Process Piece: Recent Episodes
Ruby Josephine Smith
Process Piece is not just a podcast, but a full-bodied creative project created and hosted by dance artist Ruby Josephine Smith. The idea behind this project is to explore the creative process more deeply through dialogue, studying the flow of conversation itself as a process while learning to ask better and more curious questions of artists. The podcast includes artists of all mediums, backgrounds, and from all over the world in order to discover both the amazing diversity of views on art-making, as well as what the common threads are between us creators.
Taylor Drury is a Canadian born dancer, choreographer, and sometimes line-drawing artist with WobbleWorks. She is currently a full time company member with the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. In this conversation we talk all about her path to becoming a dancer, which was full of the unexpected, as well as the period of doubting and questioning that often comes after graduation. We speak about conscious versus unconscious influences, the practice of improvisation and how it can be built into a full piece, and the life of being in a company as a dancer as opposed to working freelance. She also talks about her drawing practice, titled WobbleWorks, which is a series of one line drawings that she has expanded out into workshops and commissions.
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Taylor's website & instagram
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Sakina Saïdi is a French-Moroccan artist and illustrator based in London. Born and raised in France by Moroccan parents, Sakina grew up learning about different cultures and traditions. Her experiences nurtured her style and desire to represent this beautiful mix of cultures that now characterizes her personality and art. In this conversation, we talk about how she was raised to pursue “practical” careers, but how she eventually discovered her own purpose within the arts. We also talk about artistic validation, her thoughts on art and activism, as well as exploring identity as an artist, especially coming from a multicultural background.
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Created in response to the pandemic, ViVa marks the first collaboration between two giants in the dance world, the Miami City Ballet and the Paul Taylor Dance Company. Choreographed by Amy Hall Garner, ViVa was choreographed remotely and filmed in two different cities, premiering and streaming on the companies’ social media channels. In this special, shorter-form conversation, Ruby speaks with the two dancers in ViVa, Samantha Hope Galler and John Harnage, all about the process of creating this unique duet and what it meant to them to be able to dance and make art again after 6 months in quarantine.
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Paul Taylor Dance Company websiteandinstagramSamantha Hope Galler websiteand instagram
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Michael Novak is a dancer born and raised in Illinois. In 2018, he became the Paul Taylor Dance Company’s second Artistic Director after having danced for the company for 9 years. Previously, he also danced with Gibney Dance and the Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company, studied at Springboard Danse Montreal, and has performed works by Bill T. Jones, Vaslav Nijinski and Stephen Petronio. In this conversation, Michael talks about his creative background, how dance and drama became languages for him, and his path to where he is today as artistic director of a renowned company. He also speaks about his own creative calling with his work, as well as how he believes in dance as a way of supporting cultural healing, now, during a pandemic, and moving forward into a more connected, globalized future.
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Paul Taylor Dance Company website
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Dylan Frederick is an actor, writer and director who was born and raised in the Twin Cities. He has an MFA from the Yale School of Drama and a BFA from The University of Evansville. Dylan recently made his Broadway debut in Matthew Lopez’s 7-hour play The Inheritance. He also makes music and summer camps. In this conversation between two old friends, we speak about how performance has always been parts of his life, despite being a shy kid, and the relentless process of auditions. We get into his Broadway debut in The Inheritance and being a part of a 7-hour long production, as well as the nature of theater itself as a non-stop cycle of life and loss. Dylan also reflects on the strangeness of traditional theater simply not existing in this moment with the pandemic, and he talks a lot about why he loves camp.
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Cozbi A. Cabrera is a multimedia artist who lives in Evanston, Illinois. She paints, writes and illustrates children’s books, makes handmade collectible dolls, quilts, and designs clothing. In this conversation that weaves through the threads of all of her mediums, Cozbi and I speak about the senses and details of memory, how she took a non-linear path to becoming the artist she is today, and the importance of representation in the art world, not just for the people being represented, but for the consumers of the art to have their perspectives broadened. We each share big questions that are central to our work and Cozbi expresses how the little daily things enrich life and art.
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Tamisha Guy and Donovan Reed are both dancers within the renowned company A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham. In this in-depth conversation on process, I ask them about their paths to becoming the dancers they are today and how they joined A.I.M., as well as what real collaboration looks like within the creation process of the company. Tamisha and Donovan also share their insights and thoughtful reflections on issues in the dance and art world, such as defining safety, being an advocate for yourself and others, and an artist’s role as a change-maker in the community.
