Founder and Executive Director Mark DeGarmo of Mark DeGarmo Dance

A conversation with founder Mark DeGarmo, who has been based on the Lower East Side for over 30 years.

As an artist and scholar, his work investigates embodied imagination, improvisational composition, and nonverbal/non-discursive ways of knowing. Thus far in his professional choreographic career, DeGarmo has created over 100 dance and performance works and directed multiple tours in 13 countries.

The themes of his choreographic work are varied. Since 2022, he’s been exploring dance video. Since January 2019, he’s performed monthly improvisations broadcast in his “Moveable Moments” series.

His Mexican family, friends and colleagues inspired me to investigate Mexican culture and Frida Kahlo for the last 30 years. The result was a six-year creative process with a female-female cast in “Las Fridas.”

Mark DeGarmo Dance provides high quality, interdisciplinary arts programming for NYC public elementary school students who live in economically challenged and disenfrachised communities.  Partnerships in Literacy through Dance and Creativity© is MDD’s evidence-based seven-year interdisciplinary program. Partnerships empower elementary students to use dance, movement and creative writing as lifelong tools to fulfill their highest potential.

This is a Lower East Side NYC Cultural Podcast with Host Traven Rice