December 19, 2024 - Ayodele Casel, Will Gusakov, and Nina MacLaughlin

Ayodele Casel is a trailblazing tap dancer and choreographer.  Her tap dancing is at once percussive and poetry in motion. She joins The Culture Show to talk about the world-premiere production,  “Diary of a Tap Dancer.”  It  traces her  life  – from her first steps in the Bronx and Puerto Rico– and  along the way it celebrates the extraordinary and often-overlooked women dancers who broke the tap ceiling.  “Diary of a Tap Dancer”  is onstage at the American Repertory Theater through January 4th. To learn more, go here.

From  there we  look at the historic restoration of Notre-Dame Cathedral, which was made possible by the  collective achievement of thousands of craftspeople, builders, firefighters, engineers, and  architects. Among them was Will Gusakov.  He’s a Vermont woodworker who was part of a New England team helping to rebuild Notre-Dame, working on the timber frame medieval roof system that was first built in 1200. Will Gusakov owns  a timber framing company in Lincoln, Vermont, Goosewing Timberworks.  He joins us to talk about being part of this remarkable undertaking.

Finally, the best-selling author and literary columnist Nina MacLaughlin has written a meditation on the cold, the dark, the solitude that descends on us this time of year in her award winning essay book, “Winter Solstice.” She joins The Culture Show to talk about it.