1830EST: Artists Talk
Intimate Conversations with Artists about Art
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1830EST: Artists Talk offers an online forum to explore art-making practices through the lens of working artists and their creativity. Each episode assembles multiple viewpoints and includes interviews, field recordings, soundscapes and stories representing the diverse creative practitioners within the Core Dance global landscape.
1830EST: Artists Talk was initiated in 2021 to cultivate community in response to the pandemic, when live experiences were not possible. The ongoing pandemic disrupted the rhythms of everyday life, prompting us to reconfigure how we connect, communicate, and work together.
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Our 1830EST: Artists Talk Livestream will always be found here.
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View the recording of our latest 1830EST: Artists Talk with Maya Ciarrocchi
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Current 2025-2026 Season
Lucie Maisha N’Duhirahe & Marina Mezzogiorno-Brown
Event Date: September 11th, 2025
Lucie Maisha N’Duhirahe is a circus artist and workshop leader specializing in partner aerial and acrobatics. A graduate of the National Centre for Circus Arts in London, she co-founded Collectif and then…, creating award-winning work performed internationally. Her projects include The Circus Boat, bringing free circus to London’s waterways, and MUD – a chromatic research, exploring heritage and the Afro-diasporic body.
Marina Mezzogiorno-Brown is a circus artist and visual storyteller trained in aerial rope at La Flic Scuola di Circo in Turin. She has created and toured site-specific works across Europe, notably Amygdala with the collective Catalyst, and performed extensively with MagdaClan Circo. Her visual art includes murals, set design, and festival installations, merging performance and design to connect with place and community.
Carlton Turner
Event Date: October 2nd, 2025
Carlton Turner is an artist, agriculturalist, builder, researcher, and co-founder/co-director of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture). With over 20 years in arts and culture organizational leadership, he serves on the boards of First People’s Fund, Grantmakers in the Arts, and the National Black Food and Justice Alliance. A founding partner of the Intercultural Leadership Institute and former Executive Director of Alternate ROOTS, Carlton lives and works in Utica, MS, where his family has been rooted for eight generations.
He is an Interdisciplinary Research Fellow with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a 2023 Johnson Fellowship finalist, and was named to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts YBCA100 in 2021. His honors include the Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellowship, the Sidney Yates Award for Advocacy in the Performing Arts (2018), the M. Edgar Rosenblum Award (2011), and the Otto René Castillo Award for Political Theatre (2015). With his brother Maurice, he co-founded M.U.G.A.B.E.E., a Mississippi-based performing arts group blending jazz, hip-hop, spoken word, and soul with non-traditional storytelling.
Elise Witt
Event Date: November 5th, 2025
Elise Witt is a singer, composer, and educator whose concerts of Global, Local & Homemade Songs™ and Impromptu Glorious Chorus™ workshops have built singing communities worldwide. Born in Switzerland, raised in North Carolina, and based in Atlanta since 1977, she speaks five languages fluently and sings in more than a dozen. She has released 12 recordings on EMWorld Records, created the Elise Witt Choral Series, and published All Singing, a songbook of 58 original compositions. For 15 years, she directed music programs at the Global Village Project, a school for refugee girls, and co-authored its songbook Imagine a Circle. A longtime member of Alternate ROOTS, Elise has collaborated with artists across disciplines and received numerous honors, including representing Georgia at the Kennedy Center’s 25th Anniversary.
Chris James
Event Date: December 4th, 2025
Chris James, mental health first aid instructor for the National Council of Mental Wellbeing, certified anger management specialist. Author of the book, Get Up, Get Out & Get Some Healing. He is the Director of Black Boys Better, a statewide program providing mental health services for black boys.
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Chris James is the Chairman of Health & Wellness committee for the Atlanta Black Chambers. As a creative he is an award winning playwright and spoken word artist. He and his slam team once ranked 2nd place the world’s second largest poetry slam. And the proud husband of Kristi James.
Sean Owen Miller & Jack Massing
Event Date: January 15th, 2026
Sean Miller is an American transdisciplinary artist best known for collaborative works which merge the roles of artist, curator, and collector. His projects employ social engagement, experimental exhibition formats, and speculative design. His practice seeks to raise awareness, empathy, and wellness in the individual and the natural world. The concept of the archive or cabinet of wonder is an organizing principle for many of his projects. Miller teaches sculpture, art/sci courses, and the Workshop for Art Research and Practice at University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. He remains proud his bio statement continues to surpass Jack Massing’s bio statement by a single word.
