Dance Has Reached a Turning Point

Freed from the Studio, an Art Form Finds the Space to Transform

My shoulder is aching. I’m going up the escalator at the Macy’s in the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza. My purse is weighed down with notebooks, a portable speaker, water bottle, and of course, snacks. 

It’s March 2020. I’m teaching at the “Club WISE” program for older adults. I’m greeted warmly by a group of six women who, I’d guess, are mostly over 65. I’m told the group may be a little smaller than who registered, “The virus is keeping some people home.”

We set out to co-create a dance to Ravel’s …

The 1992 Hip-Hop Song That Sounded Like a Revolution to Black Women | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

The 1992 Hip-Hop Song That Sounded Like a Revolution to Black Women

Sir Mix-a-Lot’s Mega Hit ‘Baby Got Back’ Featured Powerful Women Dancers Who Changed America’s Beauty Norms

Throughout 400 years of the nation’s history, street dance has always been a tool for Americans who lack the social power to resist and seize control of public spaces. In …

Mesmerized, Baffled, and Smitten by the Magic of Dance

A Veteran L.A. Dance Critic Reflects on Her Passion for the Art Form

My career as a dance critic really began when I was six years old, though I didn’t know it. My mom signed me up to take a creative movement class …

Was Wounded Knee a Battle for Religious Freedom?

By Clamping Down on the Indian Ghost Dance, the U.S. Government Sparked a Tragedy

The Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 appears in many history textbooks as the “end of the Indian Wars” and a signal moment in the closing of the Western frontier. …

Dancing in New Orleans to Overcome Division

A Crescent City Transplant Creates a Diverse Non-Profit, and Finds a New Home

Five years ago, I moved from New York to New Orleans. The reasons included a need to escape from the New York grind, a lover’s terminal brain cancer, and a …

On Ice

This girl can make a tile floor an ice skating rink, and I see a
rock and say, Rock, rock, rock, rock, rock. One of us has magic
and the …