David Gere: Making Dances in an Epidemic
Works In Progress
English - April 15, 2020 20:00 - 23 minutes - 16.4 MBVisual Arts Arts Performing Arts art architecture design film theater dance performance visual arts ucla los angeles Homepage Download Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Artists took to the streets to protest government inaction in response to the AIDS crisis. What lessons can a new generation apply to COVID-19?
Works In Progress talks to David Gere, a professor in the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance and the director of the UCLA Art and Global Health Center. His center sponsors the UCLA Sex Squad -- a theater troupe that teaches young people about sexual health through music, dance and spoken word -- and organized the recent photographic exhibition "Through Positive Eyes" at the Fowler Museum.
Gere moved to San Francisco in 1985 to be a dance critic, and he wrote about theatrical dances and the "choreography of activism" in response to the AIDS crisis in his 2004 book "How to Make Dances in an Epidemic: Tracking Choreography in the Age of AIDS.”