Dance Program
How Artists Work, Now:
Public conversations on art and healthcare
Dance, Health, and the Military
Tuesday November 8, 2022 | 5:30-7:00pm
Nelson Music Room, 1304 Campus Dr, Durham, NC 27708, East Campus
Speakers:
Dr. Susan Steinberg-Oren, Clinical Psychologist, Greater Los Angeles VA Healthcare System
Christine Suarez, Los Angeles-based choreographer and dance educator
Rick Maher, 34-year combat aviator, ballet dancer, and Creative Research officer for the Australian Defense Force
Moderated by Sarah Wilbur, Associate Professor of the Practice in Dance and Theater Studies, Director of Graduate Studies, Duke Dance MFA-EIP Program
This public conversation spotlights the collaborative complexities at play in building participatory arts programs in US and Australian military mental health contexts. Our esteemed guests are a truly interprofessional brigade. Susan Steinberg-Oren (lead psychologist in Women’s Mental Health at the VA-Los Angeles) and Christine Suarez (choreographer, lead artist and fund-developer) will share their experiences and insights gleaned from the Dance for Veterans Program (2011-present). Rick Maher is a currently-serving Australian Army Officer of 34 years (combat aviation), ballet dancer, and research officer for the Australian Defense Force Arts for Recovery Program. He will share insights on the current design, implementation and scaling of a participatory dance intervention for combat soldiers and veterans across the Australian military. Audiences from the campus and surrounding communities are warmly invited to join moderator Sarah Wilbur in conversation with these experts about the challenges of integrating arts-based care strategies with health and military professionals at all stages of the career continuum.
Generously co-sponsored by: Duke Arts, Duke Forum for Scholars and Publics, Duke Dance Program, Duke Theater Studies, John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke Office of Interdisciplinary Studies, the Hart Leadership Program at Sanford School of Public Policy, and the Kenan Institute for Ethics.
This event is free and open to the public.
Guest Speakers
Dr. Sue Steinberg-Oren is a clinical psychologist working in Integrative Health and Healing. She has worked at the Greater Los Angeles VA Healthcare System for the last 32 years, serving in many capacities including as a Staff Psychologist in the Alcohol and Substance Abuse Program, Director of Training for the Psychology Pre-doctoral Internship Program, Lead Psychologist in Women’s Mental Health, and now as part of the clinical team in Whole Health. She teaches seminars for mental health trainees in clinical supervision, brief psychodynamic therapy, and mindfulness, and has published in the areas of Substance Abuse, Assessment, Integrative Health, and Feminist Psychology. Dr. Steinberg-Oren and Christine Suarez have collaborated for many years, providing the Express Yourself group (based on the Dance for Veterans curriculum) in the Women’s Mental Health program and now in the Domiciliary, a residential program for unhoused Veterans and those recovering from Substance Abuse and Dependence. She is delighted to be a part of this symposium and is especially excited to collaborate with Dr. Sarah Wilbur, her original mentor for Dance for Veterans.
Christine Suárez is a choreographer, performer, educator and community activist based in Los Angeles. Born in Caracas, Venezuela and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, she founded Suarez Dance Theater in 2003. She and collaborators create at the intersection of collaborative dance-making and community outreach. Her work has been seen in theaters, parks, classrooms, houses and hospitals and toured nationally and internationally. She has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, Santa Monica Cultural Affairs, Flourish Foundation and Foundation for Contemporary Arts. She is co-creator of Dance for Veterans - a program that builds creative expression, social cohesion and bodily authority at the Greater Los Angeles VA Hospitals. Now in its 12th year, she is fortunate to continue to serve veterans in a wide range of primarily mental health programs. Her work with veterans would not be possible without support from the California Arts Council and the Artists in Residence Program at the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. She holds an MFA in choreography from UCLA's World Arts and Cultures/Dance Department and a BA in Theater and English from Emory University. She is a founding member of the Pieter board of directors and served as board chair from 2018-20.