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A.I.M. website
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Olaiya Land is based in Seattle and is the founder and editor of Lionesse, an online journal and community promoting connection, confidence, sisterhood & self-love. She also leads creative retreats and is a photographer. In this energizing conversation, we get deep into how to use social media as a creative person to create community. We also speak about about vulnerability, overcoming fears as a creative, and the relationship between food and art.
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Lionesse
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Ella Frances Sanders is based in Ireland and is an internationally-bestselling author and illustrator of three books: Lost in Translation, The Illustrated Book of Sayings, and Eating the Sun. In this conversation we speak about topics such as why and how she feels that asking questions is her love language, the constant connections she finds between words and images and how that relates to her book-making process, distilling down huge, universal ideas and scientific matter, perfectionism versus the inevitable chaos of the world, and quite simply, miracles.
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Farida Hughes is an abstract artist working in mixed media, oil, and resin paint on panel. She developed her mixed media style after many years of painting with oil paint and experimenting with oil painting mediums. She maintains her studio in Baltimore, Maryland. In this conversation we get deep into her process- both technically and thematically. We discuss what drew her to abstract art and how she has developed her ever growing body of work, her multicultural background as a leading force in defining her artistic voice, and being comfortable with having a different perspective of the world.
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Graduate of the National Circus School in Montreal, Antonia Dolhaine spent the last 4 years touring the world teaching and performing with the likes of Cirque du Soleil, Cirque Éloize, and Celebrity Cruises among others. Recently she ran away from the circus to run back to herself. Now a trauma-informed Breathwork facilitator and somatic practitioner in-training, her purpose is to help others to reconnect with themselves through the creation process, embodiment practices, shadow-work, and rituals allowing them to reframe their relationship to life. In this conversation, we talk about her history working in the circus arts and finding her identity as an artist, her personal experiences dealing with mental health and how that has led her into the world of healing practices such as Breathwork and shadow work, looking at the creative practice from a trauma-informed lens, and the parallels between the artistic practice and polarizing politics.
*Disclaimer*: In this episode we speak about microdosing as part of Antonia's healing journey and while she feels that it is important to share information and be open about these experiences, you should not take any drugs or substances without consulting a licensed medical professional.
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Aida Azlin is a writer, creative, proud believer, and dear friend of mine from Singapore. In this conversation, we cover quite a lot of ground. We talk about how Aida started writing, how it has changed over time, and her very specific routine that kickstarts her writing mode. We discuss how human connection is the most important thing in art and in life, made especially clear during the pandemic we are in currently, the idea of “humanity before religiosity,” and how practicing Islam relates to practicing art. Because we held this conversation during Ramadan and it is coming out during the final days of this sacred month, we also talk about Ramadan itself and how it can reset our personal intentions and open up more space for creative work.
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Kennedy Muntanga is a movement artist born in Ndola, Zambia where he resided until he was 7. Moving to Leeds (UK), Kennedy’s passion for movement came from his wholesome relationship between dance and culture. We discuss the intersection between his cultural heritage and dance, how narratives bring empathy to art, why he feels like he is still at the very beginning of creating his voice in dance, what it means to be a dancer, especially during this time of global crisis when no one can perform or teach in person, and how his christian faith deeply influences and drives his work.
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Elin Kelsey, PhD is an award-winning author and internationally-recognized thought-leader for hope and environmental solutions. We talk about what led Elin to write and create children’s books specifically, as well as how to us books and art as vehicles for larger narratives and heavier conversations. We dig into her research process of writing a book and discuss the intersection between poetry and science. I love the way Elin speaks about reframing the pervasive “doom and gloom” narrative about the environment to one that is more hopeful. She elaborates on this concept and talks about how the same reframing can be applied to our current quarantined reality, finding hope in the chaos.
