Podcast

Erica Hornthal, a licensed clinical professional counselor and board-certified dance/movement therapist, is the CEO and founder of Chicago Dance Therapy. Since graduating with her MA in dance/movement therapy and counseling, Erica has worked with thousands of patients from age three to 107. Known as “The Therapist Who Moves You,” Erica has truly changed the way people see movement with regard to mental health: moving people toward unlimited potential, greater awareness, and purpose by tapping into their innate body wisdom. In addition to her passion for working with cognitive and movement disorders, neurologic conditions, anxiety, depression, and trauma, she is an advocate for the field of dance/movement therapy. Erica created the Dance Therapy Advocates Summit in 2020 in order to spread awareness and inspire and connect individuals and practitioners from all over the world. She currently lives in the North Shore of Chicago with her husband, two kids, and two French Bulldogs.

Shamel Pitts is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, as well as performance, conceptual, and spoken word artist. Since 2019, he is the artistic director/founder of TRIBE, a New York-based multidisciplinary arts collective which was a 2020-21 Artist-In-Residence at 92Y Harkness Dance Center. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Shamel began his dance training at LaGuardia High School for Music & Art and the Performing Arts and, simultaneously, at The Ailey School. He received his BFA in Dance from The Juilliard School and was awarded the Martha Hill Award for excellence in dance. He started his professional dance career with Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Hell’s Kitchen Dance and BJM_Danse Montreal. Between 2009-2016, he was a company member of the Batsheva Dance Company, led by Ohad Naharin where he studied Gaga movement language, of which he is now a certified teacher. Since 2015, Shamel has created a triptych of award-winning multidisciplinary works known as “BLACK Series,” which has been performed and toured extensively to many festivals around the world. His recent New York projects include choreography for the play “Help” by acclaimed poet and playwright Claudia Rankine, directed by Taibi Magar, commissioned and presented by The Shed in Spring of 2022. He is the recipient of a 2018 Princess Grace Award in Choreography, a 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship Award winner in Choreography, and a 2020 Jacob’s Pillow artist in residence, a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, and the cast member of the 2021 Bessie Award-winning production of “The Motherboard Suite” at New York Live Arts. He is an adjunct at The Juilliard School and has been an artist in residence at Harvard University.

Cara Hagan is a mover, maker, writer, curator, champion of just communities, and a dreamer. She believes in the power of art to upend the laws of time and physics, a necessary occurrence in pursuit of liberation. In her work, no object or outcome is sacred; but the ritual to get there is. Hagan’s adventures take place as live performance, on screen, as installation, on the page, and in collaboration with others in a multitude of contexts.

In recent years, Hagan and her work have traveled to such gatherings as the Performática Festival in Cholula, Mexico, the Conference on Geopoetics in Edinburgh, Scotland, the Loikka Dance Film Festival in Helsinki, Finland, the Taos Poetry Festival in Taos, New Mexico, and to the Dance on Camera Festival in New York City. Extended residencies have taken place at Thirak India in Jaipur, India, Playa Summer Lake in the dynamic outback of Oregon, Roehampton University in London, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the University of North Carolina, School of the Arts.

Cara is grateful to have received financial support from various organizations and institutions to continue her work. Recent support has included the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron where she was named the inaugural Community Commissioning Residency Artist for the 2020/2021 season. Past support has come from the Dance Films Association, the Filmed in NC Fund, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Forsyth County Arts Council, the Appalachian State University Research Council, the Watauga County Arts Council, and Betty’s Daughter Arts.

Since becoming a parent and navigating a global pandemic, Hagan’s work takes place a bit closer to home these days. She is working on a new book titled, Ritual is Both Balm and Resistance. She had the pleasure to be in residence at Elsewhere Museum in Greensboro, NC in June and July of 2021 where her interdisciplinary project, Essential Parts: A Guide to Moving through Crisis and Unbridled Joy is installed until 2022.

Peggy Baker has been a vivid presence in contemporary dance since 1973, performing internationally in the work of Lar Lubovitch, Mark Morris (with Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project), Doug Varone, Tere O’Connor, Molissa Fenley, and Charles Moulton (NYC); with Fortier Danse-Creation (Montreal); and Dancemakers, Toronto Dance Theatre, and James Kudelka, (Toronto). She established Peggy Baker Dance Projects in 1990, and for the first 20 years she dedicated herself to solo performance, winning rapturous praise for the eloquence and depth of her dancing, and accolades for her collaborative partnerships with extraordinary choreographers, directors, musicians, and designers. Since 2010 her choreography has focused on works for small ensemble. Over its 32-year history Peggy Baker Dance Projects has been presented at major festivals and dance centres in North America, Asia and Europe, including Danspace, The Kitchen, Symphony Space, and the Harkness Festival in New York; the Luckman Center in Los Angeles; Jacob’s Pillow; the Copenhagen International Dance Festival; the Time Festival in Ghent, Belgium; The Holland Dance Festival; the Cervantino Festival in Guanajuato, Mexico; MoDaFe in Seoul, Korea; Landmark Tower in Yokohama, Japan; the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa, the High Performance Rodeo in Calgary, Tangente, L’Agora de la danse, and Danse Danse in Montreal, and Canadian Stage and Fall for Dance North in Toronto. Her evening-length multi-disciplinary work who we are the dark, created with composer/performers Sarah Neufeld and Jeremy Gara of Arcade Fire, toured across Canada and internationally from winter 2019 to early in 2020.

