients in his renowned book, Awakenings, Uchizono distills the characteristic lingering distortions of body, personality and perception of time and space, even persistent immobility, into a solo performed on a tall ladder in the middle of a bare stage. On its own, this staging says so much--the rarity of the condition, the isolation of those who cannot look or function according to the norm, the extremity and precariousness of their situation even under medication, the mystery of a disease whose cause and prospects for resurgence remain unknown.

The solo is strangely beautiful and bizarre and fascinating; one of Uchizono's initial images presents her hand as if it were the clenched bulb of a carnivorous flower or a slowly rippling sea creature. The piece traps memory and heightened sensations within an altered state in which the body might not be perceived as a stable or singular entity...or even one's own. Josh Higgason's video layers an image of the dancer's body onto her flesh, helping us see what it's like to feel that something is very much, well, off.

Live Ideas: The Worlds of Oliver Sacks continues through Sunday evening, April 21. For information on all remaining events--including the encore of Donna Uchizono's dance program on Saturday at 4pm--click here.

New York Live Arts
219 West 19th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), Manhattan
(map/directions)

The quest to save Aramaic

How to Save a Dying Language
Geoffrey Khan is racing to document Aramaic, the language of Jesus, before its native speakers vanish
by Ariel Sabar, Smithsonian Magazine, February 2013

Your brain on art

How Does the Brain Process Art?
New imaging techniques are mapping the locations of our aesthetic response
by Abigail Tucker, Smithsonian Magazine, November 2012

Beauty on the brain

Why We Love Beautiful Things
by Lance Hosey, The New York Times, February 15, 2013

Theater takes on climate change

Fate of the Earth Takes Center Stage
by Jason Zinoman, The New York Times, February 7, 2013