Episode 5: The Future of Performing Arts: Exploring Dance and Immersive Technology

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This episode features a conversation with classically trained dancer Ariane Michaud who attended the Boston Conservatory. She is now a consultant for various organizations, including the Design for Dance Conference, which intersects dance, performing arts, and emerging technologies including virtual reality. We go through her unique trajectory that starts off in the traditional realm of the arts. We discuss how a master of her art form has successfully launched forward into a variety of sectors, defying traditional roles as an artist and bringing her love for the arts and championing it uniquely in today’s modern society.

You can follow Ariane on Twitter or Instagram.

Resources:

• Wilder Projects — NY (really cool video): A dance film company dedicated to capturing raw humanity through movement and lens.
• Lime Design — SF : Industrial design (human-oriented design)
• Brown University
• Lion King in 360 on Broadway
• Dance for Parkinsons: Great video here of dancing to beat Parkinsons
• Design for Dance — Founded by BJ Fogg — Conference brings together behavior designers, corporate leaders, and many others to collaborate on specific strategies to dance more often, increase physical activity, and build a collaborative lifestyle
• The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together by Twyla Tharp
• The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life by Twyla Tharp
• Changing the Conversation: The 17 Principles of Conflict Resolution by Dana Casperson
• Check out women like Kiri Miller who talk about the body, movement and performance studies in relation to affective computing, technology and the body diversity and racial tensions that arise. Her best books are “Playing Along: Digital Games, YouTube, and Virtual Performance” and “Playable Bodies: Dance Games and Intimate Media”

Transcript

Ariane: VR will be, and already is a platform where people will learn to dance, learn to sing, learn to paint, an environment that may feel safer to them then actually being in a studio. Being within your body, dancing is one of the most vulnerable things we can do.

Iris: Hello everyone, thank you for tuning into the fifth episode of Imagine Human, we have another exciting episode for you today that touches upon the boundaries and intersection between the arts and technology. Today we are joined by Ariane Michaud. Ariane attended the Boston conservatory to study dance and now works as a consultant for various organizations including the design for dance conference which intersect stands performing arts and emerging technologies including VR. We go through her unique trajectory that starts off in a traditional realm of the arts. We discuss how master of her artform has successfully launched forward into a variety of sectors define traditional role as an artist and brining her loving passion for the arts in today’s modern society. Hey Ariane, thank you so much for coming today to talk to us we are excited to have you here why don’t we get started by asking you about yourself and how you got into doing dance.

Ariane: So, I was born in Montreal, Canada, but I grew up in Ottawa. I’m half French Canadian, half American. My parents met on an airplane and I grew up loving the arts, loving dance. I hated going to dance class at the beginning, I always wanted to be the teacher and the leader, so I would hate when someone else is in charge and that was kind of my life I think as soon as I got on board with dance classes, it became what I did, every day after school what I thought about, everything became about dance. So I go to school, I would go to dance at night and the inevitable was to continue dancing I guess, it was kind of the inevitable next step and I auditioned for the Boston conservatory and I got in. I auditioned for a few schools and I got to the Boston Conservatory and it was my first choice, and I attended school there for 4 years, until I got my graduate degree in dance. And I am here.

Iris: Great so can you tell us a little bit about how you went from being at the conservatory to kind of the work that you are doing its really unique and we’d love our listeners to kind of understand how that manifested itself?

Ariane: Yeah absolutely, so a few years into my undergraduate degree I noticed, one, that I was not made for solely performing arts career, I was not competitive enough, I did not want it enough to be in the studio for 8 hours a day, and to be just dancing and, so I started to seek out other ways to use this knowledge that I have honed for so many years. And while I was doing that I was part of a few internships I found a really powerful mentor who guided me through some of these things and I noticed that there was a severe lack in online support for arts organizations and funding. Funding was the apparent one from the start, but there were also a lot of organizations and companies, dance companies that were smaller and looking for social media support, website design, and I kind of just filled in the gaps that’s how they started I was kind of the person who did what no one else was doing for the organization and for the dance company. And that led me to organizations that I loved and missions that I want to support, and it eventually led me to work in tech. And amongst people that actually sometimes have nothing to do with dance.

Morgan: So, would you kind of see yourself sort of merging this ancient artform into the modern-day world of technology through social media is that how you would kind of describe your role?

