Have you listened to Episode 3 yet? If not, listen on iTunes here, Spotify here, TuneIn here (or ask Alexa to “play BodyPolitic podcast on TuneIn), Google Play music here, or Buzzsprout here.
Photo: Gerry Love
I’ve gotten behind since publishing episode 3. May is an insane time in both the mom world and the dance world, and also in the get-ready-to-go-back-to-grad-school-for-the-summer world. For Summer 2019 at Hollins, we’ve so far received no less than 23 articles to read for a dance history course and luckily only one other – but very very heady – radical feminism book to read…although now I’m panicking and will be searching through my emails to make sure I didn’t miss any other required readings. And I’m simultaneously raising and nurturing my own tiny politcal artivist son who turned 7, had a spring dance recital, tested for two stripes in karate, and lost all of his scheduled school days off because of insane Midwestern winter. So, budgeting my time became a challenge. BUT that’s the point of this whole project – learning how to podcast, how to create and protect my time and space to get this done. Because this work, these artists, the message is important to me. I’m learning as I go…which I would never have done if I hadn’t forced myself to start this podcast by proposing it to the MFA department at Hollins for my independent study. So….thanks, student debt and competitive nature for getting me to publish podcasts without overthinking their imperfections!
Episode 3 is the episode I’d been waiting to record. Ashley McQueen, Artistic Director and founder of Smashworks Dance, lived a few doors down from me last summer at Hollins. I won’t disclose her age, but she has a mix of maturity and youthful vigor that she channeled to create an insanely stunning and powerful MFA thesis project. For background: in our MFA program we have to present both a written and perfomative thesis in our final year. As a second-year student, I’ll get to learn all about what that entails this summer.
Anyway – Ashley is what I envision when I say “artist/activist” or use the term “political artivism.” She has created a dance company that presents fearless, politically-charged work. I wanted to know how. HOW does she quiet the fear and negative thoughts that all performers experience and – literally – expose herself and her politics so fiercely?
Photo: Orfeas Skutelis
As a fledgling activist myself, I struggle to hone my effort. I care about and am enraged by SO. MANY. political issues that I don’t yet know how to focus my efforts – both socially and artistically – so I figured that I’m probably not the only one who experiences this “paralysis by analysis.” The bottom line is, as Christopher Roman also said, to just…do the work. Find a space and start moving or creating and let it turn into something and then find or MAKE a space to share that with an audience. It doesn’t have to be a live audience in a proscenium setting. It doesn’t have to be live. But just pledge to yourself to make something and put it out there.
EFF the perfectionist in you – we all suck at things until…we don’t. But you won’t make a difference or stop sucking until you start acting.
Below is the transcript of “Cojones” (which Alexa bleeps if you ask her to play it on TuneIn), and more stunning images of Smashworks Dance at work.
For more information about the people and programs Ashley mentions, follow these links:
On One Condition at Dixon Place
Photo: Carly Vanderheyden
CC: 00:36 Welcome back to Body Politic, the podcast at the intersection of Performing Arts and political activism. I’m your host, Courtney Collado and this is episode three – a conversation with Ashley McQueen, New York City – based performer, choreographer and artistic director of Smashworks Dance. When I first thought of Body Politic the podcast, Ashley was the artist I had in mind to interview, so I’m so thrilled to have her on the show and without further ado, here she is. Enjoy.
CC: 01:07 This is Body Politic and our guests on this episode is Ashley McQueen, Artistic Director of Smashworks Dance from New York City, originally from Alabama. And she is a true artist-activist. So I’d love just to let Ashley tell us a little bit about where she is right now, what she’s been doing this weekend at RAD Fest, which is pretty cool. And then, um, just kind of find out how she got the cojones to make the work that she does, essentially. So Ashley take it away.
AMcQ: 01:43 So I just spent the weekend re-presenting my thesis (or an excerpt from my thesis) um, at the Regional Alternative Dance Festival, “RAD Fest” in Kalamazoo. Um, and so, you know, I, I was trained in Alabama, bunhead, 20 years. You know, that was sort of my, my idea of what dance was. And it took, you know, it took many years of having this idea of what dance should be and then realizing it didn’t fit. Um, at least for me.
