Hi friends! I’m Margaret Fuhrer, the editor and producer of The Dance Edit newsletter and podcast. Welcome to the fourth episode of The Dance Edit Extra! And it’s such a good one, you guys. 

You’re about to hear from the absolutely brilliant Ephrat Asherie, who has explored so many different corners of the dance world from so many different angles—as a club dancer, as a b-girl, as a concert dance performer, as a choreographer, as a scholar. She is curious about everything and she collaborates with everyone—her range and her reach is pretty awesome. 

Ephrat is also a New Yorker, which I’m mentioning because you will hear New York in this recording—there’s a bit of street noise in the background at certain points. I actually think that feels absolutely correct, but just a heads-up so you’re not surprised by it.

Anyway, thank you all again for subscribing to the Edit Extra, and be sure to check back here for new episodes every other Saturday. Enjoy!

[pause]

Margaret Fuhrer:
It is my very great pleasure now to be joined by Ephrat Asherie. Hi, how are you doing?

Ephrat Asherie:
Hey, Margaret, how’s it going? So happy to be here with you!

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah, thank you so much for joining, because I know you are super busy right now getting your company ready to perform at the Fall For Dance Festival, which will be happening right as listeners are hearing this episode, October 15th and 16th. Very exciting!

So, Ephrat is a New York City-based b-girl and choreographer, and the artistic director of that aforementioned company, Ephrat Asherie Dance. She has a BA from Barnard in Italian and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She’s collaborated with a wide range of artists. She’s received all kinds of awards, including the 2016 Bessie Award for innovative achievement in dance. And actually, in 2018, you were one of the first recipients of the Dance Magazine Harkness Promise Awards, and I remember thinking at the time, like, “Promise Award? Hasn’t she already delivered on that promise?” [laughter]

Ephrat Asherie:
You’re very kind. No. There is much to grow and evolve and keep creating.

Margaret Fuhrer:
But actually, I’m wondering if you can start by going back to the very beginning and talking about how you first fell in love with dance, because I know you came up through the underground dance scene and that’s so foundational to your work.

Ephrat Asherie:
Oh, the very beginning. Well, I guess I should say that I grew up in the nineties listening to hip hop. So, some, hopefully many people will know that the nineties for a lot of us is the golden era of hip hop. And so I was really fortunate. I moved here when I was seven. I was born in Israel. Then we went to Italy and then we came here. And so, at a young age, I don’t know. I feel like I remember hearing my first hip hop record at age eight or something like that. And pretty soon I was really into just listening to the radio and making my own mix tapes with my friends and dancing to music videos and dancing… A little bit later, at school dances, obviously not when I was eight, but I was always dancing around.

And then my mom actually put me in ballet class. I’m one of five—I’ve got four big brothers—and I played soccer. Just kind of wanted to be one of my brothers. And she was like, “Let’s try this ballet thing.” And I like dancing, so I thought, “Okay, maybe I’ll enjoy it.” And I started to enjoy it, I think, when I started jumping and turning, but I always kept my social… The social aspect of dancing was really important to me.

So when I found breaking specifically, which really—I saw Rennie Harris PureMovement perform Rome and Jewels, and it was the first time I had seen a woman breaking, a b-girl live and direct in front of me. I’d only seen, really I’d only seen breaking in music videos up until that point. And so then that really…

Margaret Fuhrer:
Clicked.

Ephrat Asherie:
Yes. And so through breaking, where I could really relate a lot of the music that I was listening to when I first started breaking, I was very fortunate. My mentor Break Easy, Richard Santiago, he had these free community practices in Bushwick and he was always playing funk records from the seventies. And I was noticing that a lot of those records had been sampled in the hip hop records that I was listening to in the nineties. So already there was that connection. And then of course this real physicality, as well, to the dance that I gravitated towards. But I was lucky because Break Easy, it wasn’t just, “Oh, here, you’re going to learn these steps.” No, it was like total cultural immersion in every way. Even just, he created kind of a family. Breaking In Style is the name of the crew. And it was just like a family and we’d hang out at his house. He showed us newspaper clippings of his crew back in the day, we’d listen to all different kinds of music. You’d talk about DJing, showing…it was just, oh, all in. And it was my introduction to salsa too, which really is something I’m really passionate about. Yeah.

