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.

For more information about Helen Simoneau Danse, click here.

For tickets to the October 2 performance, click here.

For season information, click here.

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

Follow us:

IG: @danceprojectinc

FB: NC Dance Festival

Thanks to our podcast sponsor, UNCG Dance! Check out all their upcoming performances at go.uncg.edu/dancetix.

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.

To join or watch the Statewide Movement Wave, click here.

To purchase tickets to the NC Dance Festival performance on October 2, click here.

To learn more or get involved in the Dance Artist Alliance in Charlotte, you can contact Camerin at [email protected]

For information about BOOM Fest in Charlotte, click here.

Follow us:

IG: @danceprojectinc

FB: NC Dance Festival

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

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!

For more information about the Statewide Movement Wave, the October 2 performance, and more, please visit danceproject.org/ncdf

Let us know who else we should be talking to on the podcast this season by filling out the form at danceproject.org/ncdf/podcast.

The NC Dance Festival 30th anniversary is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, and Lincoln Financial Foundation. We need the support of individual donors and business sponsors as well to make possible the innovative work that NC dancers are creating, bring students meaningful experiences with the arts, and strengthen the community through dance. To make a gift to the Festival Fund, please visit danceproject.org/givencdf. Thanks for your support!

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:

Episode 2: “Sparking Joyfulness and Fun”

Episode 14: “That’s when I just fell in love with my Blackness.” 

Episode 18: “Never rewind what you're doing, keep it moving forward."

Watch “Converge,” the dance film we created for our NCDF virtual screening here.

Watch all of the microdances from this season: click here.

Photos and videos of the LeBauer Park mural project are here.

Connect with Tommy Noonan of Culture Mill here.

Website

Social: @cultmill

To register for our Monthly Dancer Chat, click here. The next call will be June 12, 12:30-1:30pm.

To make a gift to the Festival Fund, click here.

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)

Tamara Williams:@movingspiritsinc (IG)

www.movingspirits.org

To register for our Monthly Dancer Chat, click here. The next call will be May 8, 12:30-1:30pm.

For more information on our Move Together Mini Marathon, click here.

To make a gift to the Festival Fund, click here.

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:

Watch Gavin and Vanessa’s micro-dance film: click here.

Watch “Converge”, the dance film created from all 20 microdances here.

Connect with Stewart/Owen Dance:

IG: @stewartowendance

FB: Stewart/Owen Dance

Website

To register for our Monthly Dancer Chat, click here. The next call will be May 9, 12:30-1:30pm.

For more information on our Move Together Mini Marathon, click here.

To make a gift to the Festival Fund, click here.

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.

To view a slideshow of photos and video clips of some of the dances mentioned in this episode, click here.

Thanks to Alexandra Joye Warren, Bess Park, Emily Daughtridge, and Clay Daniel, whose memories are featured in this episode, and to other former Van Dyke Dance Group members who sent in memories.  If you have a memory of your time with Jan that you’d like to share, feel free to send it our way! Voice memos or written memories are welcome at [email protected].

We’ll be sharing a first iteration of the work Virginia Dupont did with “Five Short Forms” and our Student Performance Company during our upcoming “Move Together Mini Marathon,” a smaller, virtual version of our annual dance party fundraiser, on May 22 from 5-7:30pm. Learn more here.

For more on April 18 Community Conversation: Connecting Community Through Dance, click here.

To register for our Monthly Dancer Chat, click here. The next call will be May 8, 12:30-1:30pm.

To make a gift to Dance Project, click here.

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:

Watch Audrey and Aparna’s dance films: click here.

Watch “Converge”, the dance film created from all 20 microdances here.

Connect with Audrey Baran on IG: @barandance

Aparna Keshaviah’s website

For more on April 18 Community Conversation: Connecting Community Through Dance, click here.

To register for our Monthly Dancer Chat, click here. The next call will be April 10, 12:30-1:30pm.

To make a gift to the Festival Fund, click here.

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 read more about our 2021 Artists in Residence, click here.

For more on April 18 Community Conversation: Connecting Community Through Dance, click here.

To register for our Monthly Dancer Chat, click here. The next call will be April 10, 12:30-1:30pm.

To make a gift to the Festival Fund, click here.

This week, we’re returning to a conversation we hosted on Facebook live back in January. With the current limitations on presenting performances in traditional studio and theater spaces, artists are increasingly turning to alternative, often outdoor, performance sites, but this way of working is not new. Durham-based SITES has long been a platform for dance artists to shed light on necessary issues and create accessible, shared experiences with art. This roundtable discussion in January was moderated by SITES founder/curator Stephanie Leathers and featured a number of artists in multiple disciplines who shared their work as part of the SITES:Reset performance installation in Durham on February 27. We’ve edited the conversation a bit for this podcast, in which these artists discuss what equitable art can be, what their creative process looks like, and how their art is responsive to the here and now.

To connect with SITES on social media visit @sitesinthecity on IG and Facebook.

To see upcoming NC Dance Festival events, click here.

To make a gift to the Festival Fund, click here.