Call for Nominations – Leslie Scott Zanovitch Trailblazer Award 2026
Dance is an embodied practice – the dancer can’t be separated from the dance. Dance is also communal. For instance, the cipher structure of hip hop where dancers move in and out of the cipher (circle) surrounded by onlookers in a call-and-response practice. This structural interdependence tethers dancers to their community of practice. If exposure to hypersexualized music, costumes, or choreography occurs […]
DA:NCE announces Inaugural Leslie Scott Zanovitch Trailblazer Award
What if living “the dream” as a dancer is the exact opposite of everything one has been trained to do? Or, rather, “the dream” is really a nightmare? In a recent interview, dancer, choreographer, and educator Leslie Scott Zanovitch described how coercive incentives within the entertainment industry pressure dancers to engage in hypersexualized performances under the […]
A Brief Beat
In 2005, dance in American reality television birthed a new era of dance awareness with So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD) and Dancing with the Stars (DWTS). Dance Moms followed in 2011. Young, aspiring dancers (and conversely, fading celebrities) acquired a performance platform with lucrative pay-outs if the stars aligned in their favor. Accessing […]