Body and Soul

Katrina Reid (she/her) is a dancer and choreographer who crafts art projects rooted in improvisation, experimentation, and storytelling. Select presentations of her work include the Queens Museum, ISSUE Project Room, the Knockdown Center, Current Sessions, DoublePlus/Gibney Dance, AUNTS, the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Florida A&M University, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX). As a collaborator, Katrina explores performance across dance, theater, music, ritual, and film. Most recent projects include [siccer] by Will Rawls, and the upcoming Spectral Dances by Jonathan González, as well as past works by David Thomson, Third Rail Projects, Kevin Beasley, Emily Johnson, Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born, Marguerite Hemmings, and Megan Byrne, among others. Learn more at katrina-reid.com. For more, visit Eva Yaa Asantewaa's InfiniteBody blog here.

Petra Kuppers (she/her) is a disability culture activist and a community performance artist. Shegrounds herself in disability culture methods, and uses somatics, performance, media work, andspeculative writing to engage audiences toward more socially just and enjoyable futures. In thesepandemic years, she’s been engaged in crip drifts: working with human and more-than-humanothers outdoors (or through dream journeys online), exploring interdependence, listening, being-with, and complex joy. Her latest academic study is Eco Soma: Pain and Joy in Speculative Performance Encounters(University of Minnesota Press, 2022, open access). Her fourth poetry collection, Diver Beneaththe Street, investigates true crime and ecopoetry at the level of the soil (Wayne State UniversityPress, February 2024). She teaches at the University of Michigan, and is a 2023 GuggenheimFellow. www.petrakuppers.com https://wsupress.wayne.edu/9780814351116/diver-beneath-the-street/ https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/eco-soma More on Eva Yaa Asantewaa's InfiniteBody blog here.

Daniel Phoenix Singh has worked in higher education, the field of dance, queer communities, South Asian communities, and in arts practice, policy, and funding at local and national levels. His identities lie at the intersection of his queer, antiracist, South Asian, immigrant, artist, and advocate roles in the various communities he inhabits. He acknowledges the complicity and internalization of colonial and racial oppressions in his life and works hard to approach issues from an anticolonial and antiracist perspective. He has been influenced by the work of Erode Venkatappa Ramasamy (aka Periyar | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periyar), Rabindranath Tagore, Arundhathi Roy, Toni Morrison, and particularly Justin Laing (http://hillombo.net/about/) who work from intersectional frameworks. In his dance practice, Daniel was mentored by Pamela Mathews as curiosity took him from computer science to a dance major in college. He is deeply grateful to Lorry May, Harriet Moncure Williams, and Karen Bernstein for helping shape his choreographic voice. Madhavi Mudgal and Leela Samson in India have broadened his perspectives on the space Indian dance forms can occupy both within the body, in the pedagogy, and field of dance. He is a single parent to amazing twins who have been his foremost teachers and test his improvisational skills every day. https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielphoenixsingh/ For more, visit Eva Yaa Asantewaa's InfiniteBody blog here.

NOTE: For a glossary of Laban terms mentioned in this episode, click here. Alexandra Beller, Artistic Director of Alexandra Beller/Dances, (2002-present), was a member of the Bill T.Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company from 1995-2001. Alexandra created over 50 original Dance Theatre works, presented at theaters throughout the US and companies in Korea, Hong Kong, Oslo, and Cyprus. She has created dance theater works for over 45 universities throughout the US.Alexandra currently choreographs predominantly for Theater. Credits: Off Broadway: Sense and Sensibility (Sheen Center, Judson Gym, Folger Shakespeare Library, American Repertory Theatre, Portland Center Stage), (Helen Hayes Award, Lortel Nomination, IRNE Best Choreography), The Mad Ones (59E59), Bedlam’s Peter Pan (Duke Theatre), How to transcend a happy marriage (Lincoln Center Theatre), Regional: Two Gentlemen of Verona (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival), As You Like It (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Folger Shakespeare Library), The Young Ladies of... (Taylor Mac), Chang(e) (HERE), Current: Antonio’s Song (CATF, Milwaukee Rep), Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes) (La MaMa, and touring), Directing/Choreographing Macbeth. She wrote and directed an adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for 92Y. She was on faculty at Princeton 2015-2022 and teaches at The Laban Institute for Movement Studies, HB Studios, UWM grad program. Alexandra holds a BFA/Dance, MFA/Choreography, and CMA (Certified Movement Analyst). www.alexandrabeller.com www.alexandrabellerrdances.org www.praxispace.com For more, visit Eva Yaa Asantewaa's InfiniteBody blog here.

Valencia James is an interdisciplinary artist from Barbados interested in the intersection between dance, theater, technology, art installation and activism. Her works have explored remote interdisciplinary collaboration, artist-driven open-source software tools and the combination of live performance with immersive interactive technologies. Currently, she is researching the relationship between performance and play and how traditional Caribbean cultural and spiritual forms have been used by communities in active resistance and problem-solving in the face of colonial systems.Valencia has been a 2020 Rapid Response Fellow at Eyebeam NYC and a 2021-2022 Sundance Interdisciplinary Fellow. She has presented work at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence 2015, SIGGRAPH 2021, and the 2022 New Frontier exhibition at Sundance Film Festival. Valencia has participated in group exhibitions in Istanbul, Buenos Aires, Budapest, San Francisco and Berkeley. http://valenciajames.com/ See Eva Yaa Asantewaa's InfiniteBody blog for more.