Beyond the concert stage Ms. Baker has premiered five all-night choreographic events for Toronto’s Nuit blanche, situated her hour-long choreographic installation move – danced by local community members – in public spaces in St. Catharines, Fredericton, Kingston, Calgary, Burlington and Hamilton; staged The Perfect Word (a 3-hour sound/video/dance installation) for in/Future on the abandoned west island of Toronto’s Ontario Place; presented interior with moving figures (four dances, performed simultaneously in four different spaces) at the Art Gallery of Ontario; and land | body | breath (an hour-long installation for 8 dancers and 2 vocalists) at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. The durational film and sound installation her body as words has been presented on media screens in public squares in Toronto and Buenos Aires, Argentina, as well as being streamed by Baryshnikov Arts Centre, New York. Under the banner The Choreographer’s Trust she has published a series of booklet/DVD sets that document six of her landmark solos, and she is the subject of a book by Carol Anderson, Unfold – a Portrait of Peggy Baker, published by Dance Collection Danse.

Among Ms. Baker’s many honours are the Governor General’s Award, the Premier’s Award, the Order of Canada, the Order of Ontario, six Dora Mavor Moore Awards, the Toronto Arts Foundation’s Margo Bindhardt Award, Honorary Doctorates from the University of Calgary and York, the Walter Carsen Prize, a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, the George Luscombe Award for Mentorship, The School of Toronto Dance Theatre’s Kathryn Ash Choreographic Award, and the Silver Ticket. Ms. Baker is a 2017 fellow with the Bogliasco Foundation (Italy), and Artist-in-Residence at Canada’s National Ballet School.

Moses Pendleton has been one of America’s most innova­tive and widely performed choreographers and directors for over 40 years.  A co-founder of the ground-breaking Pilobolus Dance Theater in 1971, he formed his own company, MOMIX, in 1980. Mr. Pendleton has also worked extensively in film, TV, and opera and as a choreographer for ballet companies and special events.

Mr. Pendleton was born and raised on a dairy farm in Northern Vermont. His earliest experi­ences as a showman came from exhibiting his family’s dairy cows at the Caledonian County Fair. He received his BA in English Literature from Dartmouth College in 1971. Pilobolus began touring immediately and the group shot to fame in the1970’s, performing on Broadway under the sponsorship of Pierre Cardin, touring inter­nationally, and appearing in PBS’s Dance in America and Great Performances series.

By the end of the decade, Mr. Pendleton had begun to work outside of Pilobolus, performing in and serving as principal chore­ographer for the Paris Opera’s Integrale Erik Satie in 1979 and choreographing the Closing Ceremonies of the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid in 1980. The creation of MOMIX that same year rapidly established an international reputation for highly inventive and often illusionistic choreography. The troupe has been touring steadily and is currently performing several programs internationally. The company has made numerous special programs for Italian and French television and received the Gold Medal of the Verona Festival in 1994.

Mr. Pendleton has also been active as a performer and choreographer for other companies. He has staged Picabia’s Dadaist ballet Relache for the Joffrey Ballet and Tutu­guri, based on the writings of Artaud, for the Deutsch Opera Berlin. He created the role of the Fool for Yuri Lyubi­mov’s production of Mussorgsky’s Khovan­schina at La Scala and choreographed Rame­au’s Platee for the U.S. Spoleto Festival in 1987. He contributed choreography to Lina Wertmuller’s production of Carmen at the Munich State Opera in 1993. More recently, he has choreographed new works for the Arizona Ballet and the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet. He teamed up with Danny Ezralow and David Parsons to choreograph AEROS with the Romanian National Gymnastics Team.

His film and television work includes the feature film FX2 with Cynthia Quinn, Moses Pendleton Presents Moses Pendleton for ABC ARTS cable (winner of more than 10 international awards including a Cine Golden Eagle award and the US Film and Video Competition – now known as Sundance – Special Jury Award), and Pictures at an Exhibition with Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony, which received an International Emmy for Best Performing Arts Special in 1991. Mr. Pendleton has made music videos with Prince, Julian Lennon, and Cathy Dennis, among others.

Mr. Pendleton is an avid photographer with works presented in Rome, Milan, Florence, and Aspen. Images of his sunflower plant­ings at his home in northwestern Connecticut have been featured in numerous books and articles on gardening. He is the subject of the book Salto di Gravita by Lisavetta Sgarbi, published in Italy in 1999. Mr. Pendleton was a recipient of the Connecticut Commission on the Arts Governor’s Award in 1998. He received the Positano Choreographic Award in 1999 and was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1977. He is a recipient of a 2002 American Choreography Award for his contributions to choreography for film and television. In May 2010, Mr. Pendleton received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts (HDFA) and delivered the keynote address to the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Most recently, Mr. Pendleton choreographed the Doves of Peace, featuring Diana Vishneva, for the Opening Ceremony of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. His photographs accompany the sixteen cantos of Phil Holland’s The Dance Must Follow (2015), which takes Mr. Pendleton’s own creative process as its subject.