The Spring/Summer 2025 Print Issue!

April 14, 2025

BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT

How do we practice dance? This question continues to elude me. When I was a child, it was obvious: I went to dance classes. When I was a young adult, the pursuit of dance also felt obvious, if not difficult: practice, practice, practice, and eventually audition. Once I stopped trying to be in a company, my dance practice shifted to collaboration and self-exploration. When I left the big metropolitan cities with their arts infrastructure, my practice became more self-driven out of necessity: What opportunities are there for me? What opportunities are there in general? How can I make opportunities? Somewhere in the midst of making opportunities for dance peers in my community, my focus became interior again: If I can’t turn or jump or lunge as fully anymore, what do I want from dance? Where can my body lead me?

The articles in this issue of Stance on Dance feel aligned with the question of how we practice dance, either personally or in community. Brittany Delany connects dance and city planning through site-specific performance in Riverside, CA. Pioneer Winter of Miami, FL, explores the difference between holding versus keeping through commemorating the generation lost to HIV/AIDS and to his mother who died when he was young. Charlie Slender-White centers the dancer in all his work, driving multiple programs called Fieldwork that help the San Francisco dance scene thrive. Anne Bartlett and Jessica Perino reflect on the cycles of artmaking through their company 20MOONS in Durango, CO. Dancer and artist Romy Keegan communes with the wild natural divine in Albuquerque, NM. Nalitari, an inclusive dance organization based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, makes dance accessible for all. Lauren Tietz of Santa Fe, NM, describes the simple yet profound structure of Authentic Movement. Ilse Ghekiere, currently in Oslo, Norway, brings light to the issue of onstage nudity serving as free content for pornographic websites. And I share my experience creating and performing a piece with my longtime friend Malinda LaVelle that wrestles with idealism, dreams, and disillusionment.

What dance ecosystem do we want to practice in, and how do we make that happen, either for ourselves or for others? The field is far from perfect, but I know dance as a container for expression can hold the complexity of many different practices changing with time. Yet however we go about practicing dance, and however many times it changes, I’m convinced the point is the practice.

~~

GET YOUR COPY OF THE SPRING/SUMMER 2025 PRINT ISSUE NOW!