Choreographer Vangeline to be featured on BBC Podcast Deeply Human (ONLINE)
Company:
Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute
Vangeline will be featured on the second season of the BBC podcast Deeply Human, hosted by Dessa, which will be broadcast live on February 26 & 27, 2022, at the top of the 2 o'clock hour, local time. The episode is entitled "Why We Dance," and will be available to stream shortly after broadcast on the BBC website. On the episode, Vangeline and Dessa discuss why our bodies react to rhythm: from rain dances to raves, dance has been a social tool for sexual selection and community cohesion. The pair explores the neuroscience of music and movement and learns how dance therapy is used to treat motor disorders. Vangeline also gives Dessa a lesson in butoh - the Japanese form sometimes called "the Dance of Darkness" - at her Gowanus studio.
Season Two of Deeply Human covers monogamy, sleep deprivation, high fashion, and avant-garde Japanese dance. Dessa speaks to psychologists, animal behaviorists, mathematicians, historians, and one legendary DJ to ask the evergreen question: why do you do what you do? Why does music animate our bodies? Why are we so keen to form social hierarchies? Why do humans use intoxicants? We're talking about everyone's favorite topic—you.
About Vangeline
Vangeline is a teacher, dancer, and choreographer specializing in Japanese butoh. She is the artistic director of the Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute (New York), a dance company firmly rooted in the tradition of Japanese butoh while carrying it into the twenty-first century. With her all-female dance company, Vangeline's socially conscious performances tie together butoh and activism. Vangeline is the founder of the New York Butoh Institute Festival, which elevates the visibility of women in butoh, and the festival Queer Butoh. She pioneered the award-winning, 15-year running program The Dream a Dream Project, which brings butoh dance to incarcerated men and women at correctional facilities across New York State. Her choreographed work has been performed in Chile, Hong Kong, Germany, Denmark, France, the UK, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Vangeline is the winner of a 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Dance Award. She is also a 2018 NYFA/NYSCA Artist Fellow in Choreography for Elsewhere (a work that began as an artistic commission from Surface Area Dance Theatre with support from the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and the Heritage Lottery Fund UK); the winner of the 2015 Gibney Dance Social Action Award as well as the 2019 Janet Arnold Award from the Society of Antiquaries of London. Her work as an educator, choreographer and curator has been supported by The National Endowment for the Arts, Japan Foundation, New York Department of Cultural Affairs, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York Council on the Arts, Robert Friedman Foundation, and Asian American Arts Alliance. Vangeline's work has been heralded in publications such as the New York Times ("captivating") and Los Angeles Times("moves with the clockwork deliberation of a practiced Japanese Butoh artist") to name a few. Widely regarded as an expert in her field, Vangeline has taught at Cornell University, New York University, Brooklyn College, CUNY, Sarah Lawrence, and Princeton University (Princeton Atelier). Film projects include a starring role alongside actors James Franco and Winona Ryder in the feature film by director Jay Anania, The Letter (2012-Lionsgate). In recent years, she has been commissioned by triple Grammy Award-winning artists Esperanza Spalding, Skrillex, and David J. (Bauhaus). She is the author of the critically-acclaimed book Butoh: Cradling Empty Space, which explores the intersection of butoh and neuroscience. Her work is the subject of CNN's "Great Big Story" "Learning to Dance with your Demons."
About Deeply Human
Deeply Human is a BBC World Service and American Public Media co-production with iHeart Media. Why do you do the things you do? Hosted by American musician and writer, Dessa, Deeply Human investigates the human experience with rigor, humor, intimate stories, and the occasional spit take. Assembling brilliant minds from around the world--from philosophers to anthropologists, neuroscientists to historians--you will be left with a fuller understanding of your own behavior, and a more charitable explanation of other people's too. @bbcworld @iheartradio @deeplyhuman @dessadarling @bbcworldservice