And then through that, actually through the friend who first… Nicole. My friend, Nicole—she took me to Break Easy’s practice, because she knew I was really looking for somewhere to learn—she took me to my first underground house party, to The Shelter. And then that was just like, forget it. I got into that, just musically, culturally, everything. I saw house and vogue and the Latin hustle and just people being so free. I just, it was… Yeah. Shaped me completely.

Margaret Fuhrer:
So I want to stay in the past here for a little bit. Not quite so distant past now, because this is actually not the first time you’ve appeared on our podcasts. You left a voice memo for us last June, June of 2020, as part of a voice memo series that we were doing—little messages in a bottle at the beginning of shutdowns. And your voice and the recording was actually hoarse because you had been out at Black Lives Matter protests. You asked in the recording, “What does it mean to be a white person whose work is rooted in Black vernacular dance?” And I’m wondering if you can talk about how you’ve continued to consider that question and potential answers to it in the ensuing months.

Ephrat Asherie:
Yeah. I mean, it’s always in the work. Even before, yeah, like last year, this global reckoning and really sort of coming together to fight for Black liberation, globally, I mean, which is—wow. But I think for any white artist that’s in the underground scene, that has been blessed with being part of a community where you really feel like that collective consciousness is celebrating each individual’s voice, and everyone is valued so uniquely for who they are—that space has the vision or the potential of a sort of utopic ideal of what it means to be really together. If you don’t see that as a call to action, if you don’t see that as a magnifying glass to the injustices above ground, specifically against the communities that have created this space that you are now a part of, that you are now a guest in, that you are now fortunate to be in this really meaningful human relationship with the people, the music, the lineage, the ancestors, right? The DJs, everything—if you don’t understand that as a call to action and as a responsibility for you to keep fighting for all of those who don’t have the same access to opportunity and to education, and to just security, healthcare, all those things that if you’re white in this country, you have more access to. If you’re not fighting on that level, then something’s wrong, then you missed the mark. You’re not really seeing what the community is.

So I don’t know if that answers the questions, but it’s just always there. And it’s always as scrutinizing, as a white Jewish woman leading this company, it’s like, I’m always checking myself, looking for any blind spots and stuff. And we talk about it a lot within the company. And it’s just, this is part of the work, it’s not separate from the work.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s baked into it. Yeah, of course. The idea of the dance floor as a utopic space, as a space that we should aspire to in every context—I love that.

Ephrat Asherie:
Yes, exactly. And it is a space that shouldn’t make you complacent. It shouldn’t be like, “Oh, I go to the club. Everything’s great. Now I’m good.” No. It’s like, no, you go to the club, you get to experience this. What is it? How do we take those ethos and that values and bring them out, above ground, into the light? I just keep thinking of a call to action. It’s that.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah! Yeah.

So I wanted to talk a little bit too about UnderScored, which is a work of yours that was conceived before the pandemic, but then it was developed first as a film and then as a live performance during a series of bubble residencies over the course of shutdowns. And I love it because it celebrates club dance elders—you have the incredible Archie Burnett and Michelle Saunders, and then the live show, you had Bravo LaFortune performing with you. Working on a piece about club dance and the roots of club dance, with these icons from that scene, while the rest of the world was shut down—what was that like? And how did all of those different threads sort of weave into each other, because it really felt like they did?

