Dancecast

Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance seeks to investigate stereotypes often used to describe professional dancers with disabilities. Spearheaded by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen with illustrations by visual artist Liz Brent-Maldonado, the team interviewed 35 professional dance artists with disabilities around the country and world, asking about training, access, and press, as well as looking at the state of the field.

Purchase your print copy of Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Herringbone Books, Green Apple Books, Walmart, and other online retailers.

Purchase your ebook copy on Kindle, Kobo, Scribd, and other platforms.

Purchase your audiobook copy on Audible.

Details: Authored by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen, illustrations by Liz Brent-Maldonado, design by Christelle Dreyer, edited by Donne Lewis and April Adams, audiobook narrated by Sami Kekäläinen.

Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance seeks to investigate stereotypes often used to describe professional dancers with disabilities. Spearheaded by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen with illustrations by visual artist Liz Brent-Maldonado, the team interviewed 35 professional dance artists with disabilities around the country and world, asking about training, access, and press, as well as looking at the state of the field.

Purchase your print copy of Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Herringbone Books, Green Apple Books, Walmart, and other online retailers.

Purchase your ebook copy on Kindle, Kobo, Scribd, and other platforms.

Purchase your audiobook copy on Audible.

Details: Authored by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen, illustrations by Liz Brent-Maldonado, design by Christelle Dreyer, edited by Donne Lewis and April Adams, audiobook narrated by Sami Kekäläinen.

Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance seeks to investigate stereotypes often used to describe professional dancers with disabilities. Spearheaded by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen with illustrations by visual artist Liz Brent-Maldonado, the team interviewed 35 professional dance artists with disabilities around the country and world, asking about training, access, and press, as well as looking at the state of the field.

Purchase your print copy of Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Herringbone Books, Green Apple Books, Walmart, and other online retailers.

Purchase your ebook copy on Kindle, Kobo, Scribd, and other platforms.

Purchase your audiobook copy on Audible.

Details: Authored by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen, illustrations by Liz Brent-Maldonado, design by Christelle Dreyer, edited by Donne Lewis and April Adams, audiobook narrated by Sami Kekäläinen.

Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance seeks to investigate stereotypes often used to describe professional dancers with disabilities. Spearheaded by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen with illustrations by visual artist Liz Brent-Maldonado, the team interviewed 35 professional dance artists with disabilities around the country and world, asking about training, access, and press, as well as looking at the state of the field.

Purchase your print copy of Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Herringbone Books, Green Apple Books, Walmart, and other online retailers.

Purchase your ebook copy on Kindle, Kobo, Scribd, and other platforms.

Purchase your audiobook copy on Audible.

Details: Authored by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen, illustrations by Liz Brent-Maldonado, design by Christelle Dreyer, edited by Donne Lewis and April Adams, audiobook narrated by Sami Kekäläinen.

Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance seeks to investigate stereotypes often used to describe professional dancers with disabilities. Spearheaded by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen with illustrations by visual artist Liz Brent-Maldonado, the team interviewed 35 professional dance artists with disabilities around the country and world, asking about training, access, and press, as well as looking at the state of the field.

Purchase your print copy of Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Herringbone Books, Green Apple Books, Walmart, and other online retailers.

Purchase your ebook copy on Kindle, Kobo, Scribd, and other platforms.

Purchase your audiobook copy on Audible.

Details: Authored by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen, illustrations by Liz Brent-Maldonado, design by Christelle Dreyer, edited by Donne Lewis and April Adams, audiobook narrated by Sami Kekäläinen.

Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance seeks to investigate stereotypes often used to describe professional dancers with disabilities. Spearheaded by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen with illustrations by visual artist Liz Brent-Maldonado, the team interviewed 35 professional dance artists with disabilities around the country and world, asking about training, access, and press, as well as looking at the state of the field.

Purchase your print copy of Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Herringbone Books, Green Apple Books, Walmart, and other online retailers.

Purchase your ebook copy on Kindle, Kobo, Scribd, and other platforms.

Purchase your audiobook copy on Audible.

Details: Authored by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen, illustrations by Liz Brent-Maldonado, design by Christelle Dreyer, edited by Donne Lewis and April Adams, audiobook narrated by Sami Kekäläinen.

Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance seeks to investigate stereotypes often used to describe professional dancers with disabilities. Spearheaded by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen with illustrations by visual artist Liz Brent-Maldonado, the team interviewed 35 professional dance artists with disabilities around the country and world, asking about training, access, and press, as well as looking at the state of the field.