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Training across New York, Paris, Berlin, London, Tokyo, Brazil, regional Australia, and her purple bedroom, Vanessa Marian Varghese is particularly fascinated with street dance and the way it is born outside of the dance studio context. In 2016 Vanessa founded Groove Therapy, aimed at making dance accessible to all walks of life. In this conversation we dig into Vanessa's background in dance and creativity, how her diverse past of studies and interests now inform the whole package of her present work, her relationship with failure, and how she built groove therapy into the expanding creative business it is today. She describes a very practical piece of advice for artists and creative workers of any kind, which is building a happiness baseline budget, plus we discuss the joy of being a beginner and lifelong learner
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Vanessa's website
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Groove Therapy
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Anna Brones is a writer, papercut artist, illustrator, and producer living in the Pacific Northwest of the USA. She is the author of several books including Fika: the Art of the Swedish Coffee Break and Live Lagom: Balanced Living the Swedish Way. We speak in detail about her recent Women’s Wisdom Project, the cultural and societal values of work and productivity, how a multifaceted creator like Anna decides what is work and what isn’t and when to say yes or no to a new opportunity, enjoying what she aptly calls the “marination phase” of the creative process, and, something that we can all relate to lately, how limitations and restrictions can actually enhance the artistic process instead of hindering it.
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Because this is my 20th official conversation on the podcast, it seems fitting that the artist I am speaking with is not only a dear friend and someone I have worked with in the past, but the woman who sparked the idea for this entire thing to begin with. Natalia Fernandes planted the seed of exploring deep process in my mind in 2015 when she directed a solo that I choreographed as a part of The Oldest Thing in the World. In this episode, we spoke openly and joyfully in Natalia’s cozy apartment in the center of Madrid. We talk about a wide variety of things relating to the real work behind the work, but namely Natalia’s dance history and how she brings all of her references to her work, what it means to choose to the life of an artist, the body as a constant and natural fluid process, the big questions we all ask in our work, why the world needs more poetry, on discipline and repetition, and how we define being radical.
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Akeisha de Baat is contemporary dance artist turned online fitness enthusiast for dancers, based in Vancouver, Canada. She loves to create new works, self produce shows, and encourage other artists to go after their dreams. We talk about Akeisha's unusual path through dance, starting with roots in traditional Polynesian dancing as a link to her family, carrying the history of different dance styles in her body, her love of countertechnique and what it is exactly, plus we talk a lot about being a dancer as an artist versus an athlete. For non-dancers, we also talk a lot about processes that are applicable to all. For example, what resilience means and not only what it is to be a resilient dancer, but a resilient artist, how an injury forced her to take a break and how taking a pause can effect the creative process, and her interest in energy and the law of attraction.
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This episode is a little bit different from others. I decided to sit down with the one and only Marouan Ben Larbi, who is not only my husband, but at certain points throughout our relationship, a co-creator and fellow performer. In this conversation in our living room, the two of us go back and forth about topics relating to art-making, relationships and where the two subjects intertwine. Most notably, how we worked together and what our collaboration process looked like for our full-length dance performance piece titled Marked Territory, plus what being an artist means to each of us and separating artistic spirit from artistic profession. We discuss the fact that a stigma still exists claiming that true artists can’t devote time to stable relationships or marriage and we also get into the benefits of having someone close to you in your life with whom you can be totally vulnerable and talk to about your process. We also received several questions from friends and podcast listeners, so we answer those sporadically throughout this chat. We are hoping this conversation will give you a glimpse into just one example of what two artists coming together in a relationship can look like from the inside, going through the process of making a life and making art side-by-side.
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Sharon Picasso is a Minneapolis based movement and interdisciplinary artist. Her creative work incorporates her rich background in dance, theater, somatics, music and design. She invests in cultivating an inclusive and sustaining creative environment and above all, values the process. In this episode we discuss her beginnings in theater and psychology and why she took a break from dance for two years, how becoming a mother positively impacted her career as a choreographer and how she makes life and work sustainable, being a self-proclaimed “slow cooker” in terms of creative process, her thoughtful and special relationship with failure, plus she shares a couple of my favorite answers that I have heard so far in terms of what her daily rituals are for creativity.
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Hicham Gardaf is a photographer who was born in Tangier, Morocco, and is currently based in London. Gardaf’s work at its centre poses questions that investigate transformations of contemporary landscape, spatiality and politics of space. While he was back in Tangier for a brief trip home, I invited Hicham over for coffee and this conversation, in which we dove into how his lifelong love of looking at pictures and images transformed into taking and curating them into his own art. In his soft-spoken and uniquely humble way, Hicham shared how he got to where he is as an artist by recognizing opportunity, his interests in the relationship between photography, painting & cinema, some of Tanger’s history that he has been documenting and researching in terms of development and architecture, his interest in “vague space,” and why, for him, the creative process of being a photographer is backwards.
