Dance Company Checklist:
Guidelines for Touch and Consent
By Nicole Perry and Sarah Lozoff
Students and professional dancers alike are subject to an inequitable balance of power in the studio with their superiors. The mentor-mentee dynamic central to the traditional, touch-driven teaching of dance leaves dancers vulnerable to abuse of this power. Intimacy experts Nicole Perry and Sarah Lozoff have created Guidelines for Touch and Consent as a way to protect dancers from the abuses plaguing our headlines and respect the sensitivity of the art form.
Nicole Perry is an intimacy choreographer and coordinator, as well as director and choreographer in South Florida. Career highlights include a Broward County Artist Investment Grant for KINesphere, intimacy coordination for the award-winning short film Arena, choreography and intimacy direction for the US premiere of The Glass Piano at Theatre Lab, and resident intimacy choreographer for Measure for Measure Theatre. She is also Certified Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analyst. Nicole teaches in the dance department at the University of Miami.
Nicole has recently published various articles in Dancegeist Magazine. You can access them below:
Creating a Culture of Consent in Dance. Dancegeist Magazine. April 2021.
Disrupting Oppressive Patterns of Powers in Dance. Dancegeist Magazine. March 2021.
History of Power Dynamics in Dance. Dancegeist Magazine. Feb. 2021.
Read more about Nicole here.
Sarah Lozoff (SDC) is the resident intimacy director for both the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and RudduR Dance, as well as the first intimacy director to work with American Ballet Theatre, on the groundbreaking commissioned work, Touché. She is the intimacy direction consultant for ABT’s Fall 2021 season, as well as a certified Gyrotonic trainer, movement director, and a partner with Production on Deck.
Read more about Sarah here.
