Hilary Brown-Istrefi

🎧 Now Live: Season 2, Episode 5 of Dancing into Brain Health What if the spaces we live in could actively support our brain health—and our sense of dignity, autonomy, and connection? In this episode, we’re joined by industrial designer and Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health, Macarena Espina Díaz, whose work reimagines how inclusive, human-centered design can transform the lives of people living with dementia. From co-creating community-driven solutions in Chile to helping envision Ireland’s first brain health–focused intergenerational housing, Macarena invites us to consider how our environments—both social and physical—shape wellbeing across the lifespan. ✨ Together, we explore: • What inclusive design really means • How environments can better support people living with dementia • The power of collaboration across communities, policy, and design • Simple ways we can all engage more intentionally with the spaces around us This conversation is a powerful reminder that brain health is not just biological—it’s deeply relational, environmental, and shared. 🎧 Listen now via the link in bio or on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube #BrainHealth #InclusiveDesign #DementiaAwareness #HealthyAging #DesignForAll

🎙️ Season 2, Episode 2 is live! In this episode of the Dancing into Brain Health Podcast, we turn our attention to Lewy Body Dementia — the second most common form of progressive dementia, yet one that is still too often misunderstood, misdiagnosed, and under-supported. Our guest, Helen Bundy Medsger, is a powerful advocate whose work is rooted in lived experience. Drawing from decades of partnership in care with three family members living with Lewy Body Dementia, Helen has dedicated her life to reshaping how this condition is understood across research, clinical care, public awareness, and policy spaces. Together, we explore:
 ✨ Why lived-experience experts must be present at every stage of the dementia care advancements 
 ✨ Lessons learned from a lifetime of advocacy
 ✨ How we can move toward a future where a Lewy Body Dementia diagnosis is met with clarity, community, and hope This is a conversation about listening deeply, building community, and making space for voices that have too often been left out. 🎧 Now streaming — 🔗 link in bio. Host: Magda Kaczmarska @magdakacz2013 Guest: Helen Bundy Medsger @helen.medsger Editor: Hilary Brown-Istrefi @hbsquared_projects Photo credits: Title - Michelle Memran @memranny 1 - Helen Medsger 2 - Helen Medsger 3 - Helen Medsger 4 - Joao Barbosa @walkingthetalkfordementia 5 - Joao Barbosa 6 - Alex Kornhuber @alexkornhuber 
 #DancingIntoBrainHealth #BrainHealth #LewyBodyDementia #LBDawareness
 #DementiaAdvocacy

What becomes possible when we bring personal story, artistic practice, and community vision into conversation with neuroscience? In this opening episode of Season 2, we’re joined by Szewah Chin — communications expert, journalist, and Board Chair of DanceStream Projects — and Hilary Brown-Istrefi — dancer, choreographer, teaching artist, and podcast editor. Together, they reflect on the need for more spaces that bridge the arts, neuroscience, and community practice — not as separate disciplines, but as shared pathways toward belonging, meaning, and brain health. This conversation invites us to imagine what’s next — and to ask what kinds of dialogues we still need to be having. 🎧 Full episode available now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts (link in bio). What questions or conversations are you curious to explore with us this season? 
#DancingIntoBrainHealthPodcast #ArtsNeuroscienceCommunity #DanceForHealth #CreativeAging #LivedExperience #CommunityPractice #ArtsAdvocacy #BrainHealthConversation #DanceStreamProjects #PodcastCommunity #HopeAndHealing

🎉Happy birthday to DanceStream Projects teaching artist Hilary Brown-Istrefi (@hbsquared_projects ) You deserve all the love and celebration! 🎉 Thank you to the beautiful community and staff at @qchnyc Jamaica Older Adult Center for this lovely surprise! #happybirthday #community #dance #communitydance #dancestreamprojects #danceforhealth #danceforall #creativeaging