Ephrat Asherie:
Yeah. I mean, gosh, UnderScored is… I mean, it’s ironic, but also not ironic because UnderScored, this piece was supposed to premiere in October 2020, and obviously couldn’t. But it was in my mind to do for so long, partly because in the scene, the intergenerational conversation, the relationship with your elders, that’s part of it. You are learning from those who came before you from those who paved the way. It’s really integral. My crew MAWU, that all-female collective rooted in the scene, we, coming up, we were so lucky to have different mentors and elders support us, shout us out, give us love, show us the way, answer questions. It is just like baked into what we do as underground dancers to respect those that came before us and made it possible.

And I started to feel…we lost so many people even before the pandemic in the underground scene. And then of course suffered many losses during COVID. And so the piece, it was already sort of in the making for a long time, and then COVID came and it just became even more urgent. We need to celebrate these incredible humans, artists, mentors, just like shining lights, gems of people while they’re still here together. Let’s collaborate together, whoever’s down. It was this kind of, “Yes. Just, now. We have to just do it now.”

And so every opportunity—I feel really grateful because we’re still in process with the Guggenheim. We had that premiere set and they didn’t say like, “Bye, see you later, there’s no premiere.” They said, “How can we support you?” Which was incredible. Through these two different bubble residencies, one at Kaatsbaan, one at Bridge Street Dance Theater, and then we had these different ways of just staying connected and expressing what was going on in the moment for us, in this time where, wow, we’re already… I think all of us never took for granted how precious the community is and how precious being able to gather is; however, once it’s really taken away from you, you just realize it’s, in some ways, your lifeline. And so now you can’t do that. And so when we came together, I have to say the first time it was intense. I mean, it was amazing, but everyone had their own growing pains, I think, because being separate, being isolated for so long, now we’re back together, there’s questions about, can my body still do it? Is my mind sharp enough? All these things. And it was really amazing.

So for the first residency it was Archie and Michelle were with us and they just…full out with feeling, they led the way. I mean, Archie with his kicks and his splits, and Michelle with her fast footwork, just running around, wanting to do with the—”Let’s run it again. Let’s run it again.” I’m like, “Okay, Michelle.” [laughter] So, yeah, it was kind of a, no pun intended, but an underscoring of the importance of these intergenerational relationships, and conversations that are sort of the core of the texture of the community.

Margaret Fuhrer:
The works and process performance of UnderScored at the Guggenheim in the rotunda in the spring, that was actually the first live dance that I had seen since March of 2020. And it was—in so many ways, it was like the perfect welcome back to performance. Because, like you’re saying, it celebrated all the things that we’d missed most about it, that electric energy that can only happen when dancers are in a room with each other. And most importantly, that sense of community. Which actually leads into my next question, because I think a lot of people who maybe aren’t as familiar with the worlds of hip hop and underground club dance, they will look at the way they’re sometimes depicted in mainstream culture and assume that the emphasis is on, like, competitive virtuosity—like all these incredibly skilled dancers going head to head. But something that it seems like you’ve always emphasized in your work is actually the through line is generosity. It’s not about competition. It’s about building community. So can you talk a little about why that is, and how that manifests both in social dance settings and in your works for the stage? That was like six questions.

Ephrat Asherie:
I really appreciate all six of those questions. [laughter] No, it’s interesting because…well, one thing I just want to sort of, I don’t even know if clarifies the word, just like sort of underscore, again—I should find a different word, but obviously you can see why I picked that title…I have other reasons too, but—coming up in breaking, competition and the battle is real, and it’s important. And hip hop is rooted in showing and proving, it’s like a meritocracy. Can you get down? Then maybe I’ll respect you. And show up with your best self in that moment. But even within that…My dear friend, legendary New York dancer, b-boy and househead, Cyclone, from Step Fiends—he would always say, “Crush to inspire.” So even when you’re battling someone, you’re going at it, you’re going in, you’re bringing your best self forward as a way to say, “Hey, let’s level up. This is me doing my best. Can you meet me here? Can we push each other?” And I like to think about it like that. And one of my mentors, Marjory Smarth, rest in peace—a kind of hip hop dancer, house dancer, clubhead, just the greatest—she would always talk about how a battle is just like testing yourself in a moment. And what can you bring to that moment? And it’s not about judging yourself as a good dancer or a bad dancer, you know what I mean? So there’s other ways to even think about battling within breaking or other hip hop styles where it is really about competition that has a more holistic thing to it, holistic vibe to it.