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A solo episode for the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, looking back on how I got started with this podcast, sharing how I prep for interviews, 3 major lessons I’ve learned in the first 9 months of podcasting, and gazing forward to the future.
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Abigail Hing Wen was born in West Virginia and raised in Ohio as a child of immigrant parents, both of Chinese descent. She is the author of the bestselling YA novel Loveboat, Taipei. In this conversation, Abigail and I not only got into to process of how she wrote her wonderful book, but we connected on so many levels- as dancers, creative & intuitive thinkers, and musical lovers. We explored how she has felt the calling to write her whole life, the on-going balancing act of juggling her intensive jobs, writing career & family life, why she had to write her book in full four different times, how her MFA program created a community around writing, how we each define creative freedom, and so much more.
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Ellen Humphreys is a New Mexico-based actress, originally born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Some of her past productions include In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play) by Sarah Ruhl, Home with a View of the Monster, and the films Outlaws Don’t Get Funerals, and Running with The Devil. In this conversation, we talk about her path to becoming the actor she is today, language and a fascination with people being her starting point of her career, the importance of community and her personal process of preparing for a role, the conversational nature of acting, and we have a great discussion on whether being an actor is more of an art or a craft.
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In this solo episode I’ve decided to begin to reflect on some of the common themes that keep coming up over and over again in my conversations with diverse artists. Namely, the power of intuition in the creative process. I cite past episodes where it has been discussed, try to define what intuition means, and tell my own story of listening to my inner intuitive voice in order to make a huge, life-changing decision. I also include a little Q&A with listener questions about what inspires me and life as a woman in Morocco.
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Vie Boheme is a Motown native, blossomed in Pittsburgh and refined in Minneapolis. She is a multimodal artist; a dancer, singer and choreographer. Vie was singing in Casablanca in 2019 and I invited her to come hang out with me in Tangier for a weekend. We talked about everything from how she has explored heritage and history in her music and performance art and the general evolution of her career, to some of the issues with the dance world and why she has struck out on her own in order to connect on a deeper level with the energy of an audience. We also got into the major issue of gaps in education when it comes to showcasing black female artists and how Vie often creates her work as a response to these inequities.
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Caleb Hinz is a musician, producer, t-shirt maker and artist from Saint Paul, Minnesota. Some of the highlights of what we covered in this conversation are chatting about how his artistic upbringing impacted his current work, the benefits of surrounding yourself with creative people in your life, how he juggles what seems like a million projects at once, Caleb’s song-writing process, and defining success. We also get into how his t-shirt brand Normal Parents began, and the story behind the head-scratching slogan on one of his tees, which is “art changes nothing.”
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As a self-proclaimed maker, Sanne Clifford uses the languages of dance, movement, words and film, choreographing them into moving stories and conversations. She is a Dutch artist and choreographer, living and working in Amsterdam and touring her work abroad. In this conversation between two choreographers in Sanne’s lovely Amsterdam apartment, we dig into the details of how Sanne got to where she is in her career today- how she chose what to study, the steps she took to form her own company, and the research that she puts into each and every project. Because we met through Choreolab Europe, we talk quite a bit about the art of collaboration and play- both with other dancers and interdisciplinary collaborations. We also talk about how values are reflected in the creative process, what it means to feel secure and safe as an artist, and what dance means to her.
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Shana Kaplow is a visual artist working with large-scale, ink-on-paper installation, sculpture, and video. Her images of mass-produced household objects peruse the familiar and the enigmatic confronting a society organized around ever-expanding consumption and exploitation. In this face-to-face conversation in Shana Kaplow's beautiful St. Paul studio, we cover a huge range of topics including experiencing and making a painting as an embodied experience, the energetic quality of subject matter, ephemeral experiences of everyday objects, and the complexity of paradoxes in art and life. We talk about Shana’s relationship to art and at the same time, how art is a way of expressing her relationship to the world around her.
