Interviews
From Minuets to Algorithms: A Conversation with Katja Vaghi
The Swiss-Italian dance scholar on Baroque notation, digital bodies, and finding wabi-sabi in a hectic life.
Reviews
NYCB Winter Season Opens with Balanchine's Radiant Serenade and Sensual Prodigal Son
By Leila Lois — NYCB's opening night offered everything: the pure joy of Serenade, the frank sensuality of a rarely staged Prodigal Son, and the athletic brilliance of Paquita. Leila Lois travels from the Southern Hemisphere to see performances that honor ballet's full emotional spectrum.
Reviews
Tango Finds Its Theatre at RSA House
By Will McGregor — David Chartoriski and Yelena Odintsova navigate tango's essential paradox: a dance born in intimate embrace that becomes magnetic when performed. At Sofar Sounds' RSA House, they made the case for both.
Short Reads
Flesh and Origami by Michael O’Connor
Michael O'Connor discovers that paper folding reveals that human bodies work as archives of evolutionary folds where dancing, writing, and speech cross over each other. Through experiments with nine artists, he shows that the body isn't metaphorically like origami. It is origami.
Features
Continual Becoming: Alina Belyagina on Performativity, Collapse, and Feminist Dramaturgy
From West Siberia to Munich, Alina Belyagina has turned periphery into method. Her new work fuses vogue and Slavic folk dance to explore how bodies migrate between traditions and carry memories that discourse hasn't yet mapped.
In the Spotlight
Choreographing the Page: Lilia Di Bella on Structure, Flow, and the Reader's Experience
"‘I approached a Dance Mag's visual direction as a foundation, not a constraint,’ designer Lilia Di Bella said. In our conversation, she explains how she drew from her dance background to let shapes and colors flow through the pages, creating a space where "meaning is made together with the reader."
Features
Can Photography Capture the Invisible Energies Moving Within Us?
Photographer Jennifer Lee Delić and dancer-fighter Rasmus Branders push against the limits of the camera. Using flowing fabrics and contrasts of light, their collaboration seeks to give form to the internal dance of masculine and feminine energy we all embody.
Short Reads
Dancing Beyond the Self by Tejaswini Loundo
Tejaswini Loundo moves through flow, ego-death, and the cosmic rhythm of Naṭarāja to ask what it truly means to dance beyond the self.
Profiles
Bodies of Evidence: Sasha Portyannikova's Political Dance
In a country where protest is a crime, the dancing body itself becomes a site of resistance. Choreographer and researcher Sasha Portyannikova documents how artists under impossible conditions continue to create despite all risks.
Short Reads
Haunted Bodies & Minds by Vinícius Portella
The choreography of repression: a history of policing dance, from medieval plagues to Brazilian funk. An essay by Vinícius Portella.
Features
Kalakeli: A Jungle Sanctuary of Movement and Play
Nestled in Goa’s jungles, Kala Keli is a dance retreat where movement becomes meditation. By day: contemporary, martial arts, and yoga in open-air studios. By night: bonfire circles and ecstatic beach dances. Here, rigor meets play and bodies remember their wild, joyful language.
Features
The Rhythm of a Heartbeat: Karla Grotting on Choreographing Joy and Isolation in Whoville
Through the whimsy of Whoville, the choreographer reflects on jazz’s communal roots, the choreography of belonging, and what it means to dance joy into constraint.