Color headshot wearing red lipstick, gold nose piercing and hair in a flat twist updo with a slight smile. Right hand is placed by the right side of face.
Ballet dancer Daphne Lee, currently with world-renowned Dance Theatre of Harlem, has learned much about the joys and rigors of touring. In this talk, she shares her observations, concerns, and tips for young performers and challenges the dance field to consider how it develops new leaders.
To listen to today's podcast with Daphne Lee, click here!
And scroll down for more information!
Photo: Theik Smith
A black and white shot, of me jumping with feet crossed in the air. Hair is in faux locs and are splayed out from the momentum of the jump. Wearing a nude leotard.
BIO: Daphne Lee, originally from Rahway, NJ, began her dance training at the Rahway Dance Theatre under the direction of her mother, Ms. Jay Skeete-Lee. She graduated with Honors from the Alvin Ailey/Fordham BFA program in dance and currently holds an MFA from Hollins University. As an advocate for Multiple Myeloma Cancer research and diversity inclusion initiatives with companies, Lee remains an active ambassador of negotiating what it means to be an artist in the twenty-first century including branching out beyond ballet. Her teaching and lecture credentials include Rutgers, TCU, Oklahoma, Ohio State, Kent State, and many more. She incorporated a scholarship dedicated to women of color pursuing performing arts degrees. Lee has danced with Alvin Ailey II, Oakland Ballet Company, Collage Dance Collective, Black Iris Project, among many artists including Beyónce and is currently with the Dance Theatre of Harlem in New York City. www.daphnemlee.com and Instagram: Daphne732
The Closest Knot, HKAPA, Hong Kong, 2022 (photo: Ah Liu)
Initially trained in dance in her native Cuba, Judith Sánchez Ruíz has enjoyed an illustrious international career that includes performing for one of the towering figures of post-modern dance, Trisha Brown, who died in 2017. Fans of both Sánchez and Brown rejoiced last year when the Trisha Brown Dance Company named Sánchez as the troupe's first commissioned guest choreographer.
I was honored when Sánchez agreed to take time out from her whirlwind schedule--we're talking about zipping from Hong Kong to Münster to Brooklyn to Switzerland!--to record this wonderful talk for Body and Soul podcast!
To listen to today's podcast with Judith Sánchez Ruíz, click here!
And scroll down for more information!
Rehearsing new work, Let’s talk about bleeding, with the Trisha Brown Dance Company (photo: Julieta Cervantes)
BIO: Judith Sánchez Ruíz, the Berlin–based director (Havana, Cuba) began her dance studies at 11 at the National School of Arts, Ciudad de la Habana, Cuba. Ms. Sanchez has worked with Sasha Waltz & Guests (2011-2014); Deborah Hay (2012); Trisha Brown Dance Company (2006-2009); DD Dorvillier (2002, 2019); David Zambrano (1997), Mal Pelo (1997-1999); and DanzAbierta, (1991-1996). She established the JSR Company in New York City in 2010, creating numerous choreographic stage works and site-specific projects involving live music with innovative composers and visual artists.
Her choreography doesn't rely on the mechanization or memory of movement but more on ramifications and layering of subjects on a radio, a concept used in her last two more significant pieces, ENCAJE (2017) and My Breast on the table (2019). Human casualness and complexity, improvisation, community, and activism are essential to her work.
Sánchez has been awarded grants by The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The American Music Center's Live Music for Dance program, and the Baryshnikov Arts Center. Her work has been commissioned at Danspace Project, Works & Process at Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum, and Storm King Art Center, NY.
Sánchez has been established as a choreographer and as a teacher at major higher education institutions in dance throughout Europe, the US, Latin America, and Asia. She was a recent artist in residence at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and is currently a guest choreographer of an interdisciplinary opera premiering this January 28 at the Théâtre de Münster, Germany. In addition, she is the first commissioned guest choreographer for Trisha Brown Dance Company and will premiere the original work Let's talk about bleeding at the company's Joyce Theater season, May 2-7, 2023.
As Canadian tap dancer and podcaster Travis Knights recorded this episode, he used a great word to describe one of his beloved colleagues, and I, in turn, will choose the same word to describe Knights's performing--impeccable. I first learned of Travis through another tap artist you've heard on this podcast--Lisa La Touche--and, coincidentally, I later met Travis and shared space with him in a discussion on the state of tap today. And, yeah, maybe there are no coincidences!
I'm never sure how these Body and Soul podcast talks will turn out, but I've come to believe in their emergent magic, all so unique. Learning more about the charming--and very frank--Travis Knights did my heart good, and I hope you'll enjoy his talk, too.
