In Process: the NC Dance Festival podcast

Bringing Season 2 of In Process to a close, Festival Director Anne Morris chats with fellow Dance Project Executive Director, Lauren Joyner, as they reflect on memories and highlights from the second half of the season. They echo ideas from the wide spectrum of guests about establishing a healthy and sustainable dance career, the need for equal access to funding and opportunities, and reexamining what a thriving career in dance can look like.

"In Process" is sponsored by Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist's Performing Arts Medicine Clinic: WakeHealth.edu/PerformingArtsMed

For information on upcoming NC Dance Festival events, visit our website: danceproject.org/ncdf

Info about NCDF call for submissions: https://danceproject.org/ncdf-apply/

To make a gift to the Festival Fund, please visit danceproject.org/give

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IG: @danceprojectinc

FB: NC Dance Festival

Guests featured in this episode:

Gerri Houlihan

Jody Cassell

Rae Cozart

MaD O’Brien

Kendall Ramirez

Faith Fidgeon

Jeff Aguiar

Princess Johnson

Milanda McGinnis

April Parker

Alexandra Joye Warren

Dr. David Popoli

Lesa Broadhead

Links to episodes mentioned:

Gerri Houlihan and Jody Cassell

This week, Festival Director Anne Morris speaks with four 2022 UNCSA contemporary dance graduates, Faith Fidgeon, Kendall Ramirez, maD O’Brien, and Rae Cozart. As these artists transition out of guided education, we discuss the ways they are trying to deal with that disorientation and take control of their own learning. We’ll talk about why it feels like they’ve been thrown by an elephant, how the pandemic changed their relationship to dance, and the kind of artistic communities they are looking to create, serve and participate in.

Links:

This week festival director Anne Morris speaks with Dr. David Popoli, a Sports Medicine physician at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist specializing in Performing Arts Medicine. Dr. Popoli speaks about his dedication to approaching the work of getting artists safely and sustainably back to their artform by considering artist health in a holistic way, from sports medicine to physical therapy to nutrition and psychology. He shares his tactics for providing patient-driven care by learning the language of dance, music, and other arts, and striving to keep performing arts medicine clinics as safe spaces for artists.

This week, Festival Director Anne Morris speaks with the President of NCDEO (North Carolina Dance Education Organization) and Dance educator, Laura Stauderman. The mission of NCDEO is to support and advance dance education in NC as a component of lifelong learning while providing resources and creating a sense of community for NC dance educators. As a high school dance educator herself, Laura sees firsthand the impact of exposing the next generation to art early on and the social-emotional benefits dance provides. In this conversation, we discuss how those social-emotional benefits became essential during COVID, how art education and experiences are critical even to those not considering a career in the arts, and how connection through dance helps students and educators thrive.

"In Process" is sponsored by Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist's Performing Arts Medicine Clinic: WakeHealth.edu/PerformingArtsMed

Links from this episode:

This week’s episode, adapted from a community conversation at the February 2022 Monthly Dancer Chat, features Jody Cassell and Gerri Houlihan in conversation about aging as dancers. Jody and Gerri share their experiences about their journeys as dancers into their later life and how they maintain their bodies, minds, and spirits to continue feeding their love for dance as their relationship to the art form changes. They provide inspiration on how to nurture the artist within throughout the joys and challenges of aging.

This week, Festival Director Anne Morris continues a conversation with four Greensboro-based artists: Princess Howell Johnson, Milanda McGinnis, April Parker, and Alexandra Joye Warren. In this 2-part conversation, these four women have an honest discussion on what is needed locally and nationally for Black artists to thrive, and the structural barriers that Black artists have faced and continue to confront and overcome. In the second part of the conversation, we discuss the impact that repeated rejection from funding or presenting structures can have on mental health, the ripple effects of being unapologetically true to your authentic self, and practical suggestions to predominantly white-led organizations for sharing resources and taking a step back so Black-led organizations can rise.

