Mark DeGarmo Dance released its 7th Global Dance Circle for Social Change on December 21, 2022 to celebrate the hibernal solstice via social media and the MDD website. This year’s GDC theme is Celebration! The open-access video features professional, recreational, and non-dancer dancers and creative movers from around the world. MDD’s Global Dance Circle for Social Change Part 7 dancers represent a wide range of diverse global dance and movement artistry, ages, and cultural backgrounds.
MDD received submissions from 17 dancers and dance companies across 10 countries, 7 time zones, and 5 U.S. states, including about 76 participating dancers, musicians, and performing artists. The 10 countries represented include Canada, Indonesia, Italy, Morocco, Poland, Republic of Rwanda, Republic of Senegal, Spain, United Kingdom, and U.S. The 5 U.S. states include Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, and New York.
MDD’s diverse and inclusive Global Dance Circle for Social Change is grounded in MDD’s vision: use dance to engage and empower by enlivening bodies, shifting perspectives, and changing lives; and its mission: educate under-resourced and disenfranchised NYC communities and children; create, perform, and disseminate original artistic and scholarly work; and build intercultural community through dance arts. MDD is a leading nonprofit charity that seeks to demystify the art of, and participation, in dance in the U.S. and internationally. Mark DeGarmo Dance through this program further seeks to support and build a community of dance supporters and practitioners, including noncommercial, under-resourced, under-recognized local, national, and global dance artists.
The 17 dancers and dance companies that sent videos of their work that MDD included in Global Dance Circle for Social Change Part 7 are Adelard (Kigali, Republic of Rwanda); ShaeLynn Marie Bordyschuk (Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada); Silvita Diaz Brown (Chicago, IL); Antonio Buonaiuto (Naples, Italy), Carolyn Chester (Clinton, NJ); Encuentro Theatre and Dance Company (Madrid, Spain); Mourad Koula (Casablanca, Morocco); Ari LaMora (New York, NY); Emilee Lord (Brooklyn, NY); LUKAS (Warsaw, Poland); Galih Mahara (Bandung City, West Java, Indonesia); Suzanne Miller (Montreal, Quebec, Canada); Papouze (Republic of Senegal); Eline Peres (London, UK); Sara Pizzi (New York, NY); Karen Price (Albuquerque, NM); and Diana Shepherd (Colorado).
The spirit of freedom and free movement embodied by these dancing people is also reflected in the diverse environments they chose for their dancing: mountaintop, highway, and gardens, as well as, studios, theaters, and stages. Global Dance Circle for Social Change Part 7 can be found on MDD’s Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and website. Viva la Danza!
To view past Global Dance Circle videos, click here!
About Mark DeGarmo Dance
Mark DeGarmo Dance, founded in 1987 and celebrating its 35th Anniversary in 2022, is a leading New York City nonprofit dance organization located in Manhattan’s Lower East Side at NYC-owned The Clemente Center. MDD educates under-resourced and marginalized New York City Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities and children; creates, performs and disseminates original artistic and scholarly work; and builds transcultural community through dance arts. In 2022, MDD taught over 1,000 under-resourced elementary public school students and 100 teachers across Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan, and Queens in its evidence-based elementary school educational intervention Partnerships in Literacy through Dance & Creativity© program with the support of federal pandemic relief funds. The program is deemed “a national model” by the National Endowment for the Arts. President Barack Obama commended DeGarmo and MDD for “your service to your community and the nation.”
About the Director
Founder, Executive & Artistic Director Mark DeGarmo, Ph.D., B.F.A. is an award-winning, internationally recognized choreographer, performer, researcher, and educator with a passion for transcultural and international community-building. New York press and audiences have heralded his dance performance work as “mesmerizing” and “fearless” and DeGarmo as “a gladiator in various arenas.” Dance Teacher Magazine made him its cover feature (June 2017). Martha Hill Dance Fund awarded him its Mid-Career Award (2015). His Las Fridas: A Movement Installation and Offering is invited to the Mexico City International Contemporary Dance Festival in August 2022. DeGarmo’s latest research publication, Roadkill, American Style was published in November 2022 with original photographs and poetry in hardcover and online in Massive/Micro Autoethnography: Creative Learning in COVID Times, Editors Daniel X. Harris, Mary Elizabeth Luka, and Annette N. Markham, Volume 4 in the Studies in Arts-Based Educational Research series by Springer, Singapore.
https://markdegarmodance.org, Follow Mark DeGarmo Dance on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
This program is supported in part by Friends of Mark DeGarmo Dance and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.