To listen to this Body and Soul episode, click here.
And scroll down to read more about Travis!
Bio: Travis Knights is a Tap Dancer.
Born in Montreal, Canada, Travis was introduced to the rich oral tradition of Tap by his teacher Ethel Bruneau at age 10. He went on to travel the world spreading his love of rhythm across 4 continents, touring with Tap Dogs, Tapestry Dance Company, and the self-produced Tap Love Tour. He is the 2020 recipient of the Jaqueline Lemieux Prize for outstanding contribution to dance in Canada. In December 2021, in partnership with Dance Immersion, Travis, along with renowned Tap Dancer Lisa LaTouche, created and directed Legacy Series: Tap Dance Symposium which aimed to re-introduce Tap Dance to the local Black community in Toronto. In 2022, he debuted Anandam Dancetheatre’s innovative new work, Ephemeral Artifacts, a one person show that to date has toured 4 countries. He is the 2022 Dora Award winner for Outstanding Performance by an Individual. Travis is currently a Slaight Music Artist in Residence at Soulpepper Theatre Company. He currently lives in Brampton, Ontario and hosts The Tap Love Tour Podcast, available on spotify, soundcloud and apple podcasts, (make sure to subscribe) featuring interviews of a myriad of inspiring tap dance artists.
Brinda Guha on stage wearing black and gold with her hair in a top knot and
her arms in the air mid movement. She is smiling, and there are mic
stands behind her.
Official trailer for Can We Dance Here?
I first saw Brinda Guha and her Soles of Duende collaborators--Arielle Rosales and Amanda Castro--perform their sensational Can We Dance Here?
at Dixon Place in 2018, and I've been a fervent fan ever since. Three
women with mad skills in Tap
(Castro), Flamenco (Rosales), and Kathak (Guha), with their juxtaposed and blended dynamism, had the audience roaring with joy. I'm also deeply
respectful of Guha's scholarship and outspoken activism in the arts and social justice. I
knew she would be an powerful speaker for Body and Soul, but little did I know just how powerful!
Come along with Guha through rich memories of family, community, culture, the inner world, and performance.
Brinda standing in a white room on a white platform in all white with
a long shirt with black feminine divine drawings on it. Her hair is
down, and she has a bold lip and large turquoise earrings. Her arms are
in motion, and she is looking directly at the camera.
BIO: Brinda Guha identifies as a non-disabled, caste-privileged, cisgender
and queer South-Asian American, and is a trained Indian Classical Kathak
dancer for over 20 years and has traveled throughout USA and to India,
England, and Spain to perform. During training and performing for years
in the Kathak (Malabika Guha) and Manipuri (Kalavati Devi) dance
disciplines, as well as Flamenco (Carmen de las Cuevas; Dionisia Garcia)
and Contemporary Fusion vocabularies, she co-founded Kalamandir Dance
Company in 2010 based in the vocabulary of #ContemporaryIndian. This
name is currently under review. Through Kalamandir, Brinda choreographed
for many national stages, the North American Bengali Conference at
Madison Square Garden, and self-produced and choreographed original
feature-length dance productions which earned her artist residencies at
Dixon Place (2018) and Dancewave (2019) to continue to develop work.
Now, she is represented by CESD Talent Agency and is pursuing artistic
direction, performance and arts education. She continues to train in
Kathak, Manipuri, Yorchha™ (est. Ananya Chatterjea), and Contemporary.
Brinda also dances with dynamic percussive trio Soles of Duende,
featuring Flamenco (Arielle Rosales), Tap (Amanda Castro), and Kathak.
Her dream of having art meet activism was realized when she created WISE
FRUIT NYC, a seasonal live arts installment (est. 2017) dedicated to the
feminine divine and honoring select women-led organizations. Between
live installments, Wise Fruit NYC functions as a community-led space for
beginner tools in social justice. For her day job, she works as the
Symposium Coordinator for dance service organization based in the values
of justice, equity, and inclusion: Dance/NYC.
Kayhan, dark hair and dark eyes, sits sideways on a bench. Her arms are
folded as they rest across the back the bench. She is looking slightly
off camera to someone as if she's in conversation.
******
Kayhan Irani--writer, performer, artivist, mother--finds herself aswirl in a constellation of stories, savoring books by writers of color whose values point the way to a positive future. Come be inspired by Irani's beautiful talk on the textures of memory and how stories help us re-weave community.
Read below for more about my special guest, Kayhan Irani!