This week, Festival Director Anne Morris speaks with four Greensboro-based artists: Princess Howell Johnson, Milanda McGinnis, April Parker, and Alexandra Joye Warren. In this 2-part conversation, these four women have an honest discussion on what is needed locally and nationally for Black artists to thrive, and the structural barriers that Black artists have faced and continue to confront and overcome. In this first part of the conversation, we talk about the ways these artists create spaces for and by Black artists, and how their feelings about that work have shifted over the years. We also speak on the importance of “who is in the room,” when decisions about funding, artistic opportunities, and more are on the line, and the ways that efforts like the Black Creatives Revival can support Black artists.

This week Festival Director Anne Morris speaks with Tarayjah Hoey-Gordon, a dance educator, movement artist, and the founder of Dance Now Cry Later, an organization created to Educate, Elevate, and Inspire the next generation of dancers. Tarayjah shares the creative ways she’s finding to mentor young dance artists and describes her drive to create spaces and relationships that she would have benefitted from as she came up in the dance community. Tarayjah provides insight on how we can better respect Street Dance culture and break down the barriers between communities in the dance world, including studio dancers, street dancers, K-12 dance educators, and more. Hear how her position on the border of many of these communities provides a unique perspective and fuels her dedication to feed the NC dance community as a whole.

Last year on the podcast, Vania Claiborne, Dance Project staff member, choreographer, and educator, hosted a special conversation focused on the experience of some of the Black dance artists connected to Dance Project and the NC Dance Festival. It is such a rich conversation that we wanted to revisit it this year. Vania speaks with Amelia Renee Byrd and Jordan Booker-Medley about the experiences and mentors that have influenced who they are as artists, what it was like to see themselves reflected on the stage for the first time, how they navigate expectations our culture puts on the artistic work of Black choreographers, and what they are looking forward to exploring creatively.

Since this episode was originally released, Jordan has started a new job as Company Manager fellow for Wicked on Broadway. Amelia completed her Artist Residency with Dance Project in December 2021, and you can see and discuss the work she created for the residency in the NC Dance Festival’s next Virtual Dance Discovery Club on March 10.

Links:

This week, I’m talking with Jeff Aguiar, Theater and Literature Director for the North Carolina Arts Council. Jeff is a performing artist himself, as well as a PhD candidate in Conflict Analysis and Resolution Studies, studying the ways in which art is socially and politically engaged.

We discuss the ways that the NC Arts Council is making shifts to be more responsive to artist and community needs and more equitable in their funding practices, the role of art and dance in pushing shifts like these forward, and Jeff’s call to artists to be fully present wherever they are in their journey. In the last part of the episode, Jeff describes the grant programs the NC Arts Council is anticipating for 2022-23.

This week, Festival Director Anne Morris talks with Heather Hartley and Phil Reynolds, the founders of Trillium Arts, a residency center outside of Asheville, NC, that supports artists through a variety of residency and creative exchange programs. They moved to North Carolina a few years ago, from Chicago, where both had extensive experience working in the performing arts sector. Most recently Heather was the executive director of See Chicago Dance, a service and advocacy organization, and Phil was executive director of Chicago Dancers United from 2016 to 2019 and executive director of the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago for 17 years. We’ll talk about their hopes for Trillium to be a greenhouse for artists, the need for statewide advocacy for dance, and the richness of the dance landscape in North Carolina.

"In Process" is sponsored by Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist's Performing Arts Medicine Clinic: WakeHealth.edu/PerformingArtsMed

Links from this episode:

This week, we are taking some time at the beginning of a new year to reflect back on the past months and look ahead to the future. Since August, this podcast has featured a variety of people across the NC dance community, and in nearly each conversation, we’ve asked our guests, “what do you think the NC dance community needs to thrive?” Today, we’re listening back to excerpts of some of these conversations, drawing connections between the overlapping and intersecting ideas. In a way, we’re bringing these guests into conversation with each other, as each of them approaches the question of thriving from a slightly different point of view. We’re featuring excerpts from our interviews with Duane Cyrus, Robin Gee, Camerin Watson, Doug Singleton, Helen Simoneau, Zoe Litaker, and Caitlin Dutton-Reaver.

