Recently, I spent about a month calling artistic directors, dancers, choreographers, and producers across the country asking them the same question: How do you define dance, theater, and dance/theater? It's no marvel that everyone I spoke to gave me a different answer. Some said art has no definition. Others said that theater is more narrative based and dance is more…
"Many photos of Wenger show her wearing dresses made from Ankara fabric and outfits made with kente cloth. Where is the line between inspiration and cultural appropriation? Where does cultural assimilation turn into caricature? Would the fact that she helped the region become an artistic hub and restored the sacred shrines be taken into account? Would it matter?" I was recently…
What if most journalists are fiction writers who stopped dreaming too early? This question has been on my mind a lot lately, mostly because it applies to me more than I want to admit. When I was younger I wanted to write children's books and young adult fiction. I wanted to be the editor-in-chief of Seventeen magazine. I wanted to…
The Abigail Fisher affirmative action case has been making its way through the courts for years, and since the Supreme Court hearings start soon, it is now all over the news. Abigail Fisher graduated from high school in 2008 and during her senior year, she applied to the University of Texas. Her parents and siblings all went to UT, but…
Fight videos. They are all over the internet, from news outlets to blogs to Instagram. Sites like World Star Hip Hop were built on them. But, while we're all watching someone be pulverized, has anyone ever stopped to ask why the person who recorded the video chose to record it? I was listening to the radio this morning and the…
Recently I reviewed a play called Informed Consent by Deborah Zoe Laufer at Horizon Theatre in Atlanta, who produced it after it concluded at the Duke on 42nd in New York City. In the play, a genetic anthropologist named Jillian is conducting genomic testing to try to find a cure for Alzheimer's-- a disease that took her mother when she…