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Name: Tasha Blank
Occupation: DJ, party curator and organiser at BODY LVNGUAGE
Nationality: American
Recommendations: I’ve been listening to "Leave my Head Alone Brain" by Henrik Schwarz and Bugge Wesseltoft a lot lately. And I would point them to the work of Tigre Bailando, my absolute favorite artist who passed earlier this fall. Tigre was a huge inspiration for me and many others across many mediums, and will continue to be, perhaps more than ever.

[Read our Bugge Wesseltoft interview]
[Read our Bugge Wesseltoft interview about improvisation]



If you enjoyed this interview with Tasha Blank and would like to stay up to date with her activities, visit her official homepage. She is also on Instagram, Facebook, and Soundcloud.


TASHA BLANK · WELCOME TO BODY L🔻NGUAGE // Live 6.9.22


Can you talk a bit about your interest in or fascination for DJing? Which DJs, clubs or experiences captured your imagination in the beginning?

The first time I got my soul turned inside out on a dance floor was the first time I did acid. (Hi mom!)

I was at a party at Alex Grey’s gallery in New York City back in 2007. I was a painter then, so I was hanging out with the art, watching the paintings do all kinds of wild beautiful things. My friend ran in, covered in sweat, grabbed my hand and said “you have to come dance with me”

I hadn’t danced since I quit my pre-professional dance career at age 17, and I thought of dance as this abusive art form that had broken my heart.

But I followed my friend into a big room filled with electronic music and people wilding out and started to move. And this animal unleashed itself inside my body. The moves comin outta me were way beyond anything I'd ever done. Everything changed after that.

What made it appealing to you to DJ yourself? What was it that you wanted to express and what, did you feel, did you have to add artistically?

Dancing gave me my life back. After years of anxiety and depression, it returned me to a sense of joy, pleasure, power and play I hadn't felt since I was a little kid. It’s a gift I will forever pay forward.  

I have a strong sensibility for what creates the conditions for embodied liberation – for folks to feel safe enough to push the boundaries of their expression and release more than they ever have. I didn't see it happening in many places, so I decided to have a go at it myself.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to DJing? Do you see yourself as part of a certain tradition or lineage?

I have so many teachers to thank. Most of them aren’t DJs. It’s all storytelling, trauma healing, indigenous lineages, sex, pleasure and nervous system literacy, neuroscience, somatic studies. And then of course there’s the women who pushed the boundaries of what dance could be a generation or two before me – especially Gabrielle Roth, Anna Halprin and Emilie Conrad.

DJing is the medium, the tool I use to weave it all together to help humans walk into my rooms one way, touch parts of themselves they’d long forgotten, and walk out changed.

Clubs are still the natural home for DJing. What makes the club experience unique? Which clubs you've played or danced at are perfect for realising your vision – and why?

There’s nothing like a state of the art sound system, lighting and acoustics. I have to take this opportunity to love up on Cielo, which was my first residency in New York City. Probably the best sound setup in the US. That’s where I really learned to DJ.

I was just barely mixing when I started throwing parties there – it was like getting my drivers license and someone handing me a Ferrari. That grew me up very quickly.

There is a long tradition of cross-pollination between DJing and producing. Can you talk a bit about how this manifests itself in your own work?

Most of my energy goes into DJing and mentoring up-and-coming DJs in Powerhouse DJ School. We focus on the power of the DJ to impact a dance floor with their instincts, artistry, leadership, community building and benevolent crowd control.

I’ve made a couple albums, too. I do the songwriting, composition and vocals, and once I’ve got a proper demo I’ll collaborate with wizard-level producers and engineers. They can do things in 10 minutes that would take me 10 hours. The production process is so intense, I find it much more pleasurable to do it in the context of collaborations with friends I love.

What role does digging for music still play for your work as a DJ? Tell me a bit about what kind of music you will look for and the balance between picking material which a) excites you, b) which will please the audience and c) fulfill certain functions within your DJ set.   

I try to play music that lives at the intersection of those three categories, and I’m always digging. I focus first and foremost on what resonates with my body. If it doesn’t excite me, I’m not gonna play it. And I always have my senses tuned to what’s gonna feel good in the bodies of the people I’m playing for.

The third category is less about which tracks I choose for my library, and more about what I’m choosing to play live. When I’m bringing people on a journey, each track needs to serve a purpose in the moment.

I've always wondered: How is it possible for DJs to memorise so many tracks? How do you store tracks in your mind – traditionally as grooves + melodies + harmonies or as colours, energy levels, shapes?