Out-FRONT! Fest. ‘26 | January 3-11, 2026  A Festival curated by @pioneersgoeast and presented in partnership with Judson Church @judsonchurchnyc 🌸Alexa Grae @alexagrae Presents: Tone Pillar (World Premiere) 🌸 📍JANUARY 6 + 7 at 7pm | Judson Church Split Bill w/ Sugar Vendil @sugarvendil 🌸Featuring: Alexa Grae | @alexa_grae Hilary Brown-Istrefi | @hbsquared_projects Nina Guevara | @lemonjuiceinmypapercut Composer + Libretto by Alexa Grae | @alexa_grae Choreography/Direction/Visuals by Stephanie Acosta | @wakingstephanie Costume Design + Construction by Isaac Pool | @isaaaacpool 🌸Tone Pillar, a techno-opera, layers live vocals and movement with club influenced compositions, poetry and rituals, sparked out of self preservation. A trio of performers lead by Alexa Grae (Composer/Performer) alongside Hilary Brown-Istrefi (performer) and Nina Guevara (performer) with direction and visuals from Stephanie Acosta. Together they draw from the traditions of operatic madness, cosmic spirituality, queer raves, solitude, the body intellect, and the building of self as practice. 📍Judson Church, entrance at 243 Thompson Street, NYC 10012 🎟️ Tickets on sale NOW! 🔗 LINK IN BIO [Free + Donation + Sliding Scale] Curated by @pioneersgoeast in partnership with @judsonchurchnyc   🌸Out-FRONT! Fest. is a Radical Queer Art + Dance festival championing LGBTQ+ and Feminist artists for a lively exchange of art and culture. Curated & produced by Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte, Remi Harris, Joyce Isabelle, and Philip Treviño. @judsonchurchnyc @janartsnyc @madein_ny @nyscouncilonthearts #radical #art #dance #film #outfront

✨Reflecting on #NDEO2025 in Detroit last weekend where 800+ dance educators gathered with one shared belief: Dance is essential at every stage of life. DanceStream Projects executive director Magda Kaczmarska (@magdakacz2013 ) and teaching artist Hilary Brown-Istrefi (@hbsquared_projects ),presented a workshop: 
🩰 “Stories in the Moment: Dancing with Dementia” They introduced our co-creative dance & storytelling program for people living with dementia and care partners — exploring how dance supports brain health, wellbeing, connection, and joy. 💬 We shared reflections from people living with dementia who join the program 
🧠 Shared research on dance and the brain
💃 Moved together in community
🌱 Explored how everyone can create spaces of belonging through dance We’re so inspired by the 25+ incredible attendees who joined us — and by the momentum to make dance accessible for all. Let’s keep moving this work forward. 💜 #DanceAndDementia #StoriesInTheMoment #DanceForAll #ArtsInHealth #CommunityDance #CreativeAging #DanceEducation #BrainHealth #CarePartners #NDEO2025 #DanceIsVital

🧠✨ New Episode! This #WorldAlzheimersMonth, Dancing into Brain Health takes on a conversation we don’t hear often enough: youth brain health. In Episode 8, we sit down with Dr. Francesca Farina, neuroscientist and Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago, to discuss how early life experiences and choices shape our long-term brain health — and why starting the conversation early matters for dementia prevention. Together, we explore the Next Generation Brain Health initiative, shifting the narrative from focusing only on mid- and late-life risks to empowering young adults with knowledge and strategies that can change the future of brain health worldwide. Listen now 🎧 Link in bio! Guest: Dr Francesca Farina (@gbhi_fellows ) Host: Magda Kaczmarska (@magdakacz2013 ) Editing: Hilary Brown-Istrefi (@hbsquared_projects ) Music: Joe Venegoni #DancingIntoBrainHealth #WorldAlzheimersMonth #YouthBrainHealth #DementiaPrevention #BrainHealthAwareness

Before the ball drops into the New Year 🎊 please consider donating to @blessed_unrest ’s 25 IN ‘25’ Fundraiser to further their mission of offering free and accessible theatre training and performances to/for NYC’s artist communities and public. 🔗 Visit LINK IN BIO to learn more & give!! Over the past year I have been a member of Blessed Unrest’s exceptional Training Ensemble, and I cannot easily put into words how transformative this community has been to my practice of making and sharing as a movement-based storyteller. It is a very rare thing to find a space of deep learning and exchange that is rooted in the lived experiences and backgrounds of its members; a space even more emboldened by its removal of financial and institutional obstacles. Blessed Unrest’s Training Ensemble has not only contributed to my growth as a more authentic artist, but most significantly as a more authentic human. 🫶🏽 #blessedunrest #physicaltheatre #25in25 #supportartists #nyc #home Repost from @blessed_unrest • Happy New Year from all of us at Blessed Unrest! We are looking back at a full year of training and theatre-making in 2024, and looking ahead towards turning 25 in 2025… thank you for being a part of it all! We’re THIS CLOSE to raising the $10,000 needed to match our challenge grant. Can you help us raise $1500 more to make our goal and start 2025 off strong? If you donate by December 31st, your fully tax deductible gift is doubled!