This week, Festival Director Anne Morris talks with Doug Singleton, the Executive Director for the Charlotte Ballet. Doug has been with the Charlotte Ballet since 1996, and the Executive Director since 2005. Doug has a long history in NC, and brings the perspective of a producer and presenter to the question of how to ensure a thriving future for the dance community. We’ll talk about how the Alvin Ailey Dance Company changed the course of his life, how Charlotte Ballet works to become a company of creatives, and what he thinks the key is to getting a dance audience to come back again and again. 

Links from this episode:

This week, Festival Director Anne Morris welcomes photographer Zoe Litaker back to the show. Zoe and Anne talked last fall on the podcast, at the beginning of our work on the 30 Portraits for 30 Years series, in which Zoe photographed 30 dance artists who have been influential in the development and evolution of the Dance Festival over the years. Each of these artists is a collection of the moments they’ve lived, their personal history intertwining with the story of the NC Dance Festival in a variety of ways. Zoe’s photos capture them in one moment of time, a glimpse of a whole life in one instant. When we talked last year, Zoe was just beginning this project, which she finished in July of 2021. Now, we are reflecting a bit on the series, on how Zoe grew as an artist in this process, and what makes dance and photography such a rich partnership.

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This week, Festival Director Anne Morris talks with Duane Cyrus, founder and director of Theatre of Movement, and faculty in the UNC Greensboro Dance Department. He has curated an upcoming exhibit at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem – Black @ Intersection: Contemporary Black Voices in Art, which opens November 19. Listen to find out more about Duane’s interest in the interplay between different art forms, what a “big toe initiative” is, and how he tries to question ideas about race and gender in his creative work.

This episode of “In Process” is sponsored by the UNC Greensboro Dance Department.

Links:

This week, Festival Director Anne Morris talks with Robin Gee, director of the Greensboro Dance Film Festival and faculty in the UNC Greensboro dance department. The Greensboro Dance Film Festival runs October 29-November 6 in a variety of venues in Greensboro, and features dance films by local, regional, and international artists. As the Dance Film Festival approaches, we discuss Robin’s entry into filmmaking, how art reflects culture, and how she strives to really engage the community through her work.

This episode of “In Process” is sponsored by the UNC Greensboro Dance Department.

Links:

This week, Festival director Anne Morris talks with dancer Aparna Keshaviah and musician Atiba Rorie about their creative collaboration as part of the NC Dance Festival performance this past weekend. In bringing Aparna and Atiba together for this project, we explored the contrasts between Aparna’s classical Indian dance and Atiba’s West African rhythms, and the process of finding common ground. Prior to the October 2 performance, Atiba and Aparna had a few conversations and exchanged a few ideas about rhythms and structure. Everything else came together during the afternoon of the performance, when they rehearsed in the studio together for the first time. This conversation captures the fresh feeling and energy generated by this collaboration, and highlights the connections formed between these two artists.

This week, I’m talking to choreographer Helen Simoneau, artistic director of Helen Simoneau Danse, about her dance, Flight Distance I, that she will be setting on a cast of 5 NC professionals for our NC Dance Festival performance on October 2nd. The group will be in residence in Dance Project’s studios the week of September 27 as they prepare for performance. This will be Helen’s first live performance of her choreography since March of 2020. We’ll discuss how Flight Distance turns out to be the perfect choice for the current moment, the new project she’s working on, and the importance of momentum in ensuring dancers’ careers can thrive.

This week, Festival Director Anne Morris talks with Camerin Watson, a dancer, teacher, choreographer, and organizer based in Charlotte, NC. Camerin is one of the people helping to coordinate the NC Dance Festival’s Statewide Movement Wave on September 18. Along with coordinators in Asheville, Greensboro, Durham, and Wilmington, Camerin is helping pass a wave of movement from one end of the state to the other. People of all ages and abilities are invited to join in the guided movement and be part of the NC Dance Festival’s 30th Anniversary season as we celebrate how dance brings us together! We’ll discuss why she feels an experience like this is so important for people right now, how to join a wave near you on the 18th, and what that experience might be like. We’ll also discuss the power of dancers speaking with a collective voice for funding, resources, and space, and what it means to create and celebrate a truly diverse local art culture.

