Process Piece

Radia Bakkali is a musical artist, pianist, composer, and teacher from Tangier, Morocco. In this conversation we talk about how she fell in love with the piano, composition as a way of expressing deep emotion, taking time and paying attention to details in your personal work, how artistic projects can connect you to your community and also how to ask for help from supportive people in your life, and music as a universal language.

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Vinny Balbo is an actor, dancer, and director living and making work in Los Angeles. We talk about what it is like to grow up in a big artistic family, the path to becoming a largely self-taught dancer and how to discover and craft your own style. We discuss the art of collaborations, his new project of short films and what that experience is teaching him currently, and how to live and make work more fully in the present moment.

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Houda Rahmani is a Moroccan artist, illustrator, graphic designer, and photographer living in Tetouan. In this face to face conversation in Tangier, we discuss the academic side of art and her experience of studying fine arts in Morocco, watercolors and visual arts as poetry, we talk about the paradox of instagram- how it can make us more self-conscious about our work, but also more connected and equal in terms of artistic opportunity around the world. We discuss the difference between art vs. craft, moroccan traditional arts, whether art is a basic necessity of life, and our mutual love of the sea.

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Jumana Al Refai is a professionally trained dancer and choreographer in ballet and modern dance based in Kuwait. She has over 20 years of experience and has trained, performed, and worked with internationally recognized dancers and choreographers. In this conversation, Jumana and I talk as two dancers living in countries where it is not traditional to study dance. We talk about how she’s gotten to where she is in her professional career, where she hopes to go as a dancer working mainly in the Middle East, musicality and the different ways her multi-cultural background play a role in her work, being an active, awesome hijabi woman working in the arts, and dance as a way of connecting and relating to the people around you- both in your community and the wider world. 

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In this mini-sode, I discuss a topic that has been on my mind and present in my working life lately- doubt in the creative process. I explore how I believe it to be a necessary road block for us to learn to overcome, how I am personally dealing with it in terms of this very podcast, and I lay out some tangible ways that others can deal with their own self-doubt within the artistic process.

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Renee Byrd is based in a small town in Virginia and on her blog, Will Frolic for Food, she shares vegetarian recipes along with conversations about holistic wellness. She views self-care and personal healing as a vital part of living a full, creative life as an artist of any medium. As a musician, she is a part of the musical trio Larkspur and is starting a new project with her husband titled Blondechalant We dig deep into her performing arts background, what it means to be a multipotentialite, being a “highly sensitive person” and how that effects her creative process, how she writes music and lyrics for her musical groups Larkspur and Blondechalant, imposter syndrome, and calling yourself an expert versus an educator. 

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Laura Jean is a traveling artist living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She is writer, poet, photographer, podcaster and editor of Dame Traveler. Her blog, Roam + Go Lightly, was born in 2014 out of a simple travel diary to keep in touch with her family while she explored the greater half of EuropeWe dig into the original source of her wanderlust as well as how to define and practice mindful, meaningful travel, how art making and exploring the world are similar in that they push you outside of your comfort zone, and her process as a writer on the road. 

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Anne Butera is a self-taught artist living in Wisconsin who finds inspiration in the beauty of her garden and the magic of nature. In this episode, we discuss what it is to be self-taught and the pressure of calling yourself an artist in general, how these days we often feel like we have to share everything, the natural seasons and cycles of creative work, and, of course, always finding joy in the details.

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Pau Aran Gimeno is a choreographer, dance teacher, and performer from Barcelona who is known primarily for being a longtime company member of Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wuppertal. He is now pursuing his own solo career as a creator and choreographer. In this conversation we go deep into his childhood influences and how they are present in his work today, how he is working on developing his own movement language after having worked with many different masters over the years, being a warrior for your art, and, of course, his ongoing love affair with dance itself.

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