AMcQ: 02:16 It took starting Hollins, honestly, to really open my mind as to what dance can do for the community outside of just the proscenium setting. Um, and so, you know, as far as political work, I think all dance is political, we can’t really escape that. But for me at least, you know, I was in New York, I think it was my first summer of Hollins and I’d come home and I was asked to do this show called “On One Condition” and it was a “choreographic buffet.” So basically we could create whatever we wanted. They had six or seven choreographers and you just had to incorporate a toilet plunger. Um, so, you know, it was shortly after Trump’s presidential election. And, um, you know, we had this toilet plunger. I was like, “oh my God, what am I going to do?” And so I had this vision on the train of classical music or something and just Trump’s words, Trump’s voice overlaid and just…This plunger. And so, you know, this idea of this kind of dance satire was born from that. So I created this little five minute solo and I found such a power and such a control over something that I felt that I, you know, the world had lost control over.
Photo: Carly Vanderheyden
AMcQ: 03:28 So for me that was sort of my first taste of literal political dance. And I really had the time to experiment with what the possibilities were with that. So I took that piece, expanded it my second summer at Hollins, adding in projection and these different elements and turned it into an evening length political satire show which is where I really got to dive in and add in more research. And Hollins really gave me the tools to expand on that. And then, you know, a year later it’s thesis time. I, again, I was trained in ballet. I had this, this strength and this discipline that that gave me, but at the same time it made me feel almost kind of helpless sometimes or powerless…You know, you’re strong and you know it, but there’s still this, I just, I had a lot of fear just to put it that way. I had a lot of fear in being wrong or in, you know, doing something that wasn’t what was “supposed to be.” And so I really think that between Hollins, between this election, between these new experiences with satire, and also moving to New York at the same time and having a lot of, you know, new experiences with that, it really just, it pushed me and I was angry and I learned to harness my anger in a productive way. And so my thesis was a lot of research on politics of appearance, the waves of feminism, different feminist theories. And my mind was really opened to a lot of, to new ways that I could express myself and, you know, push boundaries.
AMcQ: 05:11 So, I dunno, that’s kind of, that was how my thesis was born from all these different little mini experiences. And I’m still, I’m still growing my, cojones, you know, it’s still, you, you re-perform these works, like this weekend I re-performed this work [at RAD fest] and it’s, you know, an entirely new audience and you’re topless and you’re giving this random stranger a 20-foot flag leash around your neck. And you know, it’s, it’s very vulnerable and it’s scary. But it’s also, it makes people really think, and it puts a whole new room of people in a situation where they have to, they’re, this is shoved in their face and they can’t ignore it and they can’t NOT talk about it. And so I think in the end, long essay short, that’s kind of our role: to put the audience in a place where they have to think and they have to acknowledge and they have to talk about it. I think that’s how we can incite some form of change in the world, you know? And we can’t control how people respond but we can just give them a platform to respond.
Photo: Carly Vanderheyden
CC: 06:12 I love the essay. I feel like for context, I should note that Ashley and I intersected at Hollins University in the Masters program there. She finished her third summer and final last year during my first, and her thesis was this really powerful solo of her -basically nude – in front of, not strangers, we all knew each other pretty well but then covering herself in red and blue paint, and the colors of the American flag take on a whole new meaning when it looks like smeared blood. Just …the imagery is so… Intoxicating, I guess, there’s no better word. It was jaw dropping and it definitely inspired a whole lot of conversation amongst the students in in good ways. And then I saw Ashley’s company, Smashworks, in St. Louis perform the full evening length work of For Which it Stands, which is also amazing. I know amazing is a really kind of hyperbolic word but…it’s powerful. The athleticism, the choreography, is so crisp and so clean yet seemingly so off-the-cuff at the same time. And it is satirical but powerful and it, I had so many emotions just watching your piece and I was just like, ‘how do you, how do you create such a fearless piece?’ Especially coming to the Midwest where the climate isn’t as friendly towards us “damn liberals” as, as it is towards people who either stay quiet and stay complacent or just kind of wait it out… Or actually full-on support the president or actions that he encourages. I mean, how does that feel to walk into a place where you know you’re a minority, one, as a female and then two, a brand-new audience full of strangers, completely – literally – exposing yourself physically but also then emotionally with this super politically-charged work. I mean, how do audiences receive that work?
