A conversation about dance and communication

DePaul Newsline

For many people, the word communication evokes images of people talking to one another, telephones, emails, social media and text messages. But for Miriam Engel, artistic director of the Angela Dance Company in Jerusalem, communication comes in the form of dance.
Engel and her husband and dance partner, Sergey Shamota, visited DePaul last month as part of the Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity President's Signature Series, "Celebrating Women and Multiculturalism through the Universal Language of Dance." In addition to giving a master class and workshop for classes in The Theatre School, they also created a piece with selected dance and School of Music students for a concert, which included choreography by DePaul dance faculty member and director of the event, Lin Kahn.
Newsline sat down with Engel to discuss why dance is important.  
How did you get your start in dance?
I started when I was three years old. My grandmother was a dancer. She originally was from Bulgaria, and because she was from a respectable family, it was considered, during that time, inappropriate for a girl to dance. But eventually she did it and she was around during the transition from classical ballet to modern dance. So I just sort of smelled it when I was a child. It immediately was a big part of my life.
Why is dance important?
I think we all dance, in one way or another. Looking at the history of human kind, it's one of the primary ways of communication. It's a way to communicate, celebrate, mourn - it's been done in ceremonies and traditions for centuries.
It also brings people together. Just coming back from this class I taught - you have every background in the room. They're psychology majors, acting majors and every other kind of major, and they all come together in one room and suddenly they're all speaking ...

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