Dance Cast

In this bonus companion episode, Monique Jenkinson, aka Fauxnique, reads from her 2022 memoir, Faux Queen: My Life in Drag.

It’s not every day that the author of a book and a subject of that book, who also wrote a book, appear on a podcast together. Well, today is that day. Drag artist Monique Jenkinson, aka Fauxnique, author of Faux Queen: A Life in Drag, and Selby Wynn Schwartz, author of The Bodies of Others: Drag Dances and their Afterlives, join Sima to deeply discuss drag dances in all their delightful daring.

Paige Morgan Johnson, Assistant Professor of Performance & Race, talks with Sima about how contemporary Waria (an Indonesian term for transgender women) nuance the relationships between language, performance genres, and the legibility of gender.

Sima has a heady discussion about dance photography and philosophies of capture with photographer Stephen Texeira.

Margaret Rennerfeldt, Professor of Dance at Austin Peay State University, joins Sima to discuss the Fox show The Big Leap.

To launch season two of Dance Cast, Sima invites listeners to share their dance stories and tells one of her own. A transcript of this episode is available at odc.dance/stories.

Host Sima Belmar reflects on the future of Dance Cast, plans for 2022, and tells a story about her dance life.

Chloë L. Zimberg (she/her), is a dancer, producer, curator, and arts program specialist currently leading ODC Theater as Creative Director. Her work centralizes on the strategic development of equitable performing arts platforms and the live arts sector. Zimberg is the Co-Founder of Chlo & Co Dance, which curates and presents Drove, a twice-annual evening of dance performance by West Coast artists, as well as Tabled, an interdisciplinary discussion series highlighting universal issue areas in the national arts ecology. Zimberg is originally from the Puget Sound and holds a BA in Performing Arts and Social Justice from the University of San Francisco with concentration in Dance and minor emphases in Politics and English Literature. She is an alum of the National Arts Strategies and University of Pennsylvania Executive Program in Arts & Culture Strategy.

Charlotte Moraga, Artistic Director of Chitresh Das Institute (CDI), and composer Alam Khan discuss CDI's new work, Mantram, an artistic creation exploring resonance through movement, music (composed by Khan), percussion, and vedanta, the world's oldest, unbroken oral tradition. Their conversation took place as part of ODC's This Is Also The Art series on October 14, 2021. 

CDI brings to the stage ground breaking, traditional, and collaborative performances exploring the depth and versatility of North Indian classical kathak dance and music, and is a community-based educational institution, focused on world-class standards, holistic knowledge, and seva (service).

Sima talks with Ann Carlson, Shinichi Iova-Koga, and Dana Iova-Koga about These are the Ones We Fell Among, a work that takes inspiration from the movements, myths, and metaphors of our endangered animal cousins – persons called by other names, like “elephant.” Conceived, choreographed, written and directed by award-winning interdisciplinary artist Ann Carlson in collaboration with inkBoat, These Are the Ones We Fell Among grapples with elegance in the face of extinction, looking for humor and grace amid excrement, entropy, fear, and fury. Performed by Shinichi and Dana Iova-Koga, with music by composers Carla Kihlstedt and Shahzad Ismaily, lighting by Allen Willner, and scenic elements by Amy Rathbone. In person, Friday-Saturday, November 5 & 6, 8 PM PT; Sunday, November 7, 4 PM PT. Available for on-demand viewing November 12.

A transcript of this episode is available at odc.dance/stories.