AMcQ: 07:55 I guess every audience is different. I only, I only know what I experience, you know? During the performance I can feel their energy. I can feel when someone is, is pulling back. Especially like in the Saint Louis show, it was such an intimate performance space. And I mean, even, even the one at RAD Fest, you know, it’s a larger theater, but I still, it’s still kind of a black box-ish space. And I’m very, very much in tune with, I can kind of sense when people are nervous or really into it. And again, that’s just my, my perception of it. But, you know, at the time it feels, it’s like I don’t… I have this sense of “this is what I have to say and this is all I can give you.” You know? “I can’t make you happy. I can only share what I know and what I have to share.” Um, so, you know, it’s, it’s a very liberating experience. And then to be honest, like the next day, there’s always that kind of like remorse. Like, oh, not remorseful, but kind of like, “Whoa, I DID that.” You know, there’s no, there’s no going back. And it’s kind of like, wow, that was, you’re on this weird adrenaline high and then the next day it’s kind of like, well, you know, I don’t have regrets, but it’s, it is a little, it’s just a vulnerable experience. And every time I do that, that piece, I feel it, but then at the same time it’s like I wouldn’t do anything differently. I wouldn’t say anything else. So it’s just being, being in tune, and self-empowered and just holding to that no matter what doubts might creep in as it always does for us humans.
CC: 09:34 Artists, in particular. So how do you find venues for this work? I mean, do you submit videos, are there discussions, or do you tend to find venues that are politically aligned with you? Or would it be interesting to you to find a venue or a town where you know there’d be pushback? Is that a goal of yours – are you kind of trying to broaden your base of support rather than educate or try to flip some people into seeing it from a different perspective? Which, I know, would be a wonderful goal, but I don’t know how open Americans are right now to that type of transition.
AMcQ: 10:10 Yeah. And I think that’s the real question. We’ve had a lot of talk about, you know, how can we share this work with, with a broader audience. You know, it’s one of those like “how much change can we make if we’re just saying the same message to people who agree with us,” you know? But then at the same time it’s like how would a very conservative Trump supporter… You know, them watching the show, it’s not going to change their mind. It’s most likely, again, assumptions here, most likely just going to piss them off. Right? So it is sort of that, there is that, that question I’m still grappling with that is “how can I reach another audience without alienating them from the beginning?” You know? And so we’ve, we’ve done, you know, like RAD Fest, we’ve applied to a couple of different festivals. Saint Louis, the venue that we performed at was, a venue I’d performed at before when I was living in the city. Um, and so I knew Tom Brady, the guy in charge and we knew the space and so it was one of those – we tried to try to reach out as much as we could and Tom did as well to just random people in the community trying to get a more, a more diverse audience experience. But then it’s, you know, you see the summary of what the work is and the people are going to flock to that if they pretty much, if they agree with it. So that’s, that’s definitely something I’m trying to figure out and trying to, trying to find an answer to.
CC: 11:30 I mean, it’s a hard one to answer because you don’t know until you try. You know, the “Echo Chamber” is wonderful and supportive, but sometimes I feel like it lends us this false sense of support. I think that’s why Trump’s presidency was so, it was just crushing to a lot of people because we thought we’d made so much progress, right? Not just as Democrats or whatever, but as women and as humans. I thought we’d gotten a lot further. And then to realize that there is this volatile nature to, still, to like half of America is really terrifying. I’m just trying to imagine you going into like a, a theater in Mississippi or something and I have no idea what would happen.
AMcQ: 12:15 Yeah, exactly. And there’s really no way to know until we try. And then on that note, it’s really a matter of, you know, what, what organization, if we were to apply for these, you know, for other festivals, and they don’t, they don’t take us, you know, that’s clearly…if there were just hypothetically a more conservative festival and we wanted to get in there, we probably wouldn’t be accepted on the forefront just because of what the piece is. So it’s, yeah, it’s ‘how do you infiltrate these new communities and just let your voice be heard.’ I mean, I would love, I’m from Alabama. I would love to take this piece to Alabama and have it be seen. And you know, it’s knowing my former community, I know that, you know, a lot of the people who would enjoy the piece would ENJOY the piece.
AMcQ: 13:03 But then there’s a lot of other people from my past and from my world who would be extremely offended. And in the end it would just end up causing a lot of, you know, disconnect, which again, is the point: we want to talk about that disconnect. But I think every community is so different and there’s really no way to analyze how it would go until we just show up and have these conversations. I think in the end it’s all about just how can we make a space for these conversations and use dance as sort of that in-between space. Um, and I don’t know, that’s, that’s the question of the hour. Of the year.
