Digital Library: Artists in Conversation 

Artists in Conversation Series - A Digital Toolkit 

We are delighted to offer video recorded conversations with accompanying discussion prompts and interactive activities to facilitate further reflections for arts and community leaders working with youth, ages 15-22. 

These conversations and toolkits are currently in development, and are being shared locally with CDC network.

Reflection: Meaningful-ness of dance through Conversation

by Aina Yasué

A short reflection on why we need to have these conversations.

• How do we know what we know? What mediums do we associate as being informative, meaningful, and valuable, or not?

• The interviews speak back against the tendency to marginalize dance as a way of knowing by highlighting abundance of meaning within dance.

• I offer the ways I personally felt inspired by these thoughtful conversations as someone who grew up dancing on a rural island of the Coast Salish territories, doing a bit of a dance with dance itself, figuring out how it fits into the everyday, at times with doubt, and most times with gratitude that I encountered something so timeless, human, simple and profound in this lifetime.

• It is an important reminder that being a dancer can mean different things throughout time.

• The emphasis on trust is a constructive reminder for artists who are caught between self-expression and external expectations.

• These interviews are cheerleaders, advocating viewers to create and to trust, as a priceless gift to society.

• Dance bursts with meaning and reflects culture back to us.

• These interviews remind viewers that dance is not simply done. Rather, dance is negotiated.

Conversation partners- Simran and Joshua. Picture: Vitantonio Spinelli