And that specifically, when we’re looking at club dances, that’s different. Because I’ve been fortunate enough to hear stories from the elders, some of whom say, “I was breaking,” or “I was totally into hip hop. And then I don’t know, it just got too rugged for me. Or the clubs got too dangerous or there was something missing. I didn’t want to compete.” And then they found the club. Or, “I didn’t want to be on the street anymore. I wanted to go to this other kind of space.” And the club is really that space of like sanctuary, safety, inclusivity. You get kicked out if you’re a knucklehead, you have to come in peace. And so when you think about those early underground parties, like the Loft specifically was called a “come as you are” party, like, come as you are. Let go of any baggage, like just come with your heart open and let’s connect with the music in the community. And again, it makes sense, right? If you’re thinking about those early parties at Loft, and the Paradise Garage as like safe havens for African-American and Latinx, specifically LGBTQ+ community is like some of the only spaces that were really, really safe for people to fully express all the spectrum of their humanness.

So yeah, you better come with that open heart to be able to connect and to generously exchange. And so, because everyone in the company, we really connected through the club, through the music, through all, to the culture—it’s like, that is the ethos of the company too. And so relationship to each other, whether we’re at the club together, we’re in the studio rehearsing, whether we’re on stage, whether we’re in the rotunda at the Guggenheim, right? That relationship to each other, to the music, to the space, to those who are no longer here with us, to those who will come after—that’s all there.

And I think that is where the generosity comes in. You share of your energy, so it can reach and be received. And then there’s that cyclical exchange. It’s just what the club is, which is why you feel those things in your spirit when you spend time there. It’s like this other vibration.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Oh, I love that. It’s a different vibration. Thank you for clarifying that as well. I’m showing the limits of my own understanding of the scene, of somebody who loves it from the outside, but has not participated.

Ephrat Asherie:
And I have to say, specifically, I think about it so much, because for me as a woman, I was breaking, and—b-girl for life right here, and I’m always down for a battle. But when I got to the club and I saw all these different ways that people were expressing and manifesting so many different parts of themselves and they didn’t have to be limited to like, “Oh, okay, I’m strong and aggressive. And then that means I can’t be soft and vulnerable.” No, like you could be both of those things. You can be powerful and supple, you know what I mean? You don’t have to choose, you can be all of those things. You can be really explosive and then you can be so subtle. That’s why it feels so clear for me, because I felt it in my body. I felt it in my spirit. I felt it in my heart when I entered the space.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. The multitudes within it and within yourself. Yeah.

So, let’s come back now to the work your company will be performing at Fall For Dance, which is called Odeon. Because it premiered in 2018. And you’ve said before that you think it’s going to be in your rep forever, that it’s one of your forever works. Can you talk about… Well, so first of all, it’s a collaboration with your brother, right? Who is a musician. What inspired that collaboration? How did that come about?

Ephrat Asherie:
So my brother Ehud is a brilliant jazz pianist and composer, and he’s a musical director for Odeon. He introduced me to the music of this composer, whose name is Ernesto Nazareth, he composed in Brazil from the late 1890s to 1934, so that’s how old the music is. The collaboration came about because we collaborated together on a piece called Riff This, Riff That in 2016 for the River to River festival, made possible through the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. And that was part of my master’s thesis research, where I was looking at the vernacular jazz dance roots of breaking, hip hop, house, and vogue, and really looking at the documentary, seminal documentary on African-American social dance, vernacular dance, The Spirit Moves. So, it was like a culmination of that. And so I really wanted to create with a jazz quartet. And so I asked my brother, he agreed. And it actually went well, which was a surprise because we’re only a year and a half apart in age, and, we got our share of arguing and bickering growing up. And although we’re close, sometimes like a family, you never know how it’s going to go.

