Welcome back to BodyPolitic! First Episode since the Before Times, Season 2, episode 1, brings you dancer, choreographer, author and delightful human Kara Tatelbaum. We discuss Kara's new book, Putting My Heels Down, criticism as currency in dance training and how it affects us throughout life, personally and professionally. We ponder the big questions like - do our math teachers still think we need to get our priorities straight? 

Anonymous "Doc" from Denver, CO, is a Family Medicine practitioner who lists termination of pregnancy as one of the services he provides and has been providing for the past 25-plus years. In addition to earning his MD, he also has a degree in Public Health. He practices family medicine, teaches, and takes on interns who wish to learn about the historical facts, public health effects, and procedural techniques of terminating pregnancies.  Doc has first-hand accounts of the threats to the safety of providers and women seeking abortion services, a deep appreciation for radical feminist literature, and is doing important work to keep women alive, intact, and safe. 

Raymond Rodriguez, former principal dancer with the Cleveland/San Jose Ballet (and also Assistant Artistic Director and Managing Director), current Head of Studio Company and Trainee Program at the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago, describes what it's like to be "aged out" of a career before feeling ready. Do we ever feel ready to sit on the sidelines once we've built a life onstage, in performance? Luckily for the Studio Company and Trainees at the Joffrey, Raymond uses his experience to educate, inspire, and prepare young dancers and choreographers to advocate for themselves and mature in ways that weren't thought important in previous generations of dance training. Knowing full well the psychological and emotional toll of a life in the studio at the whim of choreographers and directors, Raymond is ensuring that his students have the knowledge and support to weather the storms as they come. 

Fear is a big topic to tackle, and one that comes up a LOT in discussions with performing artists and artmakers. Ashley McQueen is the poster child for Political Artivism - she creates tremendous, disruptive, socially conscious, subversive work that allows the performer to be powerful, vulnerable, beautiful, and grotesque within the same piece. How does she tackle her fear, and how does she find her strength to perform such politically charged work in today's political climate? Listen to find out...

The second half of a conversation with Christopher Roman. Is it OK to have fear, as a performer, when choosing to push back against the paradigm? Christopher discusses this, describes some politically-charged works by lesser-known choregraphers, and offers suggestions to mobilize as a community, to create work that challenges the "system" as well as the audience to effect change. 

Episode 1, a conversation with Christopher Roman, pt 1/2. 

Christopher Roman is an award-winning professional dancer and choreographer based in Frankfurt, Germany. He has served as Associate Artisitic Director of the Forsythe Company in Frankfurt, Artistic Director of Dance ON in Berlin, and is at the beginning stages of building a SALT Company, a "multi-faceted" resource for dancers. In part one of our conversation, we discuss the worth of a moving body, and what would be required to effect change in the dance world in order for dancers to garner agency over their own bodies and the politics at play in the world of performing arts.