Melanie George is Associate Curator and Scholar in Residence at Jacob’s Pillow, and guest curator for the 2024 American Dance Platform at the Joyce Theater. As a dramaturg, she has contributed to projects by Raja Feather Kelly, Helen Simoneau, Alice Sheppard, Urban Bush Women, and SW!NG OUT among others. Melanie is featured in the documentary UpRooted: The Journey of Jazz Dance and a contributing to scholar to Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches, and Rooted Jazz Dance: Africanist Aesthetics and Equity in the Twenty-First Century. Melanie is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Rutgers University and has guest lectured at Harvard University, the Yale School of Drama, and The Juilliard School. In 2021, she was named one of Dance Magazine’s 30 over 30, and is the recipient of the Outstanding Leadership Award from the National Dance Education Organization. She is a performer/dramaturg with The Jazz Continuum. https://www.melaniegeorge.org See more about Melanie George at Eva Yaa Asantewaa's InfiniteBody blog: https://infinitebody.blogspot.com/2024/03/body-and-soul-melanie-george-art-of.html

Bhumi B Patel directs pateldanceworks and is a queer, desi, home-seeker, science fiction choreographer, movement artist, and writer. She has presented her choreography in the Bay Area, Manoa (Hawai’i), Los Angeles, New York, and Columbus (Ohio). Bhumi was a 2022-2023 Dance/USA Fellow and a 2023 YBCA 100 Honoree. She has presented at Dance Studies Association, Popular Culture Association, National Women’s Studies Association, and Asia Pacific Dance Festival, and has published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Contact Quarterly, and InDance. Her research on queer decoloniality and improvisation intersects with her performance-making as a way of tracing the deep connections of past, present, future to build communities of nourishment and care. pateldanceworks.org See more about Bhumi B Patel at Eva Yaa Asantewaa's InfiniteBody blog: https://infinitebody.blogspot.com/2024/03/body-and-soul-bhumi-b-patel-this-world.html

We welcome artist/educator olaiya olayemi who shares her view that resisting grind culture and living a sustainable life necessitates time for rest, play, and pleasure. olaiya olayemi is an antidisciplinary artist, radical educator, pleasure anarchist, and erotic witch. she creates texts, images, sounds, and movements. she currently lives in philadelphia, pa. Learn more about olaiya olayemi at: ww.pillowtalkwithaplaygurrrl.com And visit Eva Yaa Asantewaa's InfiniteBody blog here.

In Part Two of Mythologies of Erasure, we continue our visit with playwright and scholar Dr. Nina Angela Mercer who draws from family roots in Washington, DC and her lifelong fascination with mythology and world-building to examine how stories a society or community tells about itself too often promote marginalization and erasure of history. Dr. Nina Angela Mercer is a culture worker, scholar, and interdisciplinary artist. Her plays include GUTTA BEAUTIFUL; ⁠ITAGUA MEJI: A ROAD AND A PRAYER⁠; ELIJAHEEN BECOMES WIND; CHARISMA AT THE CROSSROADS; A COMPULSION FOR BREATHING; MOTHER WIT AND WATER-BORN; and ⁠GYPSY AND THE BULLY DOOR⁠. She also collaborated with Urban Bush Women as writer and performer in HAINT BLU. Nina’s writing is published in The Killens Review of Arts & Letters; Black Renaissance Noire; Continuum: The Journal of African Diaspora Drama, Theatre, and Performance; ⁠A Gathering of the Tribes Magazine Online⁠; Break Beat Poets Vol 2: Black Girl Magic; Are You Entertained? Black Popular Culture in the 21st Century; Performance Research Journal; Represent! New Plays for Multicultural Young People; and So We Can Know. She is currently a community engagement fellow at The Woodshed Center for Art, Thought, and Culture at Georgetown University's Racial Justice Institute. She is also the executive director of ⁠Ocean Ana Rising, Inc./OAR⁠. For more information, visit her at ⁠www.ninaangelamercer.com⁠. For more about Dr. Mercer, also visit InfiniteBody blog. Click here.

Next, we visit with playwright and scholar Dr. Nina Angela Mercer who draws from family roots in Washington, DC and her lifelong fascination with mythology and world-building to examine how stories a society or community tells about itself too often promote marginalization and erasure of history. This episode is Part 1 of Dr. Mercer's talk and will be followed by Part 2 in our next episode. Dr. Nina Angela Mercer is a culture worker, scholar, and interdisciplinary artist. Her plays include GUTTA BEAUTIFUL; ITAGUA MEJI: A ROAD AND A PRAYER; ELIJAHEEN BECOMES WIND; CHARISMA AT THE CROSSROADS; A COMPULSION FOR BREATHING; MOTHER WIT AND WATER-BORN; and GYPSY AND THE BULLY DOOR. She also collaborated with Urban Bush Women as writer and performer in HAINT BLU. Nina’s writing is published in The Killens Review of Arts & Letters; Black Renaissance Noire; Continuum: The Journal of African Diaspora Drama, Theatre, and Performance; A Gathering of the Tribes Magazine Online; Break Beat Poets Vol 2: Black Girl Magic; Are You Entertained? Black Popular Culture in the 21st Century; Performance Research Journal; Represent! New Plays for Multicultural Young People; and So We Can Know. She is currently a community engagement fellow at The Woodshed Center for Art, Thought, and Culture at Georgetown University's Racial Justice Institute. She is also the executive director of Ocean Ana Rising, Inc./OAR. For more information, visit her at www.ninaangelamercer.com. For more about Dr. Mercer, also visit InfiniteBody blog. Click here.