Etienne teaches a Folklife workshop

Sown from Culture, Flourishing in Community

Etienne Cakpo, a dance artist originally from Benin and the director of Gansango Music and Dance Company in Seattle, shares how his classes at the University of Washington have positively affected many of his students and how there is abundant cultural value in learning the dances of Africa.

February 28, 2022  |  Read Article

Felicitas: Dance in Its Simplest Form

For the past eight years, Felicitas has been writing in every year, describing her life in dance. This year, she reflects on her time in Buenos Aires and how it challenged her notion of what it means to be a dancer.

August 13, 2020  |  Read Article

Assessing the Contexts of Professionalism

LORIEN HOUSE is a dancer-turned-lawyer currently based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She shares the sense of insecurity she experienced pursuing dance professionally in comparison with her later career, and the fraught questions of validation and self-worth it accompanied. Her responses are part of a larger series dissecting what it means […]

February 12, 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