CC: 13:43 When I spoke to Christopher Roman, he kind of said the same thing. Like, “how do we make this space?” And his take away, the nut, was “just make the damn work.” Find a place to show it and just make it. If you make it, you’ll find a place to show it. Even if five people come, that’s still five more people than saw your work before. Are you thinking of putting this piece in particular on video, like on the internet or showcasing it that way or do you like to keep it live? I mean, live, there’s no way to compare the live experience of being in the room with you and your company during this piece. It was so charged. It’s so powerful. I just, I love it. I feel like the weirdest fan girl because it’s such a cool piece. I mean, are there other mediums you’re playing with to sort of reach a broader audience that can’t see you live?
AMcQ: 14:32 Yeah, we’re looking into starting a series called Smashing News, like a, a video series that hopefully we’re going to start playing with a little bit this month and kind of see if we can do like one a month. The initial idea was like a live feed, like just dialogue, and then going into a sort of movement research situation where we can just have, you know, dancers invite outside community members into a room and talk about, you know, one specific topic and then how can that manifest in sort of an improvisational space, you know, just to, to get the words into the body. How can we sort of use that as a tool? And then the end product would be, or I don’t want to say product, but the end, you know, sort of culminating event would be, you know, we would film the process and then edit it into like a minute and a half or two minute little video that we can share and just, just to sort of share the process or the dialogue, et cetera, et cetera. So this idea, it’s very much in, it’s in flux. Toying with it as a live feed, you know, that puts such an exorbitant amount of pressure on, you know, on the group, on the process… Um, so anyway, we’re trying to create some kind of a, a sharable, um, little summary of the work that we’re doing that’s outside of my thesis piece or For Which it Stands. I think with those works as much as I would love to, you know, have a, a compact little version of it that we can share with the world and people can get out and see it, you know, for free. And it’s not chained to the, the financial burden of taking the show on tour, but at the same time, I really think that I’m, I’m with you. I think that it’s just such a different experience live and to have the audience feed us as performers and for us to feed the audience in that, in that kind of aggressive way. I think that on film it’s lost. And so, especially for the thesis work, I think that needs to live in a real time space. Um, and I think that’s what’s so special about it. And what’s so special about, you know, live dance as an art form in general is just that it’s in that fleeting moment and it’s with the people who happen to be sitting there that day and that second, that minute and, you can’t re-create it. And so I think that’s, that’s the special thing that I want to try to keep intact, I guess.
CC: 17:03 No, it is very special. And as the creator, it’s yours. I know once you perform it, it’s the audience’s as well, but it’s yours. I mean, did you intend to end up as, an activist this way – through your dance – or was it kind of an accidental intersection?
AMcQ: 17:23 I’ve always been a pretty passionate person. You know I’m from Alabama, my parents are not from there – Dad’s from Illinois and Mom’s from Memphis. My Dad got a job at the Southern Poverty Law Center and he told me, “I want, I want to move to Alabama” and we were living in a small town in Wisconsin at the time and he’s like, “I want you all to meet, I want to take you to a community that’s not just white people.” We were from, again, a REALLY small town and, you know, he’s like, “I want you to experience life. I want you to have these kinds of conversations and this is, you know, this is how I want you to grow up.”
AMcQ: 18:03 And so, I mean, I was really grateful that we moved and that I had these friendships with people of color and people of different backgrounds. And, um, so it was, you know, growing up in that way. And they were very…. We’d talk about abortion. We would talk about, you know, gay rights, all this was very much on the ballot politically. And I remember having fights at the lunch table about how gay people should be allowed to go to church. And, you know, I was like, ‘but why not?’ You know? I mean, I remember being in fourth grade and having these fights with random kids in class. And I always just felt very passionately like, “why? Why is it not equal?” You know? And I just didn’t understand. My parents and I would have conversations about this all the time.
AMcQ: 18:46 And so I think it just took me a long time to get out of the structure of what dance was and to really see that dance, in the real world, dance and activism. It’s all so linked. And when we take ourselves out of these little boxes, and technique, (and not that technique is bad,) but to take it out of this little box of what a dance “should” be and what a tendu “should look like.” How can we fuse? Because in the end, the people doing this, like, we are PEOPLE. The dancers doing this dance, we’re all humans with experiences and with backgrounds and with relationships. And, you know, it’s just so important that we try to find that, that link, you know, and to acknowledge that link between reality and performance.