Margaret Fuhrer:
It wouldn’t be normal if you were happy all the time. [laughter]

Ephrat Asherie:
And that went well. And then my brother actually suggested another collaboration. I said, “Okay, like really?” I was shocked. And he said, “Yeah, what about Nazareth?” And I said, “Okay.” Because I always remembered enjoying the moments when Ehud would play Nazareth’s music. Because I would go to his gigs, and so he’d be playing kind of standard traditional jazz, like thirties, forties vibes, and then I would hear something that to me sounded like samba. And so I was into that, because I connected to samba and just Brazilian rhythms in general through house. Because when I was going to Shelter all the time, Timmy Regisford, an iconic house DJ, would play a lot of really soulful house tracks, and sometimes there would be lyrics in Portuguese—Brazilian rhythms that were sampled. …So, my connection to that was actually through house, which is just crazy.

And so then Ehud suggested Nazareth’s music. And I said, “Okay, let me listen.” And then I started listening to the canon of his music. And I was like, “Oh yeah. Oh, we got to dance with this. Come on. Let’s do it.” [laughter]

Margaret Fuhrer:
So tell me about the resulting work, about what it looks and feels like. We were talking about vibrations earlier—what kind of frequency does it vibrate on?

Ephrat Asherie:
Well, I would love for audience members to tell me that! So, I think what I was really struck by musically, that Nazareth was doing was that, he was really reflecting what was going on culturally in Brazil. So this sort of intersection of—the music reflects the intersection of Afro-Brazilian rhythms, traditional Brazilian rhythms and European melodies and harmonies. And also like just melodic and harmonic and rhythmic stuff across all those cultures is going on in the way he wrote this music. Which was actually just written for piano, and then in Brazil was adapted to a lot of different instruments like cavaquinho and even flute sometimes. And when I started hearing it, I was really intrigued by a lot of the rhythmic structure in how the piano, how the music was written for piano. And so my brother and I talked a lot about that, and he introduced me to some Brazilian percussionists, namely Sérgio Krakowski, who’s a brilliant pandeiro player—pandeiro is like the Brazilian tambourine—and listening to the arrangements with him, playing along with the piano. It was like we created this new sort of arrangement where you can feel those rhythmic grooves a little bit, which is what really drew me to the music. Because I found connections with rhythms that I grew up listening to. They were dance hall rhythms from Jamaica. You know what I mean? Or other… Sometimes the bass comes in and you’re like, yeah, I feel this.

So it is interesting for me because for some people, they’ll hear it and they’ll hear a lot of the classical line, like the melodic stuff. And other people will hear the rhythms. And so the way I even shaped the piece was like, “Oh, let’s play with that.” Like, how do we listen? How do we hear, you know what I mean? That sort of conversation between the music and the dance is paramount. That is everything to the work. So yeah.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. Teasing out all of the little bits and pieces that you hear throughout it. So can you talk a little about… I mean, first of all, why you think this is one of your forever works? What makes it an Ephrat classic?

Ephrat Asherie:
Did I say that it was a forever work?

Margaret Fuhrer:
You are on the record in Dance Magazine!

Ephrat Asherie:
Oh my gosh! Wow. That’s interesting, because I had this really lovely conversation with Brenda Bufalino—legendary tap dancer, who I met working with Michelle Dorrance—who came to see Odeon when we did it at the Joyce, 2019. And she had sat in on some rehearsals because her dance background is not just tap dancing. She did all this postmodern work, and then she was a calypso dancer. You know what I mean? And I invited her to Fall For Dance. She said, “What are you performing?” I said, “Oh, we’re doing a remixed version of Odeon.” And she said, “Oh, I’m so glad.” And I said, “Really?” Because in my mind I was like, “Oh, are we performing this too much? Do I need to show something else?” And she said, “No, it’s really important that a work has time to…” She said, “To make its mark or to be really seen or to marinate.” She used all these amazing words because she’s so articulated, just brilliant.

