Dance Hubs - Consortium for Gender, Sexuality, Race and Public Culture

Dance Hubs is an audio series about global spaces of creative movement where dancers assemble and connect, exchange and get down, and then pass through. It is hosted by Edwin Hill, Associate Professor at the University of Southern California with joint appointments in the Department of French & Italian and the Department of American Studies & Ethnicity.

Season one in this audio series features “the Loft,” a temporary residence for dancers from around the world. In this series, we will hear the story of the Loft as told by the dancers who created it and made it special. And we’ll listen to them explain why the Loft made such a meaningful impact in their lives as dancers and, quite simply, as human beings.

Episodes

Episode 2

Release Date: 04/06/2021

Julien and Sofia, the founders of “the Loft,” find their first flatmates, and transform their messy rental into a dream space for all sorts of creative endeavors. Also, we ask the “Loft Kids” how 7-14 street dancing strangers coming from all over the world, speaking different languages, with different cultures, racial backgrounds and sexual orientations, how they all got along together in a space with no locks on doors, one bathroom, and a stranger on every couch. How did the Loft Kids create a way of surviving and thriving across their differences and how did the experience impact their professional and personal journey?

Episode 1

Release Date: 01/15/2021

It’s summer 2010. Julien and Sofia, two street dancers, one from France the other from Italy, find themselves in desperate need of a space to live, move, and breathe in New York City. That’s when Julien decided to look into some lofts available in the old industrial Bushwick neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Gender & Sexuality Studies
University of Southern California
Mark Taper Hall of Humanities, 422
3501 Trousdale Parkway
Los Angeles, California 90089-4352

gssconsortium@usc.edu

The Consortium for Gender, Sexuality, Race and Public Culture is generously funded by USC Dornsife and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.