AMcQ: 19:27 And, so I think in the end, I’ve, I’ve always been a very politically active performer. I just didn’t realize it until honestly a few years ago when Hollins Master’s program really gave me the tools and the open mind to see it in a new way. And then looking back on work I’ve done before, it’s like, ‘ooohhhh, you know, I see these little, these little things that peek out and you know, what I was going through at the time are these little political little bites of, of stuff that’s just infused within the choreography.” And it’s like I see it, I just didn’t know that it was happening at the time – I was just expressing myself, you know, making a dance you know, um, so it’s just, yeah. So, long story short, I think it’s, I think they’re very much linked,
CC: 20:12 Inextricably linked. And your dad was an artist, too. I didn’t know that he worked for Southern Poverty Law Center. That’s, that makes so much more sense as to why you would follow this path. Also, what an awesome guy. He raised an awesome daughter.
AMcQ: 20:26 Yeah. I mean just, you know, may you rest in peace, Bob. Um, you know, he was a lot of the reason why, I mean obviously 50% of who I am but why I have “the balls.” I think he was, he was always just like, ‘just do it,’ you know, and he was a writer and a blacksmith and a, craftsman and a photographer; he taught me iMovie, taught me GarageBand, you know, I mean, he was just a really cool dude. Um, so I’m really, I’m grateful for him.
CC: 20:59 I had a question come up…Oh! Talk to me about, um, Smashworks advocacy. I know you just launched that after this past summer and how is that going? Was that just kind of, again, the “Hollins Effect”, realizing how much we can actually do with our time? Or was it that you wanted to make more of a material difference as well as an artistic and expressive difference in your community?
AMcQ: 21:26 You know, honestly, it was a combo of both. And just luck. I met this, this woman Ana LeJava. She and I went to Birmingham southern together about seven or eight years ago. So we met in Alabama, she’s originally from Georgia, (the country) and came for school at Birmingham Southern and then stayed and worked in the UN for a while in New York. And so we reconnected, you know, seven years later and here we are. And she saw For Which it Stands when we premiered in Brooklyn last spring. So we’ve been trying to connect and then, you know, I’m away for two months for school. And so we finally got a meeting when I came back and she was like, ‘you know, I’ve been dying to start some kind of an advocacy branch linked to dance. Just I just haven’t had, I haven’t found the right company; I don’t want to start a dance company just to do this kind of work.’
AMcQ: 22:15 She’s like, ‘I’m really interested in the political activism.’ And, um, she’s like, you know, ‘I saw your company perform and it just seems like the perfect fit.’ And so, you know, we met a lot and I was like, this is great. You know, I came home from school and was like, I don’t have any of the tools, you know, it’s like, I know how to make dance, I know how to make political work, but you know, I don’t have a strictly political background. And so it was, it was just this sort of weird, serendipitous meeting. So we’re like, ‘let’s do it.’ So we’ve been launching Smashworks Advocacy and it’s, again, it’s still, we have all these plans and Ana and I are both very similar in that we have all these ideas and it’s like, oh, we got to hone it in and, you know, um, start small.
AMcQ: 22:59 But, so we’re, we’re launching and Smashing News is kind of just one little snippet of, um, of our goals for the year, but starting an education outreach program, as well as trying to link up with different community organizations in New York and how can we, you know, start these open dialogues? How can we volunteer our time, how can we teach workshops and empower young girls? Um, how can we, you know, come out and do a pop-up, site-specific performance? So it’s, again, we have a lot of, a lot of goals, and we’re just slowly but surely, you know, applying for grants, hopefully moving. Our goal is to move towards full nonprofit status within the next year and a half. Just with a lot of the grants, that’s, you know, number one priority is to have that full status. So, Ana been a huge asset in that way.
AMcQ: 23:51 We’ve also brought on Kiva Carmen Frank as an intern. She’s someone I met in Milwaukee. She’s, so, it’s just the youth. Oh my God, she’s the next generation, you know, she’s a freshman. And she was just, we’re both like, ‘oh my God, the children!’ Um, it’s so, it’s so liberating, so exciting.
CC: 24:09 And the energy they have, they have so much more energy!
New Speaker: 24:14 She’s at, you know, a different march or something every day. I mean, she’s, so, I love that. But so we have this little team and you know, we’re slowly just building, um, all these ideas and just trying to link again, you know, from ‘how do we take the performance site and you know, this community action and like how do we build that bridge.’ And so that’s sort of where we are right now is building that bridge. I’m hopefully trying to make it make it happen and actually see real change or you know, have real interaction with the community outside of just like, “wow, great show.” You know, that’s kind of our goal.