In digesting the events of this week, I haven’t found the right words to meet the feelings. What I keep returning to is the need to start with rest and collective love and support. To rebuilt our trust in our ability to effect change in a way that aligns with values of thriving. To show up for one another in ways that open to listening, allowing one another to be seen and heard and building collective belonging, agency and care. I need to believe that we can do this. What gives me hope today are the communities of elders myself and the other members of @dancestream_projects have the privilege of working with here in NYC and beyond. Today I joined members of @queenscenter4gayseniors , a community that has a special place in my heart, has embraced me and that feels like family, a community of LGBTQIA+ elders and allies many of whom are immigrants like me. One of the members was hosting a talent show and as I sat in the audience, witnessing an authentic outpouring of creativity, songs that evoked tears and laughter, stories of hope, desire and hardship, I felt at peace. I commit to continuing to show up for this community and the others who have so generously welcomed me. DanceStream Projects commits to continue to show up in partnership and collaboration and allyship in dance, in movement and in community. Together we can and will move forward. Featured are images taken by the incredible @nuria_rius , dancer/choreographer/storytellers from Queens Center for Gay Seniors, @hbsquared_projects Hilary Brown-Istrefi - one of the wonderful artists who works with DanceStream Projects and the communities we partner with and members of 6 older adults centers across Queens who are a part of @qchnyc who joined us Nov. 1 to celebrate collective conversations on dance, brain health and community. Music 🎶 by Marty Laster - the husband of one of our participants in Manhattan whose son @michaellasternyc (himself a remarkable musician/composer) has generously shared to accompany many of our performances.

How specially synchronistic to celebrate the birthday of my dear friend & colleague, @magdakacz2013 alongside the culminating event of @dancestream_projects ’ STORIES IN THE MOMENT: BELONGING IN ACTION with 160+ participants this afternoon!! 🙌🏽 Over the last 4-months, we’ve connected through dance and storytelling with Queens-based older adults and people living with dementia at 6 senior centers across the borough — Jamaica, Rego Park, Kew Gardens, Jackson Heights, Pomonok & Forest Hills, to discuss how we can better support our brain health, dance together, and identify the ways we want to build spaces of belonging in our communities. 🫶🏽 A massive thank you to @qchnyc for our ongoing partnership, and the Queens Arts Fund & @flushing_town_hall for the support that made this programming possible. #dancestreamprojects #dance4brainhealth #communitydance #danceparty #happybirthday #goldengirls #goldenyears #queens #nyc • • Image & Video Descriptions: 1 - In front of an autumn-inspired backdrop with balloons, a brown woman in a black half-mask and gloves and a white woman in a red wig and black sunglasses strike the same pose of one outstretched arm. Polaroid by: @nuria_rius 2 - Surrounded by people cheering in a circle, a white woman partner dances with an older white man inside a gymnasium.

Please consider donating to @blessed_unrest ’s 25th anniversary fundraising campaign. Over the past year, I’ve been a member of the company’s exceptional Training Ensemble and can’t express enough how transformative this community has been to my growth as an artist and human. 🫶🏽 🔗 For more info & to give, visit link in bio. Repost from @blessed_unrest • Announcing our red-hot 🔥 2024-25 fundraising campaign! As Blessed Unrest approaches its 25th anniversary, we urgently need your support to ensure we can continue to thrive for the next 25 years. Our goal is to raise $50,000 in order to expand our Ensemble Training Program, to implement the necessary changes to Blessed Unrest’s organizational structure, and to mount our spring production of “Othello, A Prelude” (working title). To support our cause, follow our link in bio! #blessedunrest25 #fundraiser #theatreauditions #nycauditions #performingarts #nyctheatre #diversityinthearts #physicaltheatre #multiculturaltheatre #ensembletheatre #nycactors #blessedunrest #actorslife #movementartists #culturalidentity #storytellers

Repost from @sameassister • Today we celebrate your 76th birthday!! ✨ Harry Truman Brown October 22 1948 - January 10, 2021 Although you’re no longer with us in the physical realm, your joyous and generous spirit still lives on through others. Seeing the smiles on the faces of the absolutely fabulous @camhnews ’ patients during last week’s SUITS ME FINE fashion show is a testament to this. Your donated clothing including this dapper trench coat continues to spread happiness and style!! 🧥 We love you always and forever Daddy. ❤️❤️ #blackjoy #spreadlove Image Descriptions: 1 - A 1980’s photo of Harry Brown, a young smiling black man dressed in a camel trench coat seated in his white Mercedes. 2 - A young black man models a beige trench coat as he smiles and poses on the runway of CAMH’s 2024 SUITS ME FINE fashion show.