Dance is My Drug of Choice: Toni Basil in Conversation with Douglas Fogle

• May 20, 2026 | 7:30 p.m.

On the occasion of the exhibition BRUCE CONNER / RECORDING ANGEL, Marciano Art Foundation will host a discussion about dance, music and artistic collaboration with visionary choreographer and multiple Emmy and Grammy-award nominee Toni Basil. Best known for her iconic 1981 hit single and groundbreaking music video “Hey Mickey,” Basil has woven a pioneering career as a recording artist, choreographer, dancer, director, producer, street dance historian and filmmaker.

In 1964, Basil collaborated with Bruce Conner on the artist’s film BREAKAWAY (1966), a radical cinematic deconstruction of the choreographer’s dancing body, accompanied by a soundtrack of her song by the same name that she recorded and released as a single that year. Basil will discuss her collaboration with Conner and other artists across her multi-decade career as a revolutionary dance innovator.

Basil will be in conversation in the Theater Gallery with Douglas Fogle, independent curator and writer and curator of BRUCE CONNER / RECORDING ANGEL.

Special event tickets will be available to reserve starting Wednesday, April 29, so mark your calendars and stay tuned for a supplementary newsletter on the day ticketing opens.

Toni Basil is a visionary recording artist, choreographer, dancer, director, producer, street dance historian and filmmaker. Nominated for Emmys, Grammys, and multiple achievements in choreography and recognized for her enormous contributions to street dance including Hip Hop International’s highest award, “Living Legend of Hip Hop” with which she was honored in 2008, she is best known for her iconic double platinum international hit single and video “Hey Mickey” (1981) and for her role as a founding member of The Lockers, a group that changed the face of dance by showing that street dance was a great American art form. Her many film credits include acting roles in films such as Five Easy Pieces and Easy Rider as well choreography for films such as American Graffiti, Legally Blonde, That Thing You Do, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Basil has notably collaborated as a choreographer and director with a wide array of legendary pop icons including Tina Turner, David Bowie, Bette Midler, David Lee Roth and Van Halen, and David Byrne and The Talking Heads. She is currently working on a book on the history of American Street Dance.

Douglas Fogle is an independent curator and writer based in Los Angeles. His most recent exhibitions include Corita Kent: The Sorcery of Images at Marciano Art Foundation; Marlene Dumas: Cycladic Blues at the Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens, Greece (2025); and the travelling survey Thomas Demand: The Stutter of History (2022-2026). Fogle has held curatorial positions at a number of contemporary art institutions including Anderson Ranch Art Center in Aspen, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. As a writer he has contributed essays to numerous artist monographs and recently co-authored Magdalena Suarez Frimkess (idajoon/MACK, 2025) and Making Strange: The Chara Schreyer Collection (Del Monico Books/DAP, 2023).