Ariane: Yeah, I mean I think that in general the arts world is in a funny place right now, specifically because of technology, before technology the performing arts was the thing to do, was a form of entertainment for us right, and that’s why I am so passionate about dance history is because, you know, before we had our icons and the television people gathered together more often to be dancing and celebrating, and so now we are in a funny place where technology is taking over our lives and people are stepping away from things like entertainment and like the performing arts. And that is a great place for change there are so many exciting things happening, so many exciting collaborations happening with dance but also other art forms and technology, but it’s also this place where we ask ourselves what do we do with the old? What do we do with prosimian stage? What do we do with orchestras, live orchestras? What do we do with museums and paintings and how do we get people to still be excited about those things? I think we are at a point where we really have no idea where we are going but we have so much power to change what is going to happen we have so much power to shape the future for the arts but also for technology.

Iris: I think as a former performing artist in Opera, Opera is a dying art as you know and there is this need of technology to help engage the opera audience that once was and now it has become kind of a place where the elite can go. Where do you see dance going in terms of kind of rotating into a fresh perspective and fresh artform do you see something similar happening with the dance floor.

Ariane: What’s really exciting about what happened when technology emerged and specifically when film and video happened is that for the first time dance as an art form we were able to record it, we were able to record the history of it, before that dance was the only artform that had no actual physical you know, no physical evidence that it ever happened. You know we can dig up like archeologists have dug up you know evidence of rituals and dance happening there and we have the stories and written information from the time of Loui the 14th and his ballet within the courts but we never, it was not like music, not everything was recorded and there is the exception so like Rudolph Von Laban created Laban technique and Laban vocabulary and so some people did write down the dances, but what is amazing about dance specifically is that you know it can happen in a room somewhere, in other part of the world and we may never know about it. And so, what is exciting about technology and the evolution is for the first time we are able to record it and we are also able to find information about dance happening all over the country all over the world.

So I think that’s definitely where the future is going with that something I saw recently that exited me, the Bolshoi theater in Moscow is taking, they are making records of every performance that ever happened, they have physical record of. That’s 1800s and onward before that they have nothing, they know that people were dancing at the Bolshoi, that Russia is a place where Ballet existed for a long time before we could record it but some of that is lost and so what is exciting about technology in the future is that we will be able to record the history of this artform.

Another thing that’s exciting that’s happening is of course the use of virtual reality and artificial intelligence and all these really exciting things happening in technology where we are using our bodies it is not just the artists anymore, it’s everyone is using their bodies to interact with the technology.

And you know artists can get involved in a few ways there are of course interactive performances that are happening this is something that the proscenium stages say that companies now that perform at proscenium stage are using to get the audience members back, if they are competing now with YouTube they are competing with Beyoncé they are competing with “so you think you can dance” and Jay Low’s new show they are competing with all of these new shows and technologies and everything so they are using technology to bring people back into the theater and they are also using the knowledge of artists, this is something we are starting to do we are starting to use dancers and theater majors people that knnow and understand the body better than anyone else to bring them into the technology the development of technology and how to make it more inclusive for everybody, for all bodies. Because we know our body is the best, if not so imagine ourselves outside of our bodies and what a technology might need right now.

Iris: I think that’s an awesome point. Being able to kind of bring back to theater and its technology is helping everyone to take part in it and understand the bodies more and I think that virtual reality can really have an application for people who are trying to learn to dance. Something that I read was that there are application for being immersed in social environments. I am wondering what applications in dance do you think will really take off in the next 2 to 3 years to 5 years is there anything that you think technology and dance will really have a sweet spot?

Ariane: I want to say virtual reality, I really do, and I hope that artists are inclined to start collaborating more it is starting to happen the lion king did a little online virtual reality I guess it is a trailer where people can immerse themselves into the lion king and understand how exciting it is to be in the theater and to see these beautiful performers on stage.

Abi: Do you think virtual reality is useful in dance as a form of consumption of dance performances or do you think virtual reality also has applications in learning dance and like using essentially like distance education as you mentioned as something because dance does not have a written form, the teaching has to happen in a room right?

Ariane: No that’s actually that’s great that brought me right back on track because the one thing I did forget about virtual reality is also like the power of education and so absolutely I think virtual reality is going to be used, it is already used to bring audiences back into the actual theater to watch live performance but it will be used of course to educate others, there are so many people who would love to learn you know ballroom dancing, African dancing there are so many exciting opportunities there and yes, we are just starting.