John Killacky
Event Date: February 19th, 2026
John R. Killacky served two terms in the Vermont House of Representatives. Previously he was executive director of Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, program officer for arts and culture at San Francisco Foundation, executive director of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and curator of performing arts for Walker Art Center. Other past positions include program officer at Pew Charitable Trusts, general manager of PepsiCo SUMMERFARE, and managing director of the Trisha Brown and Laura Dean dance companies. He received the First Bank Award Sally Ordway Irvine Award in Artistic Vision, William Dawson Award for Programming Excellence from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, Dance USA's Ernie Award as an unsung hero, Fan Taylor Distinguished Service Award for Exemplary Service to the Field of Professional Presenting, and Vermont Arts Council's Kannenstine Award for Arts Advocacy. Killacky has served as a panelist, lecturer, and consultant for a broad range of arts and funding organizations. He has...
Rosie Trump
Event Date: March 19th, 2026
Rosie Trump is the founder and chief curator of the Third Coast Dance Film Festival. She is the award winning choreographer/director/editor of eleven short dance films. She is interested in the reflexive nature of the camera lens and the cinematic possibilities of digital media. Trump’s dance films have recently screened at ADFs Movies by Movers, San Francisco Dance Film Festival, San Souci Dance Film Festival, Extremely Short Shorts at the Aurora Picture Show, Light Moves Dance Film Festival, Frame X Frame, and Dance Film Association’s Long Legs Short Films. Currently residing in Reno, NV, Trump is an Associate Professor of Dance at the University of Nevada, Reno. Learn more at www.rosietrump.org.
Faith Fidgeon & Isa Newport
Event Date: April 16th, 2026
Faith Fidgeon is a dance artist currently residing in Atlanta, Georgia. Faith graduated from University of North Carolina School of the Arts in 2022 with a BFA in Contemporary Dance and a minor in Arts Entrepreneurship. Faith has recently danced in staibdance's premiere of ARARAT, Shen Wei's premiere of Summary at the American Dance Festival, and a collaborative choreographic work with Fly On A Wall. In addition to stage performance, they have danced in circus performances, museum exhibitions, short films, and with Alliance Theater’s Theater for the Very Young. Faith’s current movement practices include countertechnique, release technique, contact improvisation, yoga, and bouldering. Conceptually and aesthetically, they are interested in blurring the lines of theater and dance, repetition, duration, satire, and how performance shows up in our everyday lives.
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Isa Newport is a multifaceted artist from Tallahassee, FL. Their professional training at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) has shaped them into a...
Alex Spitzer
Event Date: May 14th, 2026
Alex Spitzer is a professional choreographer and dancer in Atlanta, Georgia. Currently he dances with Beacon Dance since 2014 and on their Board of Directors. He is also on the Board of Directors for the National Dance Society. He was Artistic Director of the Spitzer Dance Company from 1992-2022. He has been recognized nationally and internationally. Presenting full evening concerts, lecture demonstrations, and workshops for schools and the public, Alex, through SDC, has toured to Los Angeles, Boston, Orlando, Cleveland, and Knoxville. In Los Angeles and Boston he performed in two International Dance Festivals. In Orlando he choreographed and danced a solo in the Opening Ceremony of the Federation Internationale De Powerchair Football Association (FIPFA) World Cup 2017. Alex has danced with Infinity Dance Theater in New York City and Duende Dance Theater in Atlanta.
Alex, in 1999 received his B.A. degree in Dance from Texas Woman's ...
Previous Seasons
2023-2024 Season
The 2023-2024 season included talks with Nadya Zeitlin, Katarzyna Pastuszak, Natalia Chylinska, Kevin O'Conner, Marco Casagrande, Nicolò Giorgini, Anne Archer Dennington, Deanna Sirlin, Nuno Veiga, Wanda Easton, Hannah Hanshaw, Aida Kuettle, Nakeya Palmer, Niv Sheinfeld, Oren Laor, Jonathan Keats, and Felipe Perez Santiago.
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2021-2022 Season
The 2021-2022 Season included talks with Christian Meyer, Kristin O'Neal and Julio Medina, Walter Apps, Iman Siferllah-Griffin and Laith Stevenson, Felipe Barral, Adam Larsen, Jennifer Scully-Thurston, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Snowflake Calvert, Julie B. Johnson & DeMarcus Suggs, the Teens Activate Faculty, and Douglas Rosenberg.
