HELLO!

Welcome to my creative community.

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MAGDA KACZMARSKA is a dancer, teaching artist and creative aging advocate based in New York City.

Magda was born in Poland but grew up in the southwestern United States where she received her MFA in Dance Performance & Choreography and her BS in Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics from the University of Arizona. Magda has dedicated her career to utilizing the vehicle of dance and movement to amplify and support creative community and has over 20 years of experience as a community-based dance artist. Her multidisciplinary work leverages a dual background in neuropharmacology research and dance to build bridges and empower individuals and communities to be active agents in their creativity and brain health. Through all her work, she seeks to foster safe, creative and inclusive spaces for discovery, agency and meaning. She believes all of us possess the ability to harness our creative expression to support building meaningful and healthy communities around us.

Before relocating to New York, Magda served as co-founder, choreographer and performer with Evolve Dance~West, a non-profit dance company which sought to expand accessibility to dance in southern Arizona. Through Evolve Dance~West, she offered community based creative movement programs for diverse communities, including a subsidiary Dance for PD® program in Arizona, programs with the Alzheimer’s Association and Owl and Panther, an organization supporting intergenerational refugees and survivors of trauma. In New York City, she worked as a lead teacher and performer with Dances for a Variable Population (DVP) supporting hundreds of older adults in exploration of strong and creative movement.

Magda leads and develops programs which foster creative community for intergenerational groups of all abilities. In 2019, she founded DanceStream Projects, to expand her vision to build healthy, expressive and inclusive community through the vehicle of dance, as the art of body movement. DanceStream Projects has a mission to spark brain health and build creative community through dance and movement. Inspired by the concept of “upstreaming” health DanceStream Projects provides direct ally-ship and empowerment to communities bridging the arts and health. DanceStream Projects is a creative collective (operating as a fiscally-sponsored project of New York Live Arts) based out of Queens, NY.

DanceStream Projects community-based dance programs, Stories in the Moment and Every Body Moves are reaching and offering support to the most marginalized communities, working with communities of people living with dementia as well as low-income older adults living alone to offer joyous, expressive and community building programming while sparking and extending brain health. Stories in the Moment, which combines dance, creative movement and storytelling, to amplify the creative voices of people living with dementia across the globe, was awarded a Pilot Award for Brain Health Leaders from the Alzheimer’s Association, Global Brain Health Institute and Alzheimer’s Society UK, and has reached people living with dementia during the COVID-19 pandemic in the US and beyond. Stories in the Moment is offered year-round in partnership with the Dementia Action Alliance. Every Body Moves, supports brain health for older adults through physical activity, social connection and creative expression and has been offered since 2020 in partnership with the UCSF Memory and Aging Center in San Francisco.

DanceStream Projects educational programs dismantle misconceptions and place power founded in evidence base in the hands of individuals and communities to be active agents in their own brain health. In the last two years, the organization’s Brain Health Salons have reached communities in the US (California, New York, Virginia) and beyond (Lithuania, Poland, Ireland, Nigeria) while the BrainFM program developed in collaboration with Dr. Anusha Mohan, from Trinity College Dublin, a co-creative educational tool that unites dance and storytelling to make learning about the brain, inclusive, fun and creative, has engaged 100s of intergenerational audiences around the globe.

Devoted to building evidence base, while expanding public and professional education in best practices in creative aging practice globally, Magda balances her work in intergenerational community-based teaching with engagement in advocacy in several sectors. She speaks regularly at local, national and international public and academic events to expand understanding and adoption of creative aging practices, intergenerational brain health promotion, dementia-inclusive communities specifically through the lens of dance and health. She mentors future leaders in the creative and health sector through a regular partnership at the Fordham Ailey School of Dance in New York City and the Arts in Medicine Fellowship in Lagos, Nigeria. 

She serves as a representative to the UN with Generations United and is on the executive committee of the UN NGO Committee on Ageing. She has served on the Dance and Disability Taskforce at the National Dance Education Organization since 2018, dedicated to support access, equity and inclusion in the dance education community, for which she received the Executive Director Award in 2021. As an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute, Magda builds collaborations around the globe to design and expand access to creative aging programs that support brain health, belonging and artistic expression across the lifespan.