Purchase your print copy of Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Herringbone Books, Green Apple Books, Walmart, and other online retailers.

Purchase your ebook copy on Kindle, Kobo, Scribd, and other platforms.

Purchase your audiobook copy on Audible.

Details: Authored by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen, illustrations by Liz Brent-Maldonado, design by Christelle Dreyer, edited by Donne Lewis and April Adams, audiobook narrated by Sami Kekäläinen.

Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance seeks to investigate stereotypes often used to describe professional dancers with disabilities. Spearheaded by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen with illustrations by visual artist Liz Brent-Maldonado, the team interviewed 35 professional dance artists with disabilities around the country and world, asking about training, access, and press, as well as looking at the state of the field.

Purchase your print copy of Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Herringbone Books, Green Apple Books, Walmart, and other online retailers.

Purchase your ebook copy on Kindle, Kobo, Scribd, and other platforms.

Purchase your audiobook copy on Audible.

Details: Authored by Emmaly Wiederholt and Silva Laukkanen, illustrations by Liz Brent-Maldonado, design by Christelle Dreyer, edited by Donne Lewis and April Adams, audiobook narrated by Sami Kekäläinen.

“I Have Terrible Anxiety but I Love Being Onstage” 

In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews her intern Emily Heath, a dance student at Bennington College. As a young person, Emily reflects on the economic uncertainty of pursuing dance and their desire to learn more entrepreneurial and marketable skills in addition to somatic-based curriculum. Emily reflects on their ongoing experience of anxiety, and how they now feel supported in dance environments but acknowledge that getting a diagnosis and treatment can be a privilege. Their future goals feel tempered by the pandemic, but they describe their interest in exploring digital spaces and developing a movement vocabulary to process emotion. Finally, Emily expresses how showing up with anxiety in dance spaces is an ongoing negotiation.

Text by Emmaly Wiederholt

Emily Heath is a dancer and student at Bennington College. They have studied many different styles for more than 10 years. The work they are doing now is centered around understanding their internal landscape and how dance can become a tool to heal. They are curious about how to make dance accessible to those who may not feel welcome in the dance community for various reasons. They believe that every person and experience has something to teach them and they are excited to learn those things. 

Check out my collaborator Stance on Dance  which is a 501c3 dance journalism nonprofit that educates the dance community and wider audiences about dance from the perspective of underrepresented voices and access points. 

To see more about what I do, check out bodyshift.org.

Emily Heath's video project about anxiety "Whirlpooling Thoughts" is coming soon. 

Exploring How Performance is Experienced

In this episode of DanceCast, Silva interviews Jess Curtis, an award-winning choreographer, performer, and scholar based in San Francisco and Berlin. Jess reflects on his entrance to dance through skiing and how he was immediately hooked to being onstage. He shares how his career took a turn when he accepted a job in an interdisciplinary nouveau cirque company in France, and how he later established himself in Berlin while still running his company Jess Curtis/Gravity in the Bay Area. A pivotal working relationship with Scottish disability dance artist Claire Cunningham turned Jess’ focus toward integrating access accommodations like sign language interpretation or audio descriptions into performance. This work also informed his PhD, which looked at phenomenologies of perception and how vision is over-utilized in performance.

Text by Emmaly Wiederholt

Jess Curtis is committed to an art-making practice informed by experimentation, innovation, critical discourse, and social relevance at the intersections of fine art and popular culture. He has created and performed multidisciplinary dance performance throughout the US and Europe with seminal group Contraband, the radical performance collective CORE and the experimental French circus company Cahin-Caha, Cirque Batard. From 1991 to 1998, he co-directed the ground-breaking San Francisco performance venue 848 Community Space with Keith Hennessy and Michael Whitson. In 2000, Jess founded his own trans-continental performance company, Jess Curtis/Gravity, based in Berlin and San Francisco. In 2011 he was presented the prestigious Alpert Award in the Arts for choreography and the Homer Avila Award for innovation in physically diverse performance. Jess is active as a writer, advocate, and community organizer in the fields of contemporary dance and performance, and teaches dance, contact improvisation and interdisciplinary performance for individuals of all abilities throughout the US and Europe. He has been a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of the Arts in Berlin. He holds an MFA in Choreography and a PhD in Performance Studies from the University of California at Davis.

To learn more, visit www.jesscurtisgravity.org.

Check out my collaborator Stance on Dance  which is a 501c3 dance journalism nonprofit that educates the dance community and wider audiences about dance from the perspective of underrepresented voices and access points. 

To see more about what I do, check out bodyshift.org.