Welcome to the 2nd season of “In Process: The NC Dance Festival podcast”!

This season, we’ll be guided by the question, “What does the NC Dance Community need to Thrive?” Our conversations this season start with dance and the creative life, but spill into all aspects of our community as we connect, revitalize, and dream together. This week, Festival Director Anne Morris is joined by Dance Project co-director Lauren Joyner, to kick off this second season, talking a little about what to expect from this season of the podcast, and what we have planned for the rest of the NC Dance Festival’s 30th Anniversary season this fall. There will be plenty to watch, participate in, and interact with this season, so we hope you can join us!

This week, we’re wrapping up Season 1 of “In Process,” the NC Dance Festival podcast, by listening back to a collection of moments in this Dance Festival season. Some of these are favorite moments from conversations, things that I think back to again and again. Some of these give a sense of the range of ways we’ve engaged artists and audiences in this very different season. All of them bring up questions that the Festival and this podcast have been investigating this season, and really, are at the core of so much that we as dancers do: Who are we? What moves us? How do we move through the world? How do we relate to others, collaborate, share our vision, and inspire each other?

Links in this episode:

Full episodes mentioned:

In Episode 20, we are sharing an excerpt of our recent Community Conversation, titled Connecting Community Through Dance. This virtual conversation, sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte Dance Program, featured dance artists Tamara Williams and Alexandra Joye Warren speaking on how their work through dance builds community, works toward social justice, and gives access and voice to those historically left out.

Links in this episode:

To connect with the artists:

Alexandra Joye Warren: @joyemovement (IG)
https://www.joyemovement.com

Tamara Williams:@movingspiritsinc (IG)

www.movingspirits.org

This week, Festival Director Anne Morris talks with Gavin Stewart and Vanessa Owen of Stewart/Owen Dance. The couple is based in Asheville, NC, and this year, they’ve really been able to connect with their local arts community in a bigger way than  before the pandemic, when their professional lives were full of travel. We talk about the microdance they created for the NC Dance Festival season in the fall, the ways they have created outside of their comfort zone this year, and how they look forward to using technology to get the most out of their performing career.

Links in this episode:

This week we have a special bonus episode in honor of Dance Project’s founder Jan Van Dyke. Her birthday is today, April 15, and she would have been 80 years old this year! To celebrate this milestone birthday, Festival Director Anne Morris sat down with three long-time Van Dyke Dance Group members, Virginia Freeman Dupont, Kelly Swindell, and Laura McDuffee, to talk about the impact meeting and working with Jan had on their lives and careers, some of the things they learned from Jan that they try to carry into their own lives, and the ways that they are helping bring her work and her influence forward, to the next generation. We also had the pleasure of collecting memories from other former members of Jan’s company, and we’ll share a few of their memories of Jan and her dances throughout this episode.

This week, Festival Director Anne Morris chats with Aparna Keshaviah and Audrey Baran, two of the 20 choreographers selected to make a micro dance, a 30-60 second dance film, for the NC Dance Festival’s virtual premiere back in October. For this project, each choreographer was paired with a “choreography buddy”. The intention here was not to create their microdances together, but to provide some creative support throughout the process, and also to get to know artists working in other ways or other parts of the state. Audrey and Aparna were choreography buddies, so we’ll hear how they connected for this project, and how their dances evolved in very different directions. Aparna works from a foundation of Bharatanatyam, a classical Indian dance, so we’ll discuss how that influenced her micro-dance, and how Audrey drew from a contemporary dance background for her work.

Links in this episode:

This week, Festival Director Anne Morris shares short interviews with two of our current Artists in Residence, Jen Guy Metcalf and Bre Forbes. As artists in residence, Jen and Bre have access to a certain amount of free rehearsal space in our Greensboro studio, to use for the development of their creative work during the 2021 calendar year. In these conversations, we’ll hear how each is developing their artistic work, how dance communicates where words sometimes fail, the unique power of dance to illuminate and transform community spaces, and how these artists live dance in every aspect of their lives.

