At the core of The world was ending, so they danced, and they were free (premiere) is disability. This work highlights disabled artistry and prioritizes access for both its collaborators and audiences.
Audio Description (for blind or low vision folks) and ASL interpretation (for Deaf or Hard of Hearing folks) are audience accessibility measures that are often presented as separate from the primary audience experience and usually by advance request only. Following the example of Ellice Patterson, Founder and Artistic Director of Abilities Dance Boston, both Audio Description and ASL interpretation are presented as default for the audience. The Audio Description is woven together with an original poem by disabled collaborator Vanessa Hernández Cruz, both of which are narrated live by two actors on stage.
The sonic landscape is completed with music selections by disabled folk musician Gaelynn Lea. These curated music selections include Lea’s arrangement of the traditional folk tune “Tombigbee Waltz,” which serves as particular interest for this work. This folk tune has its origins in minstrelsy, an artistic genre that “normalized” blackface. Additionally, “tombigbee” is the Choctaw word for “coffin maker.” Set as the prologue for this work, Lea’s performance of “Tombigbee Waltz” prepares the work to consider the relationship between different factors of oppression (such as racism, ableism, and classism) and the insidious nature of capitalism, in which most people are coerced and exploited for their labor all the way into their coffins.
The set design includes three tapestry reprints of works by the Deaf Uruguayan visual artist Petrona Viera (1895-1960). These selected works include two studies – Sin titulo (Untitled) and Saltando a la cuerda (Jumping rope) – and one of her most well-known works, Recreo (Playtime) (c. 1924). By chance, I came across Viera’s work in December 2022 at an exhibition of her work at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Santiago, Chile). Viera’s use of color, perspective, and literal play in the world around her became the visual anchor for the landscape created by Vanessa Hernández Cruz’s poem.
In her works, especially those of people, Viera drew heavily on her observations of people in motion, whether engaged with labor or at play with each other. Viera’s works are rich with movement – choreography! – but these evocations of play and joy are riddled with unsettling tension. Amidst the joy of play, Viera also captures the sadness of isolation and exclusion. This dissonance provided one of two primary sources of choreography in this work. The movements witnessed on stage are a combination of (re)creations of Viera’s works and studies, as well as responses to Cruz’s original poem for this work.
Cruz’s original poem, also titled The world was ending, so they danced, and they were free after this dance work, is rich with texture and emotion. Through her poetry, Cruz reflects on her experience as a disabled, Chicana artist and advocate in systems that were not constructed for her. Her imagery and emotional content add a viscerally unsettling yet cathartic element to the choreography and the landscape of the dance work. In creating this dance work, the dancers responded directly to Cruz’s poetry, which is entwined with the Audio Description to form the sound score. This dance work flips the script on traditional approaches to Audio Description by exploring how Audio Description can inspire movement, rather than creating Audio Description in response to the choreography.
One of the core explorations of The world was ending, so they danced, and they were free is the pursuit of a “disability aesthetic,” coined by the late disability studies pioneer Tobin Siebers. What happens to our art when we center disability (rather than marginalizing disability), and how does that shift transform our existing artistic horizons and aesthetic paradigm? I can’t say that this work holds any answers to those questions. However, I encourage you not to consider this experience as a dance work produced for consumption. Rather, I invite you to join this experiential laboratory process in which all of us together are asking questions toward visioning a different future.
Introducing the work: Thesis 2023 / Introducing the Work
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