Mark DeGarmo Dance’s Founder, Executive, and Artistic Director, Dr. Mark DeGarmo Featured on The Lo-Down Culture Cast: Conversations with Culture Changers Available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, or any Podcast Streaming Platform.

 

New York, NY - Dr. Mark DeGarmo was recently interviewed by Arts & Culture Editor Traven Rice on The Lo-Down Culture Cast: Conversations with Culture Changers. They discuss DeGarmo’s artistic journey, including his work in embodied imagination, improvisational composition, and themes of his choreographic work. DeGarmo also reflects on his Las Fridas project, as well as the nonprofit he founded and directs, Mark DeGarmo Dance, and its Partnerships in Literacy through Dance and Creativity program. The conversation also highlights MDD’s 15th annual Virtual Salon Performance Series (VSPS), exploring the theme NO BORDERS, NO HIERARCHIES which will broadcast live via Zoom on Thursday, April 6, 2025, at 7 PM ET for the season’s grand finale.

 

LISTEN TO OR WATCH The Lo-Down Culture Cast: Conversations with Culture Changers: https://youtu.be/-AVpJxpAFdA?si=qFgZwTZdti-Dp8Af. The conversation delves into the programs that exemplify Mark DeGarmo Dance’s 3-part mission of integrating education, performance, and intercultural community through dance: 

 

LAS FRIDAS: A MOVEMENT INSTALLATION AND OFFERING

DeGarmo explores with Traven Rice the origins and layers embedded in this original work that breaks and doesn’t recognize boundaries and borders between art forms. Called “a new form” by NYC critics and audiences, it blends theater, movement, dance, performance art, visual art, music, and ritual. Las Fridas is an intimate nonlinear 60-minute performance exploring Frida Kahlo’s life, loves, and traumas. Presented by Mark DeGarmo over 13 years in New York, it is a nonlinear surrealist “play without words,” “movement installation and offering,” “an offering for the Days of the Dead,” and “love letter to Mexico” for 2 performers. 

 

PARTNERSHIPS IN LITERACY THROUGH DANCE & CREATIVITY

MDD’s Partnerships in Literacy through Dance & Creativity program is evidence-based. Johns Hopkins University School of Education and Research’s study showed “promising evidence” that MDD’s fourth grade students’ state reading test scores increased by a “statistically significant amount.” 95% of partner classroom teachers wanted the partnership to return the following year. Often the schools' only arts program, MDD Teaching Artists in Dance & Creativity annually instruct up to 1,000 students and 200 teachers in historically under-resourced and geographically isolated NYC Title I public elementary schools. The National Endowment for the Arts recognized it as “a national model.” President Barack Obama praised its community and national impacts. Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer proclaimed Nov. 17, 2017, as Mark DeGarmo Dance Day in Manhattan. Miss America 2019 Nia Imani Franklin accepted MDD’s Arts Education Advocacy Award in support of MDD’s arts education impacts.

 

VIRTUAL SALON PERFORMANCE SERIES FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

Founded in 2010, MDD’s Virtual Salon Performance Series for Social Change (VSPS) facilitates presentations and conversations with diverse dance and movement artists and the public to develop works-in-progress. Since 2020 it has broadcast 41 virtual salons featuring 553 dancers from 31 countries and 22 U.S. states. MDD’s 15th annual VSPS 2025: NO BORDERS, NO HIERARCHIES will broadcast live via Zoom on Thursday, April 6, 2025, at 7 PM ET, showcasing artists from California, New York, and Tennessee in the season’s grand finale.

 

Mark DeGarmo, Ph.D., Founder, Executive & Artistic Director, is a dancer/performer, choreographer, writer, researcher, and learning theorist. Honors and awards include Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowship (Peru), Martha Hill Dance Fund’s 15th Anniversary Mid-Career Award (USA), USA Department of State American Cultural Specialist Award (Ecuador), The White House Millennium Artist Program, Dance Teacher magazine cover feature article (USA), and

A. A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum photography and costume exhibitions, including ex patriot Russian ballet dancers Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov (Moscow, Russia). A dance graduate of The Juilliard School, he earned a doctorate grounded in transdisciplinary and social justice studies from Union Institute & University.

 

https://markdegarmodance.org, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Vimeo. 

Our programs are supported, in part, by private and public funds from American Online Giving Foundation; Jody and John Arnhold; Benevity; Frances and Benjamin Benenson Foundation; Bernheim Foundation; Blackbaud Giving Fund; Lisa and Dick Cashin; PJ and Dawn Dearden; Rev. Dr. Lindley DeGarmo and Sarah Finlayson; Friends of Mark DeGarmo Dance; Jill Ganey; The Harkness Foundation for Dance; JPMorgan Chase Foundation; Lara and Darius Mehraban; The Kyle J. Mulrooney Foundation; Mental Insight Foundation; National Endowment for the Arts; Network for Good; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; New York City Department of Education; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; Lindsay O'Reilly; PwC Charitable Foundation; Religious Society of Friends; The Rothfeld Family Foundation; Ruth and Seymour Klein Foundation, and Barbara Sherman.