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Yahia Lababidi is an Egyptian-Lebanese poet, writer, and aphorist. He grew up in Egypt, attended university in the states and eventually moved there later in life and is still based in Florida to this day. He has written several critically acclaimed books including his first book of aphorisms, Signposts to Elsewhere, a collection of poetry, Balancing Acts, and his newest compilation of aphorisms, Where Epics fail: Meditations to Live By. We discuss Yahia’s literary background, displacement and the concept of formulating your own creative home, the difference between writing prose, poetry and aphorisms, and the beauty and terror of having an artistic calling. Within the realm of callings, we also delve into the image of the suffering artist and the deep connectedness of faith and art.
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Radia Bakkali is a musical artist, pianist, composer, and teacher from Tangier, Morocco. In this conversation we talk about how she fell in love with the piano, composition as a way of expressing deep emotion, taking time and paying attention to details in your personal work, how artistic projects can connect you to your community and also how to ask for help from supportive people in your life, and music as a universal language.
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Vinny Balbo is an actor, dancer, and director living and making work in Los Angeles. We talk about what it is like to grow up in a big artistic family, the path to becoming a largely self-taught dancer and how to discover and craft your own style. We discuss the art of collaborations, his new project of short films and what that experience is teaching him currently, and how to live and make work more fully in the present moment.
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Houda Rahmani is a Moroccan artist, illustrator, graphic designer, and photographer living in Tetouan. In this face to face conversation in Tangier, we discuss the academic side of art and her experience of studying fine arts in Morocco, watercolors and visual arts as poetry, we talk about the paradox of instagram- how it can make us more self-conscious about our work, but also more connected and equal in terms of artistic opportunity around the world. We discuss the difference between art vs. craft, moroccan traditional arts, whether art is a basic necessity of life, and our mutual love of the sea.
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Jumana Al Refai is a professionally trained dancer and choreographer in ballet and modern dance based in Kuwait. She has over 20 years of experience and has trained, performed, and worked with internationally recognized dancers and choreographers. In this conversation, Jumana and I talk as two dancers living in countries where it is not traditional to study dance. We talk about how she’s gotten to where she is in her professional career, where she hopes to go as a dancer working mainly in the Middle East, musicality and the different ways her multi-cultural background play a role in her work, being an active, awesome hijabi woman working in the arts, and dance as a way of connecting and relating to the people around you- both in your community and the wider world.
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In this mini-sode, I discuss a topic that has been on my mind and present in my working life lately- doubt in the creative process. I explore how I believe it to be a necessary road block for us to learn to overcome, how I am personally dealing with it in terms of this very podcast, and I lay out some tangible ways that others can deal with their own self-doubt within the artistic process.
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Renee Byrd is based in a small town in Virginia and on her blog, Will Frolic for Food, she shares vegetarian recipes along with conversations about holistic wellness. She views self-care and personal healing as a vital part of living a full, creative life as an artist of any medium. As a musician, she is a part of the musical trio Larkspur and is starting a new project with her husband titled Blondechalant We dig deep into her performing arts background, what it means to be a multipotentialite, being a “highly sensitive person” and how that effects her creative process, how she writes music and lyrics for her musical groups Larkspur and Blondechalant, imposter syndrome, and calling yourself an expert versus an educator.
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Laura Jean is a traveling artist living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She is writer, poet, photographer, podcaster and editor of Dame Traveler. Her blog, Roam + Go Lightly, was born in 2014 out of a simple travel diary to keep in touch with her family while she explored the greater half of EuropeWe dig into the original source of her wanderlust as well as how to define and practice mindful, meaningful travel, how art making and exploring the world are similar in that they push you outside of your comfort zone, and her process as a writer on the road.
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Anne Butera is a self-taught artist living in Wisconsin who finds inspiration in the beauty of her garden and the magic of nature. In this episode, we discuss what it is to be self-taught and the pressure of calling yourself an artist in general, how these days we often feel like we have to share everything, the natural seasons and cycles of creative work, and, of course, always finding joy in the details.
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Pau Aran Gimeno is a choreographer, dance teacher, and performer from Barcelona who is known primarily for being a longtime company member of Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wuppertal. He is now pursuing his own solo career as a creator and choreographer. In this conversation we go deep into his childhood influences and how they are present in his work today, how he is working on developing his own movement language after having worked with many different masters over the years, being a warrior for your art, and, of course, his ongoing love affair with dance itself.
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