Delineating Professional Belly Dance

DEBORAH NEWBERG is an oriental dancer (aka belly dancer, Raks Sharqi dancer, or Middle Eastern dancer), choreographer, director of the Saltanah Dancers, and a belly dance instructor at Santa Fe Community College and DanceSpace. She discusses the question of what makes a professional through the lens of belly dance, and […]

January 22, 2018  |  Read Article

Permeating Community with Professional-Level Dance

JOANIE GARCIA is one of the founders of Dark Sky Aerial, an aerial theater and performance art company in Flagstaff, Arizona. She describes her personal ambiguity toward the term “professional dancer,” and recognizes the more comprehensive role dance can play in a person’s life. Her responses are part of a […]

January 18, 2018  |  Read Article

Expanding Access and Equity in the Dance Profession

MARK TRAVIS RIVERA, founder of marked dance project and an award-winning activist, choreographer, dancer, speaker and writer, shares his perspective on what makes a professional dancer and how his intersectionality being Latino, gay, gender non-conforming (femme) and disabled informs his point of view. His responses are part of a larger […]

January 15, 2018  |  Read Article

Am I A Professional?

BY EMMALY WIEDERHOLT; ILLUSTRATION BY CAMILLE TAFT Am I a professional dancer? The question reads like something out of those “advice for dancers” columns I read in Dance Magazine as a teenager. “Dear all-knowing dance guru: I’ve studied dance in many forms for several years and I perform regularly, sometimes for […]

January 11, 2018  |  Read Article

Movement Activism

An Interview with Diana Thielen Diana Thielen, based in Berlin, Germany, is a dancer/performer, teacher of the Axis Syllabus, dedicated feminist, and student of education and gender studies. In addition to teaching and performing, she runs the blog movementactivism.com, where she writes about her intersectional inquiry and fascination with the […]

January 8, 2018  |  Read Article