And it really gave me pause. And I thought to myself, “Yeah, this does feel like a work that needs to just keep growing and it gets… We kind of get into it more and more as we go.” So, now it’s funny that you’re reminding me that I actually said that. Well, I guess it does feel… It seems that there’s always more to investigate, and I feel that that’s a good sign. We’re working with musicians that really inspire us and the musicians are inspired by us. So there’s this thing that’s always shifting, right? Because once you’re performing with live music, it’s always going to be different. All of us are growing and changing as dancers, especially after this last year and a half. We can really feel those shifts.

So there’s always something new to visit. Which I know is the hope for every piece. But in some ways this one, I don’t know… maybe I have to also say, it’s the first work that we’ve toured this much. And so there’s also that. It’s like, “Oh, it’s just in us. Let’s just keep going and getting deeper and deeper.” And I also have dreams of the relationship between dancer and musician and blurring those lines. I have dreams of getting deeper into that. What is that times a million? So maybe it’s not even over. Maybe there’s another version.

Margaret Fuhrer:
It’s still going. It’s still going. Can you talk a little bit—because I know for Fall For Dance, it’s Odeon Redux, it’s something a little bit different—can you talk about what has been changed for this Fall For Dance performance?

Ephrat Asherie:
Well, we only have 20 minutes. So, we wanted to just give you a remix that feels like…where you can catch the vibe. That you can start to understand those things that are really integral to the work, which is a relationship with the dancer and musician, which is our connection to each other, which is this kind of very unique music that really is about cultural collisions in Brazil and a specific time and how that connects to the dances that we’re doing, which of course all share the root in West African movement and rhythms. So, can we give you a sense of that in 20 minutes? We are going to try our hardest. I really hope you come.

Margaret Fuhrer:
You know, even just the number of people you’ve referenced in this interview alone—you’ve collaborated with so many different artists, you’ve been influenced and mentored by so many different artists across so many different genres of dance and music. What about—I feel like you’ve already started to answer this question, but you can keep answering it—what about collaboration drives you in your creative process? Would you say… I mean, it sounds like you’re a fundamentally collaborative artist.

Ephrat Asherie:
I just believe dancing is fundamentally collaborative, in essence. Even when you’re dancing by yourself, you’re collaborating with the floor, like the space. And not to be like that, but it’s true! We’re not alone. And I think that’s beautiful. And I am grateful to not be alone, and to find ways to be connected. And I don’t know if that’s… I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I moved around a lot as a kid, or I was always looking for ways to make things feel like they’re more connected than disparate. Maybe that’s just my personality. I don’t know. I’m a Gemini. I don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t… It feels very human and really beautiful to find ways to, of course, not erase our differences because that’s amazing too, and why we’re human as well. Both of those things, holding the full spectrum of humanness, I don’t know. I keep saying that. That’s in my mind, how do we create space for that to come out, the full spectrum of all our humanness? And that comes out through collaboration. Because we trust each other and then we can create together. And then that’s when the beauty and the magic can emerge.

I just really feel that. And I feel like that’s what’s going on in the club every night. That’s the space that gave me the confidence to be an artist. That’s the space where I saw real expressive freedom through movement, and understanding the connection between music and movement. And so those are the ethos and the values that I carry with me when I’m creating in any space. And so, yeah, collaboration is essential. It’s everything. It’s the essence. Yeah.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. And talking about carrying, then, that idealistic vision that we develop on the dance floor, in the studio, out into the real world—yeah, collaboration is the key to all of that progress that we’re hoping to make. It’s all about working with each other.

Ephrat Asherie:
Yeah. I think it’s just… We were just really reminded of it because we were so isolated for a long time. It’s beautiful to need help and support each other and give support. And it can be vulnerable, but that’s beautiful. And I think that’s… For a lot of us as artists, we want to be in that space. We don’t want to hide, we want to have that trust to be able to do that.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Finally, what else are you working on right now? What’s cooking?

