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Dance, love and loss

Dance, love and loss

Interview breakout session with Raul Malo at the 2023 Waterfront Blues Festival with Curtis Salgado, produced by Erika Olsen (Peter Dervin photo) If people feel a sense of inclusive joy when they hear the Mavericks’ music, then I’ve done my job. —Raul...
Dance to obliterate space and time

Dance to obliterate space and time

Photos from Seabeck Dance Camp 2025 (NW Dance) The space theme for NW Dance’s Seabeck Camp this past weekend was right up my alley. Friends with telescopes used to take me along to Red Rock Canyon in the California desert, where we’d marvel at planets,...
Live music for longer lives! 🎶

Live music for longer lives! 🎶

Above: Jon Batiste, photo by Scott Newton (Austin City Limits) With so many ways to communicate at our disposal, we must not forget the transformative power of a live music experience and genuine human exchange. —Jon Batiste Good news: Attending live music shows can...
Grateful for music, dance, community

Grateful for music, dance, community

Each year, at one of my dances around Thanksgiving, we provide strips of paper on which dancers can write what they’re grateful for. I’m always deeply moved by what’s expressed, and throughout the night I read as many as possible to the crowd. This...
Dancers: A history of degenerates

Dancers: A history of degenerates

“Indulgence in the turkey trot, the tango and other objectionable modern dances is as much a violation of the seventh commandment as adultery.” So bloviated Rev. Father Wm. A. Brothers, a clergyman from Montclair, NJ around the year 1913. (Library of Congress) The...
Magic Dances: You, Me & the Music

Magic Dances: You, Me & the Music

When you are dancing…for that two and a half minutes…it’s a love affair, between you and your partner and the music. You feel the music, you feel your partner, she feels you and she feels the music. So there the three of you are together....