Conscious Dancer Magazine was founded in 2007. For over seven years, we printed a quarterly glossy color publication that reached over 100,000 people in hundreds of international locations. As technology evolved and resources became a concern, in 2012, the Dance First Association was established as an umbrella organization to better support individual teachers and trainers as they proliferated conscious dance around the globe. As our inner circle, the Dance First Association membership has come to represent some of the most enduring and committed modality founders and practitioners. Conscious Dancer continues to operate as the original and oldest common voice for all conscious dancers.
I got started with public speaking in a roundabout way, due to my role as publisher of Conscious Dancer magazine. I was invited to give a keynote at a publishing conference in Manhattan. In spite of the butterflies in my stomach, I was totally surprised and delighted by how much fun it was, I’d never received an ovation for speaking before and when a couple of folks from Condé Nast buttonholed me afterwards to say how much they enjoyed it, I was hooked. I’ve always been the one who’s happy to grab the mic and emcee at events, being a loud guy with a deep booming voice has its advantages. I’ve always had a knack for synthesizing trends and current events into novel and unique ideas, so much so that I began calling myself a “cultural engineer” back in the 90’s.
My dance career spans nearly half a century. I started conscious dancing with Body Choir in Austin, Texas in the late 90s. As a Nia teacher for almost twenty years now, I think of myself on the front line, offering an onramp to conscious dance in mainstream settings. I’m a Dance/Movement Therapist in-training with a regular ecstatic dance practice. I’ve developed a movement program for children. I’ve performed professionally and danced everything from Authentic Movement to Gaga/people, from Austin to Zurich. Perhaps more importantly to those of you who look to us for marketing wisdom, my life adventures have included having to rebuild my dance community a couple of times. I have a Master’s degree and two decades of professional experience in design and marketing. I’ve art directed a magazine, executive-produced a dot-com and CEO’d a corporation. So I get it: dance, business and marketing!
Orit Krug is a Board-Certified Dance/Movement Therapist and Licensed Creative Arts Therapist. She has extensive clinical experience with a range of populations including children with severe emotional disturbances, autism spectrum disorders, trauma survivors, hospitalized patients in crisis, and adults and adolescents with a variety of DSM-V diagnoses. Orit was the Director of Expressive Therapies at Rockford Center for three years, where she led a department of up to ten Creative Arts Therapists in an inpatient and outpatient psychiatric hospital. Orit provides individual dance therapy, clinical supervision, and business coaching. She is passionate about helping people build a solid movement vocabulary so that they can express themselves with empowerment and freedom. Orit launched the first ever Dance Therapy podcast in April 2017, called Mind Your Body. As a result of her creative and novel approach to advocate for the field, Orit won the 2018 “Innovation Award” granted by the American Dance Therapy Association
While Haider is not a dancer, never has been a dancer, he is quick-on-his-feet to address our wish-list and otherwise all-things-technical. He has been developing and bug-fixing for Conscious Dancer for three years now. Haider enjoys being outdoors, learning history and playing cricket and video games in his free time.