Ephrat Asherie:
What is cooking? We are trying to finish UnderScored. So we will. We’re going to do it. A really exciting part of UnderScored is that, again, it’s like the pandemic sort of pushed in into these multiple iterations, but already the project, because it’s community-based, and it really is about, in many ways, archiving this really important history here in New York, has many different facets. And we’re working with Jerome Robins Dance Division at the New York Public Library on collecting oral histories of elders in the underground scene. And also, we’re going to work in documenting some movements, some dance in the studio or in the cafe. We’re figuring out sort of the format for that. So, that’s really exciting. And it’s going to live in the archives at the public library.

Margaret Fuhrer:
That is such a big blind spot in their archives too. That’s so important to get in.

Ephrat Asherie:
Yeah. And just big shout out to Linda Murray.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Oh my gosh, yeah.

Ephrat Asherie:
Because she’s really been such a huge supporter and just proponent of doing this work, and understanding how important it is. So exciting.

And then we’re really open to tour UnderScored. We received NPN support to tour the work before the pandemic. So we were looking forward to finishing the work and then getting it out into the world. And of course—I’m just going to put it out there, because maybe it’s going to make me more accountable—but I do really dream of this being like the catalyst to creating a documentary that sort of looks at where the underground scene is now. Because a lot of the elders that are in UnderScored were also in a seminal documentary about the underground scene, called Check Your Body At The Door, created by Sally Sommer. And how unbelievable that they’re still dancing now in their sixties—and then Michelle Saunders is 78, wow. So, also setting my mind to that and then being able to include even more elders in that.

Anyways, so I’m thinking in that sort of capacity, and hoping to involve as many community members as possible in this project, that kind of has these webs that go out—that is my dream.

Margaret Fuhrer:
The documentary, is this something that you would direct?

Ephrat Asherie:
Yes. I’m just really interested in directing. The pandemic kind of pushed me in that direction. Many, many choreographers, just the idea of thinking, just how sort of best to capture so many of these incredible human beings that are the reason we have an underground scene at all. Figuring out that. Even those simple questions of like, “Where do we do the interview? What music do we play?” Having those conversations with them, like the idea of thinking about how it’s… What’s the best way to encapsulate this community that is so sacred to so many of us? And again, to work collaboratively on that. And then think about models, where maybe it’s not a straight documentary, maybe it’s a series. I don’t know. Am I saying too much? I don’t know. But that’s my dream, and I’m putting it out there, and now people can hear it, and now I can do it!

Margaret Fuhrer:
We got to manifest it! Now it’s going to happen.

Ephrat, thank you so much for joining. I’m really looking forward to seeing your company on stage at Fall For Dance and well beyond that, too.

Ephrat Asherie:
Thank you so much, Margaret. This was a real treat and we’re so excited about Fall For Dance. This is going to be our City Center premiere.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Ooh! I apologize for neglecting to mention that.

Ephrat Asherie:
No, no. We’re really excited. And when we toured the work, my brother wasn’t always able to play with us, but he’s going to be playing with us at City Center. So, that’s going to be extra special.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Oh, that’s awesome.

Ephrat Asherie:
Yeah. Hope a lot of New York heads come and check us out. We can’t wait.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yes, New York City-area listeners, get your tickets now. There’s still time. Go!

Ephrat Asherie:
[laughter] Thank you again.

[pause]

Another huge thank-you to Ephrat. And as we were saying, seriously, if you are in or around NYC, be sure to get your tickets to Fall For Dance tonight so you can see her and her company in person. You will not be disappointed—and it’s a great program otherwise, too. We’ve included that ticket link in the show notes. And make sure you’re keeping up with Ephrat on Instagram @ephratasheriedance, too. 

Thanks for listening, everyone! Wishing you all a happy and restful weekend.