And to be immersed in the experience instead of watching a YouTube video would be very powerful there are already so many YouTube stars who are making dance more accessible who are making music more accessible who are making all kinds of things accessible it is like the do it yourself age, the DIY age and dance is only starting to be a part of that trend and those who are too afraid to go to a dance studio or step into a theater where maybe the performing arts are alienating to them, and we are not even talking about the amount of money they have to spent to get into the theater in the first place.

Absolutely VR will be and already is a platform where people will learn to dance, learn to sing, learn to paint, an environment that may feel safer to them then actually being in a studio being within your body dancing is one of the most vulnerable things we can do.

Abi: Have you like experienced like a VR performance that was really mind-blowing or have you used VR technology in particular ways?

Ariane: I have not specifically used VR technology, but I was a part of you know put on a headset last year at the conference that I help run at Bram University, and the person setting up the experience actually called in performance the day before, so there were dancers, there were theater majors and they had improvised through 10 to 15 minutes.

So then when I put on the headset I was able to see the performers around me, these were that I knew these were dancers and artists that I had interacted with at the conference and I was able to see them performing around me, so they were very close to me. I had put on a VR headset before but I had never experienced it quiete like this and what was so amazing about this experience was I was not only able to see them but I was able to navigate how I saw them.

And that’s something else that’s really impressive when you think about the way we engage with performances now with a lot of art, its head on, your body is in front of it and that’s often how theaters are set up, that’s how you set yourself up to see a painting you want to be right in front of it and so with this experience I was able to decide where I wanted to place my body. So I had power and choice as to where my body went in relation to the performers and that’s almost returning to some of the history from a long time ago before the use of the proscenium stage performances happened around you in the French ballet courts, performances happened before you they happened in front of you behind you people would travel in an out it was part of the actual experience of socializing, of being with other people, it would be gambling and watching the performance, you were not just sitting there or standing there and facing it head on.

So that’s another exciting part of using technology for the arts is that we are now using the technology to have more than one focus and some of that is also giving the audience member that power again to choose that focus to help them use their imagination, use their own bodies their willingness to learn to be part of the experience.

Iris: So, this is a question about performing arts in the future of performing artists because I think now we are seeing an amalgamation of an artist who not only has to dance but also must sing and also has to be able to speak a certain way, they have to kind of have a lot of different skills and they have to up their game. How do you think future performer will look like and what do they need to actually be good at as it grows increasingly more competitive?

Ariane: Absolutely increasingly more competitive I think more and more people are going to school, and unfortunately the jobs are decreasing, and the funding is decreasing everywhere in the world I think that’s a great question, it is not about how well you can sing and dance more and more we are seeing companies that are looking for dancers who can not only perform their task as the performer but also handle the online social media accounts.

So, dancers have to not only hone their craft but understand the world that is keeping their craft alive. There is almost no such thing as a full time professional dance career anymore unless you are in one of the big ballet companies in US, I am talking about New York City ballet, American ballet theater, you are not getting healthcare or dental care or any kind of benefits with your 5-hour a week dance project.

A lot of people need to, a lot of performers, a lot of dancers, but all kind of performers need to wake up and see the world of technology the world of freelancing, of remote work is actually transporting itself into the world of artists and you see more and more artists who are freelancers and who are working on who have a day job and are performing at night so the world around us is also affecting artists.

Abi: To follow up on that, what do most of the people that you went to school end up doing because you say there are a lot more people getting these degrees but there are no jobs, do those people go to school for their passion and then they end up pursuing a different career essentially or do they end up doing dance related careers?

Ariane: Yes, so unfortunately I would have to say that the world of arts and education has not yet caught up to the real world you know no one had talked to me about a website or my Instagram presence which is actually, so its huge, so no one has talked about the realities of the performing arts today and I think education is getting there, they will catch up, there are new programs being build but a lot of students after they graduate are shocked by how quickly the world is changing, the world of arts is not what I would envision it would be.

I was one of those kids who grew up thinking I would be a ballerina who said that I would be performing every night that I would have the money to live off of that. And the minute I started understanding the arts now I understood that that was no longer the reality that was not the case.

And there are a lot of students who struggle after graduation who are auditioning and auditioning for parts that may not exist, that might not have the funding, you may get the part and you may not get paid. It is a huge issue in the arts, doing a lot of work for free, and then you are stuck.