Rick Maher served in the Australian Army for more than three decades and is also an enthusiastic, yet ungainly, ballet danseur. Up until a few years ago Rick’s regular soldiery gig included standing around looking cool as a Combat Aviation Officer. During this time, Rick served in a number of roles that included Regimental Command, operational deployments to East Timor, overseas service to both Singapore and Israel, and a Service-related internship to the Australian Senate. In 2019, whilst otherwise minding his own business, his career made an unexpected turn, and in what Rick describes as a cosmic level act of kismet, Rick’s two worlds of the military, and of dance, collided and he commenced his PhD research at the Queensland University of Technology with a focus on designing dance-based quality-of-life enhancements for war veterans with trauma based mental health injuries
How Artists Work, Now:
Public conversations on art and healthcare
Collaborative Directions in Art and Health
Wednesday, November 9, 2022 | 5:30-7:00pm
East Duke 209
Speakers: Artists and MacArthur Fellows Dr. Anne Basting and Liz Lerman
Moderated by Sarah Wilbur, Associate Professor of the Practice in Dance and Theater Studies, Director of Graduate Studies, Duke Dance MFA-EIP Program
What is the unique role of the arts in reimagining creative approaches to the pressing public health issues of the present? This public conversation features two MacArthur "genius grant" winners with longstanding commitments to transdisciplinary collaboration. Duke proudly welcomes artist-scholar Dr. Anne Basting and choreographer Liz Lerman to share their individual histories as practicing artists in health partnerships. Basting will discuss her award winning TimeSlips project which has occupied the forefront of gerontology, neuroscience, participatory art engagement and memory care. Lerman will discuss her evolving approach to interdisciplinary and intergenerational dance making and critical questioning in medical education and community-based performance. Audiences from all corners of Duke and Durham are welcome to join this conversation about the expanding ways that artists are organizing at the intersection of art and health.
Generously co-sponsored by: Duke Arts, Duke Forum for Scholars and Publics, Duke Dance Program, Duke Theater Studies, John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke Office of Interdisciplinary Studies, the Hart Leadership Program at Sanford School of Public Policy, and the Kenan Institute for Ethics.
This event is free and open to the public.
Guest Speakers
Anne Basting is a writer, artist and advocate for the power of creativity to transform aging care. She is Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee where she directs the Center for 21st Century Studies. She is Founder of the award-winning non-profit TimeSlips.org, which trains, inspires, and supports caregivers to infuse creativity into care. Her writing and large-scale public performances have helped shape an international movement to extend creative and meaningful expression from childhood, where it is expected, through to late life, where it has been too long withheld.
Her books include Creative Care: A Revolutionary Approach to Elder and Dementia Care (Harper), Penelope: An Arts-based Odyssey to Transform Eldercare (U of Iowa), and Forget Memory: Creating Better Lives for People with Dementia (Johns Hopkins). Internationally recognized for her speaking and her innovative work, Anne is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, and numerous major awards and grants. She believes that creative engagement can and should be infused into every aging care system and has trained/consulted with Meals on Wheels, libraries, home care companies, senior centers, memory cafes, museums, adult day programs, and every level of long-term care.
In 2019, Anne collaborated with a team of artists, elders, and caregivers on her largest project yet – a reimagining of the story of Peter Pan with 12 rural Kentucky nursing homes. She is currently at work on a book and art exhibit about caring for her mother; and on Stories We Know by Heart, a series of intergenerational, creative workshop guides based on classic folk and fairy tales.
Liz Lerman is a choreographer, performer, writer, educator and speaker, and the recipient of numerous honors, including a 2002 MacArthur “Genius Grant,” a 2011 United States Artists Ford Fellowship in Dance, and the 2017 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award. A key aspect of her artistry is opening her process to various publics from shipbuilders to physicists, construction workers to ballerinas, resulting in both research and outcomes that are participatory, relevant, urgent, and usable by others. She founded Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in 1976 and cultivated the company’s unique multi-generational ensemble into a leading force in contemporary dance until 2011. She was an artist-in-residence and visiting lecturer at Harvard University in 2011, and her most recent work, Healing Wars, toured across the US in 2014-15. Liz conducts residencies on Critical Response Process, creative research, the intersection of art and science, and the building of narrative within dance performance at such institutions as Harvard University, Yale School of Drama, Wesleyan University, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the National Theatre Studio, among others. Her collection of essays, Hiking the Horizontal: Field Notes from a Choreographer, was published in 2011 by Wesleyan University Press and released in paperback in 2014. In 2016 Liz was named the first Institute Professor at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University, where she is building a lab focused on creative research.