Check out Episode 1: Welcome To The Dance Complex from Dancing Through Time: The Untold Stories of The Dance Complex the podcast!
Listen Here:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6si1MZmyADqh8AJATzab2L
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dancing-through-time-the-untold-stories-of/id1848581670
Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/d53a463c-6459-4525-a8ee-c977edccb0e6/dancing-through-time-the-untold-stories-of-the-dance-complex
iHeartRadio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1310-dancing-through-time-the-302680629/
Description:
Dancing Through Time: The Untold Stories of The Dance Complex celebrates the legacy of the artists and educators who have danced through our building over all these years by sharing the stories, moments, and impact of The Dance Complex in Central Square Cambridge MA and the movers who experience them.
This podcast was created with support from Mass Humanities and Massachusetts Cultural Council and in partnership with History Cambridge. The mission of this project is to collect the oral histories, as well as physical materials, on the creation, development, and evolution, of and within, The Dance Complex in Central Square.
In Episode 1 of Dancing Through Time: The Untold Stories of The Dance Complex, “Welcome To The Dance Complex”, Executive Artistic Director Peter DiMuro welcomes you through imagery and sound to the 34 year old non-profit dance facility. Also included are stories from our dancers: listen to Anna Myer, Dana Alsamsam, Margot Parsons, Dean Vollick, and Isaura Oliveira speak about their time at The Dance Complex. More information about each of the artists speaking can be found below:
Anna Myer:
Anna Myer was a ballerina for the Boston Ballet and ballet mistress Ana Roje before founding Anna Myer and Dancers in 2001. Her innovative choreography has received the acclaim of some of the country’s most prominent dance critics, including the New York Times and the Boston Globe. In 2014 Anna co-founded beheard.world with Jay Paris to focus on creating mixed genre pieces about social justice themes for stages and public spaces.
Dana Alsamsam:
Dana Alsamsam is a first generation, Syrian-American dancer, choreographer, director, poet, editor, arts fundraiser and content creator based in Boston. Today, she is the Artistic Director of Nozama Dance Collective, bringing to life the company’s vision of
collaborative movement and technical dance, representing intersectional experiences of identity. Dana has performed as a company member, or choreographic collaborator with, Sasso & Company, Ascendence Dance Chicago, DanceWorks Chicago ChoreoLab, Lin Kahn’s Music Dance Collective, Nozama Dance Collective, DePaul Dance Company, Moonwater Dance Project, Boston Dance Theater Immersion Project, and more.
Margot Parsons:
Margot Parsons, choreographer and instructor of ballet at Boston University, Boston Ballet, and José Mateo Ballet Theatre, and previously for 13 years at Harvard University, 37 years at Boston College, and 27 years at The Dance Complex, has presented over one hundred pieces of choreography. Her past teaching includes The New School for Social Research in New York, Hunter College (NY), The Spence School (NY), Ethical Culture School (NY), The Cambridge School of Weston (MA), Dean College (MA), Suffolk University (MA), and at Bradford College (MA) where she initiated the dance major program. Her early training in ballet was in Chicago with Richard Ellis and Christine Douboulay and with Eric Braun and Phyllis Sabold and later in New York with Maggie Black, Richard Thomas and Barbara Fallis, at the Harkness School, in modern at the Graham Studio, and in choreography with Anna Sokolow and Bessie Schoenberg. She performed with numerous companies including Choreoconcerts, Larry Richardson, Yuriko, The Ballet Ensemble of New York, in the City Center production of the “King and I,” and in Boston with Dorothy Hershkowitz, Ken Pierce, Baroque Dance Company, and with the original cast of “A Dancer’s Christmas,” created and directed by Father Robert VerEecke. Her choreography has been staged on many companies including her own company, DanceVisions, Inc.; the Ballet Repertory class at Boston University; Boston College student and Faculty shows; Harvard Ballet Company; Wellesley College students; Across the Ages Dance; Boston Ballet II; and BalleyNY, at the Alvin Ailey City Center Dance Theater.
Dean Vollick:
Dean Vollick began his dance journey at Brock University and later trained at the Lois Smith School of Dance in Toronto. He was a scholarship student at the Banff School of Fine Arts, where dancers like Laura Alonso and David Earle acted as his mentor. His two-decade performing career included work with companies such as Ontario Ballet Theatre, Ballet Florida, and Toronto Dance Theatre, and Dance Theatre David Earle, touring internationally.
In 2001, he completed the Teacher Training Program for Professional Dancers at Canada’s National Ballet School, graduating as valedictorian. He has taught at the American Academy of Ballet and has been a guest instructor for US Ballet Associates, Jessica Lang Dance Company, and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. For four years he was a full-time teacher at the Boston Ballet, serving as principal of the Citydance outreach program, and he continues to teach and choreograph nationally.
Isaura Oliveira:
Ms. Oliveira was born in Salvador-Bahia, the cradle of African Brazilian culture, where African traditions and the arts are constantly maintained and nourished. This is exactly from where and how Isaura built her cultural-artistic experience. She has devoted her extraordinary talents to work in academic, artistic, community, educational and health venues. Isaura appeared in a
PBS and BBC-TVs documentary “Dancing #5: New Worlds, New Forms” in 1993, as the representative for Brazilian dance. Her classes, lecturers, and performances left a lasting impression at Smith, Radcliffe, Wellesley Colleges; Brown, Wesleyan University, University of Massachusetts-Boston, Stanford, UC Riverside University; as well, at Motion Pacific in Santa Cruz-CA, Spontaneous Celebrations and The Dance Complex in MA. Isaura performed ANCESTRAIS – her acclaimed solo performance of dance, theater and multi-media, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Kresgie Auditorium in 2001. This program is available for performing arts theaters and festivals. ANCESTRAIS investigates the African Divinities of the Condomblé – the Orixas. Condomblé is the religious system transported by African slaves to Brazil through the state of Bahia. ANCESTRAIS affirms the right of people of the African Diaspora to celebrate, teach and learn their own culture, technique and philosophy as a part of the larger multicultural context of contemporary art. Directed by Isaura Oliveira and Professor Thomas DeFrantz.
This podcast is produced by The Dance Complex, Scripted and co-produced by Tara Guzman-Finn, Audio Engineering by Kara Fili, Narrated by Peter DiMuro and Narration was recorded at CCTV