SPOTIFY PLAYLIST: "STEFANIE BATTEN BLAND x LIVE THE PROCESS"

My name is: Stefanie Batten Bland.

I live in: Soho, New York City.

I’m known for being:

Choreographer/director/performer/educator/performance identity liaison in dance-theater and immersive theater.

I’m talking about:

I mainly work in dance-theater. It’s a place where the dance tells stories and where theater moves a lot. It is a hybrid genre in storytelling. It is dynamic and bursts with incredible performance and is nestled in human and codified movement modalities.

You can find it at:

Wow, what a few months we’ve had! BAM Next Wave Festival, our Boston tour and next Company SBB will perform (March 31 and April 1) at New Brunswick Performing Arts Center. Look Who’s Coming To Dinner is an amazing work that asks to whom we should offer a seat at our table of life. 

My work inside of SleepNoMore for Emursive Productions—that of performance and identity—is ongoing. It addresses how we ensure all performers can access and exist inside of their fictional characters, whilst confronting the unconditional biases we all carry into proximity-based performance. This is done through lighting, coaching, costuming, hair and a lot of listening. I have an article on this in Dance Magazine here. 

Before I started practicing this, I was:

I’ve always been a performer, mover. As a kid, I charged my parents and their friends money for my curated shows during dinner parties! 

My interest was sparked when: 

It has always been. I cannot remember a spark.

The idea behind it is:

Dance, theater-making in general, is life experience, isn’t it? I directed the McKittrick’s New Year’s Eve show this year. It was the most extraordinary experience—the gift of hiring over thirty performers to bring to life celebration, sensational exploration, nestled inside of our current roaring ‘20s was the ideal form to express tensions, ecstasy and glory and the gift of living into this new year.

My favorite lesser-known detail is:

I love doing nothing. Lying on a porch somewhere in the countryside is a perfect day.

It’s so important to move because: Movement makes movement. Life is a present tense action of constantly moving forward. The minute we stop. Well… yikes!

Movement is not just about the physical because: Everything we are is interconnected. Intellectual stimulation is movement exploration. Political demonstrations and changes are physical movements in a larger sense. Movement is life.

The words I live by are:

Everything is accessible.

One truth that is so important, but people don’t always realize is: We know instinctually when to move. It’s up to us to listen and have the courage to act. That is the moment of magic making.

My favorite artists on my playlist are:

Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Polo et Pan, Erik Satie, Lizzo and Radiohead.