Music organization, music organization and more music organization! I have my library cataloged and cross referenced according to key word, genre, key, tempo, vibe, feeling. I have a whole number system based on the Score, which is the map I teach in PhDJ that creates a mind boggling set every time.

I’m terrible at remembering actual track names, but I can usually remember which playlists and tags a track has and locate it that way. And remembering those things? It just comes down to knowing my music really well. It’s a very intimate relationship.

Using your very latest DJ set as an example, what does your approach look like, from selecting the material and preparing for and opening a set? What were some of the transitions that really worked looking back?

I just put this one out with Data Transmission:

Data Transmission · Spotlight Mix: Tasha Blank


It was a special creative process because it wasn’t about creating a live experience (which I’m really used to doing, zillions of live mixes here). With this one, It was a pure expression of where I was at – which was on a plane to Vegas, where I was relocating after three years of nomadic living.

So I got to play with songs that have meant a lot to me during this time, and create a journey that expressed what’s here now. Whereas I don’t always prepare for my live sets because I like to be able to play off and with the crowd in the moment, this one was pure composition.

As for particular transitions? Take a listen. I stand by the whole thing :)

How does the decision making process work during a gig with regards to wanting to play certain records, the next transition and where you want the set to go? How far do you tend to plan ahead during a set?

Sometimes I don't know what I’m gonna play when I’ve got one minute left on a track. That’s when it gets really fun. It’s a combination of preparing – knowing my music really well, playing with certain transitions and ideas – and surrender.

The first few years I DJ’d I planned every set. But now there’s room for me to get out of my head and let my instincts drive. That’s when the magic really happens.

As a DJ, you can compose a set of many short tracks or play them out in full, get involved with mixing or keep the tunes as the producer intended them, create fluent seagues or tension. Tell me about your personal preferences in this regard, please.

Depends on where I want to take the crowd. I like to play tracks in full and do long blends when we’re in a really juicy pocket and everyone just keeps dropping deeper and deeper into the dance, or building really steadily to a peak. But if the energy needs to be moved or we need to shake it up, I might bring us through a bunch of tracks more quickly.

This is where attunement to my body and the energy of the room is everything. To know what’s needed when, whether to take the energy up and move things around, or drop it down, drive it right, left or sideways.

Pieces can sound entirely different as part of a DJ set compared to playing them on their own. How do you explain this? Which tracks from your collection don't seem like much outside of a DJ set but are incredible effective and versatile on a gig?

I want every song to hit. Everything I play, I love in and of itself. No fillers. Then mixing it all together and crafting a journey becomes a whole new layer of love.

But I will say, I dropped Booka Shades's "Tresspass 2019 - Mark Knight Remix" at BODY LVNGUAGE recently, and it’s definitely not a track it’d listen to in my living room … but that moment live in the club with everyone losing their heads? It exploded the room.



In terms of the overall architecture of a DJ set, how do you work with energy levels, peaks and troughs and the experience of time?

Such a great question, this is what I spend seven months schooling my students on in PhDJ. It’s very analogous to crafting a film – except instead of words and pictures that appeal to your mind, it’s a sonic story that speaks to your body.

It has to work with the nervous system too, because that’s what’s determining how much our body will open and express and feel at any given moment. We have to start where folks are at, and gradually build them up, using a rotation of more expansive, grounded, uplifting, meditative, sexy, sultry and joyful vibes to take the body on a ride into ecstasy.

Online DJ mixes, created in the studio as a solitary event, have become ubiquitous. From your experience with the format, what changes when it comes to the way you DJ – and to the experience as a whole - when you subtract the audience?

It's almost a different art form. Because live DJ’ing is so interactive, it’s not just about the music. The music is a really important ingredient in this much larger thing we’re all creating together.

When it’s just me and my headphones, it becomes a more personal and internal form of expression, almost a meditation.

Advances in AI-supported DJing look set to transform the trade. For the future, where do you see the role of humans in DJing versus that of technology?

I think dancing in community is one of the most human things we can do. It takes a certain kind of presence to hold space for people to go places they’ve never gone before. Computers can’t do that.

Let's imagine you lost all your music for one night and all there is left at the venue is a crate of records containing a random selection of music. How would you approach this set?

With terror, lol. Then I’d make it a game and do my best, and definitely get the crowd in on the joke.

Like ok y’all, this is gonna be weird, and we’re all in it together so let’s make it a good time!