I went to school with some people who have started their own projects, who have part time contracts, who were also doing other things, to make ends meet, to live to pay their rent and that looks different for everyone, you know it is a big trend amongst performers to work in the restaurant industry, there are people who have been working administrative positions which is where I started which is what I do still sometimes. And they are taking any of their other skills to make the money to pursue what they love.

Morgan: So, how do you see this evolving, this kind of idea of a striving artist evolving with the desire to preserve the artform itself in its full integrity how can you have both?

Ariane: Well, we are hustling, that’s for sure, we are working our buts off, I hope that in the next 10, 15, 20 years there are more people who are willing to work on the other side of things as I mentioned before one of the big issues now is funding, there are not enough people who are willing to work administratively and everyone wants to be front and center, everyone wants to be dancing or singing or you know making their art but we need more support.

And right now that is not coming from the government, it has in the past, I am sure it will in the future, right now the national endowment for the arts is at a very low point, and so we need people to step up and understand that the support behind the scenes is as important as the actual performer on stage and it’s not a failure, you are not doing your art wrong, your career is not crashing because you are helping other artists survive other performances happen.

Morgan: What are your thoughts on Crowdfunding platforms if you have any?

Ariane: Yes, I actually help a lot of people online to develop crowdfunding campaigns.

Morgan: Is this on Kickstarter, patron what is it?

Ariane: Yes, absolutely, I think the 2 biggest ones in any industry right now are Kickstarter and Indiegogo. I know that Kickstarter specifically is trying to support the arts in a more meaningful way then they have in the past, they are looking for artists who want to crowdfund, and not just for individual projects I think that’s usually the trend for artists is to raise money for your specific individual project.

So, it is a trend for artists to raise money online for their own individual projects for travel or for intensives they want to attend to hone their own craft, but platforms like Kickstarter are starting to really support and try to find more people to use their platform for projects that are arts related.

They want to be supporting the arts. And I know that that’s an initiative that they have started recently, and I think it is a great way to get people on board, it’s a great way to show other people what you are doing and to get them to show up, to support.

It is hard right now we are raising money for all kinds of this things and why should the arts matter right? There is a lot going on in politics right now, there is a lot going on the other side of the world, there are people who don’t have enough money to eat every day and we need artists to continue supporting what they do and to explain to people why it is important for everyone to be a part of this world, and so platforms are part of that, they help share with the world in a way faster than any other not technology related platform, they help share what you are doing and actually the urgency of the arts in general needing this money to survive.

Morgan: So, in tandem with the starting artists how are you thinking about preservation of the sites in which they have these performances and the schools in which they teach where is the funding coming for those types of organization structures.

Ariane: I am not worrying about the schools there will always be little 3-year-olds ready to take dance class, I am not worried about those, I am worried about the diversity in education because as we struggle this idea of privilege and what that looks like in terms of diversity of course then that brings, that is directly in correlation with dance education, you can’t afford to send you child to a dance class, then your child will not dance in that realm at least so I am not worried about education.

I think we are at a point right now where there is that question is the theater still necessary? I mean I would say yes because I have had magical experiences in the theater but if it does survive if we do want it to survive it needs to change you cannot be paying 85 to 100 dollars a ticket for a dance performance and that might not be a lot to some people, but if we want people to go to this theater if we want them to continue keep seeing the artists perform in the flash which is where they are most passionate, where we feel that strongly, we need to make it more accessible. That’s the issue, we don’t have enough funding we need to be charging more for tickets to get people we want more people in the room.

So, we are stuck in this place where technology can make things accessible for free and a lot people will choose free over the 85-dollar ticket and we struggling I don’t think there is an answer, yet to that and I don’t know the answer because I also want artist to be paid fairly, which does not hanaper very often.

As a performer or someone working behind the scenes, very similar to the structure of a nonprofit, when you are working for a dance nonprofit it gets even more [27:27 inaudible]. So, that’s the question we haven’t answered yet will the theater survive, will the proscenium stage survive, is it necessary is it vital to get people excited and to get people involved I definitely don’t have that answer.

Morgan: What is a project you are working on that you are really passionate about right now?

Ariane: So, I am working on a few that fall into different areas of the professional dance world one of the projects that I have always been excited about I have started as a student and now I am a communications director is a nonprofit organization called Juntos collective and we are empowering intercultural exchanging by brining dance students in the United States to teach and perform in underprivileged parts of central America and Mexico and that excites me because dance needs to be shared and not only be shared with people with money.

