Why We Dance: Vangeline on BBC's Deeply Human with Dessa Darling–launches Feb 26
Choreographer Vangeline
will be featured on
the BBC Podcast Deeply Human
with Host Dessa Darling
February 26 & 27, 2022
Vangeline will be featured on the second season of the BBC podcast Deeply Human, hosted by Dessa Darling, 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
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
Check it out!