Mark DeGarmo Dance Continues Interview Series This Friday With Ron Alexander

Mark DeGarmo Dance continues its transcultural transdisciplinary Interview Series: Creativity and Creative Practice, featuring an interview with Ronald K. Alexander, arts consultant, administrator, educator, choreographer, activist, and an advocate for the arts who currently works with The Black Arts Institute, ResorationArt, the Billie Holiday Theatre, the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, and the Ailey School.

"...Being a Black artist in the United States, you are inevitably involved in a Black arts movement," says Mr. Alexander in conversation with the series curator and host, Mark DeGarmo. "You cannot help but produce Black art, being a Black artist." The two go on to discuss activism, Mr. Alexander's dance history and work with students, and his advice for young artists in the world today.

MDD's Interview Series consists of short interviews with artists and scholars about their artistic and scholarly work and its responses and implications for the human condition and the times in which we live. MDD broadcasts the series on a biweekly basis, Fridays at 1pm ET (U.S.). Dr. Mark DeGarmo is the series' producer, curator, and interviewer.

The interview series is designed to broaden and deepen understanding and the practical applications of creativity and creative practices across transcultural transdisciplinary fields and domains. The series starts with interviews of practitioners from Argentina, Australia, and the USA across the fields of dance, theater, the performing arts, educational research, and teaching. DeGarmo's inquiry into creativity as a human birthright shapes the series, as does the Black Lives Matter movement that emerged into full national and international view after MDD launched its Interview Series.

Mark DeGarmo, Ph.D., Founder, Executive and Artistic Director of MDD "hopes that such reflective discourse will contribute to sustaining and expanding artists' work and creative practices while developing new audiences and deeper public understanding and appreciation of the roles of The Arts and artists in the USA and across global cultures. I believe this is a critical time in USA's democracy, democratic practices, social imagination, and history. The Arts and Dance are needed now more than ever not as window dressing and entertainment, but rather, to inform, to educate, to challenge, to heal, to inspire, to bring together, to build community, to lead, and to propose new visions of a truly egalitarian and communitarian diverse, inclusive society. The Arts are needed now to help energize our country into positive social action, justice, and lasting never-before-seen society-wide systemic structural changes."

Interviews will be posted on the MDD YouTube page biweekly on Fridays at 1pm ET (U.S.).

Ronald K. Alexander is an arts consultant, administrator, educator, choreographer, activist, and an advocate for The Arts. He was a certified dance instructor with the NYC Department of Education from 1994-2002, was the subject of "Five Teachers, Five Venues," a 2011 article in Dance Teacher Magazine, and currently on the faculties of The Black Arts Institute, RestorationART, the Billie Holiday Theatre, Brooklyn, NY, the Stella Adler School of Acting, and the Ailey School, NY, NY.

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