PUBLIC SPEAKING
public speaking and dialogue design
As a speaker, Dana draws on her experience as a conflict specialist and her 40 years as a performing artist. Dana’s talks offer enlivening deep dives into a range of topics around issues of communication, conflict, and our capacity for change and constructive growth.
DIALOGUE DESIGN
Dana’s work in dialogue creation integrates her expertise in conflict analysis and her 40 years of experience with choreographic design. Through this synthesis, she creates environments and events that invite a greater ease and depth in connection, reflection, and exchange.
public speaking
public speaking
Dana’s vibrant talks integrate her expertise as a conflict analyst and her vast experience as a performing artist in venues around the world. The talks and seminars she offers are highly interactive, with participants engaging in both reflection and exchange. These events often act as strong sparks for future action and can be helpful as an introduction to further work together through consultation, coaching, or training. Dana is available for either in-person or online talks and seminars.
Selected Talks:
“Conflict is a Place of Opportunity”
TEDx Hackney. London, England
“What Can Choreography Reveal About Conflict?”
Lincoln Center’s Global Exchange Art X Conflict, NYC, US
“Changing the Conversation in Conflict”
California State University’s Professional Development program
“Conflict Resolution for Scientists”
Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, US
“Conflict & Possibility in the Practice of Collaborative Law”
The Massachusetts Collaborative Law Council, US
“Conflict & Physical Thinking”
The German Dance Prize Symposium. Essen, Germany
Keynote Talk
“Constructive Conflict in the Field of End-Of-Life Services”
Service Corporation International Women’s Leadership Conference
ON THE TEDX STAGE
“MS. CASPERSEN’S PERFORMANCE IS EXTRAORDINARY.”
– The New York Times
dialogue design
dialogue design
Dana creates events where participants are invited to reflect and connect on topics that matter to them and their communities. This work draws on her expertise in conflict analysis and 40 years of experience with choreographic design. Participants are invited into highly structured frameworks that help people communicate in an expanded manner, using simple physical actions and language to exchange on ideas, positions, and beliefs. Explore the event models below or contact Dana to discuss a custom event to meet your specific interests.
THE DIS/ AGREEMENT PROJECT
A practice of humanization through 47 snapshots of attention
In conflict, our attention is often primarily on the gestures of attack and defense. THE DIS/AGREEMENT PROJECT invites attention to a broader spectrum of human gesture, to expand our sense of what matters in times and places of conflict.
In the project, ten artists from around the world engaged in spoken and physical conversations with people with whom they agreed and disagreed. The gestures of the artists and their conversation partners– 47 people from 11 countries – were then transcribed into written and spoken language, creating choreographic distillations of experience to be again fleshed out into action by the minds of listeners and viewers.
Explore more.
With thanks to my partners on the project: Jumana Al Refai (Kuwait), Nour Barakeh (Syria/ Austria), Isaac Blake (UK Romani Gypsy), Mayra Hernandez (USA), Ani Javian (USA) , Jacquey Nyaminde (Kenya), Valerie Oliveiro (Singapore/ USA), Jakevis Thomason (USA), Mengfan Wang (China).
THE DIS/AGREEMENT PROJECT is supported by the Goethe Institutes of Boston and Chicago, the Rutgers University Dance Department of Mason Gross School of the Arts, and the National Performance Netz- Stepping Out, funded by the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, as part of the Neustart Kultur Initiative [aid program DIS-TANZEN/ tanz:digital/ DIS-TANZ-START] of the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland.
THE POLARITY PARTY
An immersive, participative event on polarization
THE POLARITY PARTY invites participants to consider the questions:
What is polarization? What does it do in us? What do we do with it?
In this event, there is no performance and no spectators, instead simple actions such as walking, sitting, and talking become tools for reflection and interaction. The hosts / creators of the project are dance artists who guide participants as they move through a series of carefully crafted, action-based situations.
Developed in a collaboration between Dana Caspersen and the MichaelDouglas Kollektiv, the project invites participants to configure and re-configure in the space as they engage in conversations exploring their experiences of polarization and belonging.
The Polarity Party offers a situation where we can focus on the mechanism of polarization itself and our role in it.
“The staging of The Polarity Party… provides impressive insights into the power of conversation… The big win that you can pull out of a visit to this party is the ability to recognize polarization, and so to see it as an experience that can be acted upon, negotiated with, and possibly resolved.”
– Melanie Suchy, Stadtrevue Cologne
UNDER | STAND
An action dialogue on racism
In Old English, one meaning of the word “understand” is “to stand among”– to engage in an action of connection.
UNDER | STAND is a public dialogue project where participants from diverse backgrounds engage in a collective “physical interview” process where the body emerges as a ground of connection and communication.
