Health and Wellness | Art Intercepts

Kait’s New Year’s Resolution: Don’t Diet

At age thirteen, Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul told me being 5’2 and 115 pounds was overweight (who let them publish this?). My diet highlight reel includes: “Rogue Weight Watchers” aka binge eating carrots, dabbling with bulimia, and calorie counting. My period stopped for a bit, I was tired all the time, I didn’t get hungry or full anymore,…

Summerdance Meets Science

I’ve been keeping my eye on Dr. David Marquez, who keeps his office across campus from me at UIC. Marquez is conducting some interesting research on the effects of Latin cultural dance programs for older adults. Our backgrounds and our work are as different as peanut butter and cats, but on this we agree: there is little research out there about…

Sometimes it’s Reassuring to See that Other People Agree With You

There’s a nice article online at Dance Magazine floating around on the social media today about common mistakes we are making in the dance world. Author Nancy Wozny gathered information from Physical Therapists, and I’m relieved and excited to report that all three bullet points are things I’ve already said. In a nutshell: Mistake #1: Static Stretching at the beginning of the…

How I am Celebrating Eating Disorders Awareness Week

February is Eating Disorders Awareness Month, and there has been quite a bit floating around the blogosphere with respect to this poignant topic in the dance community. It’s just too bad that we are still faced with a serious problem when it comes to dancers and eating disorders, but the fact that the community is now talking more open and honestly…

A Chance to Dance. But, is it really your only chance?

In watching last week's episode of A Chance to Dance, I found a lot of myself in those young dancers. I remember what it felt like to think that this one thing was my *only* opportunity to succeed in a dance career. When I was 20, I took a 48-hour trip to New York to audition for Marymount Manhattan…

Superhumans (or not)

You may not know this, but I'm a HUGE cycling fan. So the news of Lance Armstrong's alleged use of performance enhancing drugs on 60 minutes last Sunday was a disappointment, if not a shock, and a horrible reminder that these figures that we put on pedestals have not always achieved superhuman feats of athleticism through good training, hard work, and…

On Movement

https://vitiligosupport.org/soma.html Movement is on the brain. Here's why: In a post-show discussion at Dance Union, with the topic of the evening titled "On Movement", someone asked the panel of choreographers (myself included) why we chose dance as a medium to express these particular ideas. I'm not exactly sure how I answered the question, but looking back on it I…