It excites me that dance students have the opportunity to see what their artform can do how their artform can empower another human, can encourage communication with another human that does not necessarily speak your same verbal language and can show you that 2 bodies can think more alike than we actually know that regardless of your political views, regardless of how much money your household brings in is that all humans can dance, all humans can be together and share something in that way, so that really excites me and I was student who travels with this organization first and then eventually decided that I wanted to help this organization to grow and I stuck around for really long time and then they finally hired me that is one that really excites me.

Morgan: Can you tell us about where you went as a student and what the reception was of the local population?

Ariane: I traveled 4 times as a student with them, I traveled to Guatemala twice, Mexico and Nicaragua and it is amazing to share, it was amazing to share dance with people abroad and it was amazing for them to share their dance culture with me, so dance I think in central and Latin America is more part of their daily culture.

It is amazing to see the 4-year old shaking their hips like Beyoncé, I look at that, you know, that was definitely not embedded into our culture. It is also amazing to talk to people and understand that they don’t go to the theater, that is not embedded in their culture, they don’t have a lot of theaters especially in underserved communities there are families, children and adults that have never seen a professional performer whether it would be a singer or a dancer or someone working in theater.

And so to bring that experience to them part of our culture is amazing it is amazing to see people show up in their Sunday vests to see this performance that is so important to them and touches them so deeply, they are so open to the experience and for them to share their culture with us, for them to say this is what you showed us this beautiful professional dance performance and now we’d like to show you part of ours and they share the dance culture that is akin to them, and in Nicaragua I learned the palo de mayo dance and I got to put on a costume and the headpiece and use my body in a new way, that excited me, and also excited me to give hope to people who might not understand that their passion can turn into a job, that their passion can actually bring them places.

We worked with all kinds of different people, it’s always really impressive to work with organizations that are taking kids of the street, or teenagers of the street who have passions like we met a group of boys who are learning the art of circus and they had no idea that could be work, that could be their job, they could make money and live off of that and to share with them that we chose our passions as our career, that we believed in something and pursue it, it is always empowering to share that with someone else.

To have a role model or someone who is professional.

Exactly to have a role model and to share with them, no matter what it is just because the place that you come from you can still do it right. Sharing passion with someone helps them understand where their passion can go, I guess I will share one more passion that I am really excited about and this is a conference that I helped program at Bram university which is the conference for research and choreographic interfaces and this is a conference that happens once a year and we bring together experts in all kinds of different field, in technology, in anthropology, in dance, in theater, we bring artists and we bring other professionals together and we talk about the future of technology.

It is so essential that we bring people together now, because technology is part of our daily lives, it’s part of our bodies, it’s part of our lives, but what we can do with that technology has only began and getting people in one room that can start collaborating and that’s the really important word collaborating to make technology and the world a better place, that is so important to me.

There are so many bad things can happen with this technology, we can focus on that, or we can focus on all of the good, we can focus on all of these beautiful collaborations that can happen, how to bring artists who understand the body into these conversations, how to bring people of diversity into this conversation and talk about what that means what do we like the future to look like. How can we get dancers involved? I want to be involved in this future, I don’t want to be left on the sidelines, and it is just the beginning, so that project also really excites me, I am so fortunate to be a program associate for the conference, it is amazing people who are also working on such collaborative projects already.

Morgan: Can you talk about some people that you find very inspiring that you met through the conference?

Ariane: Yes, I haven’t gotten permission to mention their names or their projects specifically, but here is example you have a dancer working with someone majoring in robotics, and this is a woman who is working on I think a few different robot projects, but one specifically that will age as people age a robot that can help you at the pace that you need to be helped. Think about the elderly and how they respond to technologies not as qui k as a millennial might so working on a robot that will age as you age work at the right pace for you that is one of the projects she is working on and she dance to understand what movement looks like in that case how slow do you really need to be. How can all our joints be helped by the technology and robots. There are really interesting projects like that a bunch of VR happening conversations happening around the motion, the movement that needs to happen for some of these technologies to work there are so many examples that this is not working right now.

There was s a viral video on Twitter where the motion of a white man swiping his hand for soap worked and then the swipe of the black man did not work, you could swipe a napkin and it will work, how is that how can we bring other people into the conversation so technology does not make those mistakes over and over again.

Abi: That is like super crucial because all technology is like designed by young people and, so you never really think about the disabled or the elderly and anyone who has like different ways of moving.

