Jo Troll Dance

Tl;dr This section of Butler continues to complicate the idea of what gender even is and if it’s possible to know. It also brings up some real questions about how we discuss intersex people and co-opt their experiences for gender philosophy. [All Butler citations from: Judith Butler. 2007.Gender Trouble (New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group)] Internal identity is shaped by external…

Tl;dr When starting dance, there is sometimes a choice between improvised or structured movement. What’s right for someone probably depends on personality and environment. You can always experiment and see what feels good for you. When it comes to dance improvisation, there are two schools of thought when it comes to newer dancers. If you are starting out dance, especially contemporary dance, a…

Oh, this is a jumble of links, but all good reading. These are all things I’m chewing on in terms of how we exist as humans, how we exist with art, and how we can all improve the world of art for each other. The Case for Returning U.S. Public Lands to Indigenous People “After serving 12 years as a backcountry wilderness ranger for the U.S. Forest Service, I’m convinced there is an alternative:…

Tl;dr A disabled, covid cautious life isn’t all misery and isolation, it can actually be meaningful and full of community When I talk about being covid cautious, the same things usually come up – isolation, frustration, tense relationships, and anxiety. All sorts of negative shit. But that isn’t a full picture. The reality is that I absolutely love my life. I live in my own space with a…

[tl;dr Both improvised and structured dance forms can be great for finding comfortable movement in the body. It probably depends on the individual] So, while I was researching some other things (namely, a future blog post that needs more research), I happened upon many numbers of papers that argued that improvisation leads to the most “natural” way for a body to move. This, of course, comes with…

So, I’m so behind on everything, this was originally intended to go out in JANUARY. I feel like time has only made my original commentary even more…intense. Sometimes I include things on my link lists because they make me uncomfortable or I’m not sure how I feel about them. The first article here – Voting is Not Harm Reduction – is one of these. Especially with hindsight, I’m having a lot of…

[tl;dr The results of the US presidential election will have a deep, horrifying impact, but art is still powerful, present, and necessary] All right then. I guess it’s time to talk about the presidential election that just happened. In full honesty, I’ve been kind of avoiding it because it is such an unavoidable topic of conversation these days that I feel like it’s the only thing I’m talking…

[tl;dr Across styles, culture, and age groups, the main expectations for dance teachers appears to be caring about students, according to five lists of desired traits. The biggest area of difference is in the expectations for dance teachers to have specific qualifications] So in starting to define what a dance class is, I’ve spent a lot of time looking at expectations for students in class, but…

[tl;dr Everyone has different red flags and green flags for their dance teachers, but my red flags includes not taking no for an answer and my green flags include giving me control, choice, and trust.] Dance is possible for everyone, but, sadly, not everyone believes that. Sometimes the most exclusionary people in the dance world are the teachers. So, to help you and anyone who wants to dance…

I’m not sure if there’s an underlying theme in my reading for the past while, but these are all reads that really hit me in one way or another. I do want to flag particularly the article about Rachael Gunn. It circulated quite a lot around the time it was relevant during the Olympics this summer, but I think it’s relevant well beyond the immediate context – it brings up important points around…

[tl;dr my skillset involves being about to bridge the gap between various cultural spaces, which means I “codeswitch”. When codeswitching is necessary, this can be frustrating, but it is also a particular kind of power.] A long time ago, I wrote a blog post about never feeling “enough” of any one thing – caught between the various different worlds that I bounce in and out of, never quite…

I’ve been thinking a lot about the slow, tedious parts of change recently and I think this set of readings reflects that. How can we enact change meaningfully and thoughtfully? What are the small things in our lives that can lead to change? What are the parts of creating change that we don’t enjoy but have to do anyway? How do we make this sustainable?  Make Neurodiversity…

[tl;dr An experience I had with my fifth grade teacher taught me how audiences are looking for what they expect. This is something I think about strategically in my art today] I’ve been thinking recently a lot about how small interactions can have such a huge impact on children. What might feel like a throwaway comment on a bad day for an adult can be life shattering for a child, who has never…

The theme for this set of readings is things that have pushed me – challenging me to think about how to make my work more honest, do better for people who are harmed by different axes of oppression than me, and stretch my creativity to be more accessible. Disabled people’s exclusion from indoor spaces is a civil rights violation, not an annoyance “The woman in the story may get her wish and…

tl;dr This section of Butler has interesting overlap with intersectionality, a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw around the same time. It brings up questions of solidarity, collaboration, coalition, and the impossibility of finding a single, universal definition of gender  [All Butler citations from: Judith Butler. 2007.Gender Trouble (New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group)] And it’s…

[Tl;dr I’ve been organizing queer dance workshops for six years and am pretty proud of it] It hit me recently that August will mark six whole years of organizing Queer Dance Workshops in Boston, which feels like a pretty big milestone. I spend a lot of time feeling like I “haven’t gotten there” yet with these workshops – they’re not big enough, they don’t have regular enough attendance, they’re…

[tl;dr The idea that certain dance forms are more technically rigorous is a disservice to the amount of different types of thoughtfulness that goes into all dance forms] I have a degree in contemporary dance. The skills I actually use from that program did not come from contemporary dance at all – it was my dance teaching class, choreology (the study of movement), and one very sensible…