Eva Yaa Asantewaa
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Kayhan Irani performs There is a Portal in Philadelphia (photo: Aidan Un)
Kayhan, standing on a dark stage with eyes shut. She is in profile and a spotlight illuminates her face and chest. Her left arm is lifted up above her head, palm closed as if holding something. Her lips are slightly as she exhales.
BIO: I am Kayhan Irani, a writer, a performer, a cultural
organizer, and a Theater of the Oppressed Joker. For the past twenty I
have used the tools of participatory theater and storytelling,
internationally and in the US, to develop grassroots leaders and seed
transformative change. I make art that brings people together to deepen
our relationships to each other through story. Performance as
conversation, as memory, as a way to return to ourselves what we have
disregarded. My current project, There is a Portal, is
performance as pedagogy. A deeply personal, reflective digital journey,
coupled with in-person spaces of gentle, collective inquiry and
local/diasporic storytelling. The project offers embodied poetic
exploration to help us divest from narratives of erasure, restore our
core metaphors, and build narratives that orient us toward
self-belonging.
A black woman with long dreadlocks is wearing a black sleeveless dress. She is suspended in the air in a double attitude jump, with her left and right arms placed in fourth position with palms facing outward. The background is blurred with shades of green and white colors.
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Maxine Montilus has served many roles in dance--performer, choreographer, administrator, writer, and educator. I asked her to focus this podcast episode on her experience and ideas as a passionate and imaginative dance teacher across ages and levels. It was a delight to listen to her, and I hope you will enjoy this, too!
Listen to her segment on Body and Soul podcast here.
Subscribe to Body and Soul for more.
Read below to learn more about Maxine.
Eva Yaa Asantewaa
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BIO: Maxine Montilus is a dance artist from Brooklyn, New York. As an educator, Maxine is currently a Visiting Professor in the Theatre and Dance department at Indiana University. She is also a principal facilitator and teaching artist with Camille A. Brown & Dancers’ EVERY BODY MOVE Community Engagement platform, and was recently an adjunct dance professor at both Hunter College and SUNY Old Wetsbury. She has also served as a teaching artist for Haiti Cultural Exchange, Caribbean Cultural Center Africa Diaspora Institute, and Opus Dance Theatre. From 2015-2018, she was a full-time dance teacher for the New York City Department of Education. Maxine has also served as an arts administrator in arts education, coordinating programs for public schools, studios and healthcare facilities at The Juilliard School, Marquis Studios and Dancewave. www.maxinemontilus.com/
devynn emory on set for Grandmother Cindy, 2022 (photo: Reilly Horan)
emory with bronzed skin, dark black faded hair stands in their grandmother's warm fuzzy coat covered in polar bears looking directly at the camera while clasping their hands in anticipation of the performance beginning soon. behind them is a silver sterile table with bowls of medicine placed in preparation, their performer/collaborator Joseph M. Pierce (Cherokee Nation) and their cinematographer Jorge Cousineau. two figures draped in yellow fabric hold the space, representing devynn's ancestors.
******
There's no reason to build a wall of labels around devynn emory and their work in this world and between worlds. They care for body, spirit, and community in a multitude of ways--from nursing to choreography, from mediumship to bodywork, from writing to work with death and grieving. This rich interweaving of skills and services sounds strange only in a society that deliberately separates body and soul and fails to respect the multiplicity of ways of knowing and healing. devynn, however, stays attuned to ancient ways and what the land teaches.
Listen to their segment on Body and Soul podcast here.
Subscribe to Body and Soul for more.
Read below to learn more about devynn.
Eva Yaa Asantewaa
devynn emory filming Cindy Sessions: LAND on the lands of the Serrano peoples
BIO: devynn emory is a choreographer/dance artist, dual-licensed bodyworker, ritual guide, medium and registered nurse- practicing in the fields of acute/critical care, hospice, COVID and integrative health. emory's performance company devynnemory/beastproductions finds the intersection of these fields, walking the edges of thresholds–drawing from their multiple in-between states of being, holding space for liminal bodies bridging multiple planes of transition, finding reciprocity practice as a constant decolonial practice. they are currently working on a trilogy centering medical mannequins holding the wisdom of end-of-life experiences. (deadbird + can anybody help me hold this body, 2021, Cindy Sessions: Grandmother Cindy + Cindy Sessions LOVE, LOSS, LAND 2022, boiling-rain tbd). emory is a research group fellow at danspace 2020-2023, a recipient of the Onassis Eureka award, an FCA emergency grant recipient, and an Art Matters Artist2Artist fellow. born on Lenape Land, emory is a reconnecting descendant of mixed Lenape/Blackfoot/settler ancestry. www.devynnemory.com
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