Using simple physical actions, such as walking, tapping, and gesturing, participants create a compelling physical map of their lived experience as individuals and community members. Moving through stations of conversation–physical and spoken– participants see, hear, and offer multiple perspectives simultaneously, allowing the complexities of social experience to find an appropriately rich strength of expression.
Partners include: New York University | Smith College, Amherst | the University of Southern California, Los Angeles | Roehampton University, London | The School of Contemporary Dance and Thought, Northhampton | Uferstudios, Berlin, Germany
The project was developed and is being shaped by the time, ideas and actions of many people and communities. Special thanks to Reshma Anwar, Robin Aren, Mikaela Brandon, Delaine Dobbs, Francesca Harper, Emily Hart, Tasha Hess-Neustadt, Sam Kaltenhaler and Maya Miller for their work on the development of UNDER | STAND. Thank you to New York University’s Center for Ballet and the Arts for their generous support of the project.
THE EXCHANGE
An interactive public event exploring violence
THE EXCHANGE invites participants into the question:
How do we as individuals affect the level of violence in the world through our thinking and actions?
Developed in collaboration with the MichalDouglas Kollektiv, The Exchange offers a physical framework from which to reflect and exchange on individual and global violence mechanisms. Participants are invited to consider what they believe about the use of violence, where they learned those beliefs, and how those beliefs focus their attention and actions in conflict.
In the current national and international atmosphere of heightened division across racial, religious, and ideological lines, violent interactions increasingly become a common, if unwanted, norm and a sense of hopelessness often arises. Through the actions of listening, speaking, and walking, The Exchange offers participants a way to consider the effect that we, as individuals, have on the systems of interaction that we take part in daily, and how positive change might take place.
Click here to explore this project further.
The project is supported by Culture Department of the City of Cologne, Germany, the Land Ministery NRW, the Kunststiftung NRW, the Center for Contemporary Dance, Cologne, the University for Music and Dance, Cologne, ZAIK, the Atelierhaus Quartier am Hafen and the Orangerie – Theater am Volksgarten.
“Dana’s capacity to translate her artistic mind and her long-term international experience towards this topic is unique and exceptional.”
– Ingo Diehl, Director, MA program for Contemporary Dance Education, University of Music and the Performing Arts (Germany)
KNOTUNKNOT
An interactive dialogue on immigration
Knotunknot is an interactive public event that uses simple physical motion as an instrument of communication, allowing participants from diverse communities to exchange on questions of belonging, nation, culture, and place.
In Knotunknot, participants begin by grouping and re-grouping in response to a series of questions as they are invited to take a literal, physical stance according to their own beliefs and experiences. This common action both illuminates the intricate patterns of community and renders the apparent borders between groups more permeable.
Following this action, the participants dive into a shared conversation on their experiences and beliefs. During these discussions, a real-time spatial translation of the conversations also takes place. In a process developed by Dana and Tomaso Carnetto, Director of the Academy of Visual Arts, Frankfurt, Germany, participants unknowingly leave traces of their physical gestures on the tables where they are seated during discussions, producing a graphic translation of their dialogue in marks of ink on paper. Revealed after the dialogues, these complex images become objects of contemplation as the participants walk through them, reflecting on the nature of their connection during the event.
VIOLENCE : RECODE
A choreographic public dialogue examining systems of structural violence
Using images, physical action, and sound, Violence: Recode illuminates a question posed by anthropologist Paul Farmer:
“By what mechanisms do social forces ranging from poverty to racism become embodied as individual experience?”
Participants are invited to engage with a series of simple physical postures that are placed in counterpoint to a changing series of descriptive picture titles. A group of musicians surround the participants and create a rhythmic framework that contains and drives the pace of the event.
Violence : Recode was created in collaboration with students and faculty from Vermont State University.
THREE COUNTER-MOVEMENTS TO VIOLENCE
A choreographic public dialogue examining the impact of violence on youth
Created in collaboration with students from high schools in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, Three Counter-Movements to Violence is a choreographic dialogue on the impact of violence on youth. The event is based on the question the youth raised:
“Is there a difference between the physical punishment of children and violence?”
The project generated a platform where participants could engage with and without words–moving through the room on a path choreographed by their own ideas and beliefs. The group created an event where each participant, regardless of their movement agility, acts as an integral part of the exchange.
Created in collaboration with students from the Lyndon Educational Alternative Resources Network (LEARN), the East Burke School, and the Saint Johnsbury Academy in Vermont, with the help of Karen Holmes, Ingrid Mahler and Colleen Twomey.
Produced in partnership with Catamount Arts Center, Umbrella, and the Community Restorative Justice Center, Inc. in St. Johnsbury. With the kind support of the Vermont Community Foundation, Ben and Jerry’s, the Catamount Arts Center, the Vermont Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts.