Aug 7, 2019
On this episode your co-host YeaJean interviews dance artist, scholar, and educator, Ray Eliot Schwartz, based in Puebla, Mexico. Ray Eliot Schwartz received his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and his MFA from University of Texas-Austin. He is the co-founder of Performática: Foro Internacional de Danza Contemporánea y Artes del Movimiento and a consultant and teaching artist for ArcDanz International Dance Workshop. He has been a guest artist for diverse populations in the U.S., South East Asia, South America, and Mexico. He has served on the faculty of the American Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, MELT, the ZMP Summer Dance Intensive, the Colorado College Summer Dance Festival and SFADI, among others. His somatic studies include certifications in Body-Mind Centering® and the Feldenkrais Method®. He is a research associate at the Center for Mind Body Movement. He is a published scholar who writes about the interface of somatic movement education and contemporary dance practice, and he served as Academic Coordinator of the Dance Program of the University of the Americas-Puebla in México from 2008-2018. On this episode, we talk about social media as the economy for attention, pros/cons of internet based technologies in the classroom, an inside look at the hiring process for university dance programs, using the digital space to create an international dance forum, and using a somatic-model to inform dance making.