Links in this episode:

To close out Black History Month, we have a special conversation hosted by Vania Claiborne, focused on the experience of some of the Black dance artists connected to Dance Project and the NC Dance Festival. Vania speaks with Amelia Renee Byrd and Jordan Booker-Medley about the experiences and mentors that have influenced who they are as artists, what it was like to see themselves reflected on the stage for the first time, how they navigate expectations our culture puts on the artistic work of Black choreographers, and what they are looking forward to exploring creatively.

Links mentioned in this episode:

This week Festival Director Anne Morris chats with choreographers Vania Claiborne, Taryn Griggs, and Laura Gutierrez. We have a candid conversation about the realities of being a dance artist during the pandemic, the connection between dancing and processing current events, the cost of the gig lifestyle as a choreographer, and what to do if you eat, sleep, breathe dance. These artists share how they are starting to answer some of the questions that the pandemic has raised about what is important in a dance career, and we discuss the new workshop Dance Project is starting February 14, called Maker’s Space. Taryn Griggs will facilitate this workshop for dance makers, designed to reconnect artists with their creative practice and with each other.

Links mentioned in this episode:

In this episode, Festival Director Anne Morris talks to Christopher Fleming, Technical Director at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, or UNCG. For the last 3 years, Chris has also been the Tech Director and Lighting designer for the NC Dance Festival tour. In this conversation, we’ll talk about how Chris got his start as a lighting designer, what has been providing some hope in this challenging time for dance departments, with the coronavirus pandemic, how he strives to create the world he wants to live in inside of his theater, and why he’d like his students to sit outside for 24 hours.

In Episode 5, Festival Director Anne Morris interviews 3 more of the 20  choreographers selected to create a microdance (30-60 second dance film)  for the NC Dance Festival's virtual season. We'll hear from Renay Aumiller as we chat about trusting your collaborators, how music influenced her creation process, and what the pandemic means for dancers who work closely with the community. Then, Anne talks to Chris Yon and Taryn Griggs about how it feels to shift to a virtual format, talk honestly about what we miss about dancing in person right now, and how the medium of film changes the creative relationship between the two of them.

In  Episode 4, Festival Director Anne Morris interviews 3 more of the 20 choreographers selected to create a microdance (30-60 second dance film) for the NC Dance Festival's virtual season. We'll hear from Vania Claiborne about how this project required her to work in a different way than usual and how she ended up with a dance that she says “feels like her.” Then, Anne talks to "choreography buddies" Michael Rank and Jiwon Ha about the warm and generous partnership they created in this process, and the ways history shows up in the present.

In Episode 3, Festival Director Anne Morris interviews Sarah Council and Kate Shugar, two of the twenty choreographers selected to make microdances (30-60 second dance films) for the NC Dance Festival's virtual season. For this project, each choreographer was paired with a “choreography buddy,” and Kate and Sarah were "buddies" in this process. The intention here was not to create their dances together, but to provide some creative support, and also to get to know artists working in other ways or other parts of the state. We provided the choreographers with 30 images drawn from the 3 decades of the Festival’s history, and each pair of choreographers chose 5 images to act as a starting place for their microdances.

Kate Shugar and Sarah Council talk about the relationship they built, the challenges of making a 1 minute dance, and the hidden influences on their creative work.

In Episode 2, Festival Director Anne Morris interviews Amanda Miller, Director of Programs and Marketing for Greensboro Downtown Parks, choreographer Alexandra Joye Warren, and visual artist Darlene J. McClinton about the collaborative mural installed in LeBauer Park during National Dance Day. 

We discuss how true collaboration and partnership is not like ordering off a menu, how the process of creating the mural required translating between dance and visual arts languages and finding a shared language, and how the mural can welcome anyone and everyone to move in their own ways. 

In this first episode, NC Dance Festival director Anne Morris lays out what's in store for this season--the start of the Festival's 30th Anniversary season. Anne gives a brief history of the Festival, insight into the themes and threads that connect the different parts of this season – now mostly virtual– and a preview of what this podcast will feature in the coming weeks. Whether you’re a dancer yourself or just curious about the who, how, and especially the why of dance, we’re glad to have you along for this journey.