Mark DeGarmo Dance, founded in 1987, has created a wonderful new interview series called Creativity and Creative Practice during which DeGarmo moderates short interviews with notable artists such as Clarence Brooks, Ronald K. Alexander, Anne Harris, Anabella Lenzu, Andrea & Ernesta Corvino, and others. The interviews focuses on the artists’ artistic and scholarly work, looking especially at the current times we as a world population are living through.
Beginning with Episode 4, the Interview Series: Creativity and Creative Practice has turned its attention artists of color, “emphasizing Black Americans’ presence, voices, experiences, and creativity, in response to the national and global awaking and continuing crisis”. DeGarmo’s latest interview is with the amazingly talented dance writer, educator and curator Eva Yaa Asantewaa. This is an interview LA Dance Chronicle readers should not miss.
Eva Yaa Asantewaa (pronouns: she/her) is a native New Yorker of Black Caribbean heritage who was a member of the inaugural faculty of Montclair State University’s MFA in Dance program. She has also served on the faculty for New England Foundation for the Arts’ Regional Dance Development Initiative Dance Lab 2016 for emerging Chicago-area dance artists. In May 2017, she served on the faculty for the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography’s inaugural Forward Dialogues Dance Lab for Emerging Choreographers and returned in 2019 as a workshop facilitator.
Asantewaa is Senior Director of Artist Development and Curation as well as Editorial Director at Gibney, New York’s acclaimed center for dance and social activism. She won the 2017 Bessie Award for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance as a veteran writer, curator and community educator. Since 1976, she has contributed writing on dance to Dance Magazine, The Village Voice, SoHo Weekly News, Gay City News, The Dance Enthusiast, Time Out New York and other publications and interviewed dance artists and advocates as host of two podcasts, Body and Soul and Serious Moonlight. She blogs on the arts, with dance as a specialty, for InfiniteBody.
The full list of presentations, special events, workshops, groups, counseling or other services that Asantewaa has produced or offered for many organizations and/or projects is too long to list in this article, but you can find out what they are by reading about her here.
About Mark DeGarmo Dance:
Mark DeGarmo Dance is a nonprofit organization that educates New York City communities and children; creates, performs, and disseminates original artistic work; and builds intercultural community through dance arts. MDD has received over 300 grants from public and private funders and was the subject of a coveted cover feature article by Dance Teacher Magazine in June 2017. Since its beginnings, MDD has committed its resources to serving social justice, equity and equality issues across multiple fronts through dance arts in New York City, the U.S., and internationally.
To listen to Mark DeGarmo’s conversation with Eva Yaa Asantewaa, click HERE.
To visit the Mark DeGarmo Dance website, click HERE.
Written and compiled by Jeff Slayton for LA Dance Chronicle.
Featured image: Flyer courtesy of Mark DeGarmo Dance