CC: 24:51 It’s a good one. I’m excited to see where that goes. I think it’s, we need more of that and that’s exactly what I think the next wave of dancers are going to be doing. Before I got to Hollins, I didn’t know what to expect, first of all, and I first just wanted my Masters so I could get back into the dance world. But then realizing how much work there is to do. And how much wrong there is to right. And I keep on thinking about what you said earlier: It all comes back to fear. And I don’t…the reason I started this podcast was, one, I’ve always wanted to, but I was too afraid to because I hate the way my voice sounds or I don’t think I have anything to say. But also there’re so many things that I care about and that I want to change, and that piss me off, and I have no idea where to start. So I thought this was one place to start. At least by talking to people who are, who’ve tried and who just stopped giving a shit and started putting their work out there because it has to be said or it has to be done. And we all have to make the change together as a community. So one by one, and you’re making a huge contribution in “dance-meets-advocacy-meets-political activism.” So I hope you recognize that. I know you’re just in your day-to-day doing your work, but what you’re doing is really, really important work and really important ART. And I hope you know that.
AMcQ: 26:08 Thank you. Thank you.
CC: 26:10 Of course. And so my last question on like my predetermined bullet-point list was: words of wisdom for the fledgling or accidental activists like me who really wants to do something to make a difference? Anybody who might be listening, like how would you advise them on building a coalition or small team, or creating that safe space? Or just creating the safe space to perform the work that they know needs to be performed. How do you, how. What’s your HOW. Is there a “how?”
AMcQ: 26:45 Absolutely. I mean, there’s so many things, but in a nutshell, just educate yourself, you know, read, stay open, get feedback from opposite viewpoints, show your work. Like we showed a little excerpt to, you know, a dancer-who-shall-not-be-named’s husband, who is a Trump supporter. And, and like getting, getting his point of view of like, what are you seeing, you know, outside of just our little rose colored dance colored glasses, you know, how he, how can we get feedback. What are other people seeing? So just being educated and trying to see your work and see what you’re doing from all viewpoints. Don’t be afraid to take risk. In the end. It’s just go, you know, if you feel educated, that’s what I would say. Or at least like you feel that you’ve done the research, you’ve done the work, then give yourself the permission to take the risk.
AMcQ: 27:37 And just know that it takes a village, also. We can’t do everything by ourselves. So find that team that you feel comfortable with and you feel supported by. If you’re inspired by someone, you reach out to them, get their feedback, get their advice, have a collaboration, have a coffee. Um, you know, it’s, it’s so important to not feel alone in this kind of work, because it can drive you crazy I think if, if you feel alone in it . And, and just stay passionate. I think too, you know, if you lose the passion, just question WHY, you know, it’s, we all want to do this work because we feel passionate and just try to try to harness it. It can, it can beat you down. And this, you know, this kind of activist work, it can feel like you’re sinking in the sand, you know, sinking sand. Um, but just be, just stay passionate, and keep trying to reinvent and reignite the fire.
CC: 28:35 Right. Cause we could do the same piece over and over, but it’s always different depending on the day, depending on the mood, depending on any number of things. It’s always a reinvention. Every single performance. That’s a good nugget. I’m going to steal that one. Wow. Well thank you so much Ashley. You’re, again, You’re freaking awesome. I love the work you’re doing. I can’t wait to see what you do in addition to like the amazing stuff you’ve already done. It’s just…you’re a very exciting artist to watch.
CC: 29:04 Thank you for listening to BodyPolitic, the podcast at the intersection of performing arts and political activism. I’m your host, Courtney Collado. Please join us next time for episode four with Raymond Rodriguez, who is the head of the Studio Company and Trainee Program at the Joffrey Ballet. He has a lot to say about ageism in dance and he’s working his butt off to train the next generation of dancers to have and exercise their agency as individuals.
RR: 29:31 To let them know that they do have a voice and we are all in this together. I tell them all the time, I’m learning from you as well. You’re learning from me and I’m learning from you.
CC: 29:44 Thank you again to you, the listeners, to Ashley Mcqueen, to Hollins University, and to our sponsor Byron Green. Music credits go to incompetech.com and composer Kevin McCleod.