Ariane: Diversity is one and of course the issue of motion is that sometimes you have people working on these projects who are quiet at sitting on their computer and coding the actual technology at hand but when you think about the motions that need to go into it that you know again the Fitbit but even the motions that turn on our lights eventually I can see that being integrated into everything that we do. Motion needs to be recorded and they need to all work together so all these different companies working on different projects that involve motion capture and using that motion to use the device to turn on the device to turn off the device to communicate with the device that is going to be a huge problem if everyone is working on this and they are all sitting on their computers and no one has actualy thought about what it takes to use your body.

You don’t want to wave your hand and all of a sudden you are calling your mom and the door opens and the lights go off, that’s a huge issue that we are not taking into account right now, people are building these amazing technologies and they are not thinking about what can go terribly wrong if we don’t think of our involvements of our bodies within that technology and so I am seeing more and more collaborations around that through this conference and I am seeing collaborations where they are taking people who understand the body better than anyone else and have spent years and years and years and a lot of money to work on their own bodies and bringing them to the conversations.

Morgan: And also like a history of like 1000 of years of [inaudible 38:23]

Ariane: Absolutely.

Morgan: So, you worked with the elderly before on a previous project, right?

Ariane: I, yes, I have, when I can I teach movement to elderly and they have [38:40] at the Boston Conservatory, so work on a project there called Movement Matters. Where we bring dance classes to the elderly and the community.

Morgan: And is that primarily, I guess what I am trying to get out is where do you see the therapeutic benefit or that teaching dance to the elderly.

Ariane: There is so many, I would love to bring out the example of dance for Parkinson’s disease which is, there is a program in New York run by David Leventhal and he has built an entire curriculum around movement for the elderly but specifically also for people with Parkinson’s disease and I would recommend that you check out the documentary, any of their work online it is amazing to see how body responds to music, specifically music and dance together and how there is so many physical benefits but also emotional benefits to using dance as a therapy, And more and more people, its popping up everywhere, there are now like majors, you can major at a university at dance therapy and people are developing actual content to train other people, we are at the beginning of that, and that is because scientist are really looking into the power of music and movement together to uplift the human spirit and the human body.

Morgan: Seems like that could be a huge vector for growth for dancing in general make its use more apparent for people, most take it for granted.

Ariane: Talking about virtual reality that’s a great place to use virtual reality, I know that Dance for PP in New York is working on their partnering with technology to see where they can go to make these classes more accessible, to bodies that can’t necessarily get off the couch as easily as others you know a lot of classes for elderly, and so if you are hot inking about someone who is disabled and can’t move at a quick enough pace who can’t drive, who can’t actually physically attend the class, that is where technology comes in how can we make therapies like that accessible to everyone.

Iris: What do you think was the most valuable thing that helped you kind of keep course or that helped push you in the direction in terms of envisioning and being able to being passionate about this is there something really helped you get there?

Ariane: Yes, My sophomore year I got very sick I picked up a bug while traveling and I stopped dancing and that was the experience that helped me move forward with my career was not dancing for a few months stepping away from my artform and experiencing the world as just a human and I think that’s relevant to anyone, stepping away from the computer, stepping away from whatever it is that you do.

So stepping away from dance for me, helped me understand how I wanted to place my body in that realm, how I wanted to help the arts move forward. Yeah stepping away from dance for a while because I think we get so caught up in our own individual world that we forget about everything else.

And that is what happened to me I was so focused on pointing my feet really hard, that I was so focused at trying to kick my head with my foot, I forgot about all the other exciting things happening in the world and so getting sick and stepping away from education a bit stepping away from the dance studio specifically helped me understand the potential that I had within the knowledge that I had already gained thought my education through my dancing. Everytime I think of my career now and where I want to go, I think back to the time when I was not dancing, thinking about dancing more than anything absolutely, thinking about dance, thinking about the arts.

Abi: Thank you so much for this amazing discussion and teaching us all so much about dancing really getting us excited about the future of it.

Ariane: Ariane: Thank you, I always want to make it accessible to everyone else who does not get a bachelor of arts.

Abi: We are grateful to everyone who does.

Ariane: Thank you.

Abi: Thank you.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Imagine Human please don’t forget to check out our website at Imagine Human.com for additional resources and links relevant to this episode, as always we really appreciate your support so don’t forget to share with friends and family and subscribe on iTunes and iCloud we are always looking forward to meeting interesting people to interview for Imagine Human so if you know of someone please contact us on social media or email us at Imaginehumanity17@gmail.com.