Photo: Lucent Vignette Photography
Week after week, headlines are dominated by violent incidents with connections to difference, like the mass shooting at the Orlando gay nightclub Pulse in June, or the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling in confrontations with police officers in July. As a society, we’re beginning to have important — if sometimes uncomfortable — conversations about how to prevent situations in which race, sexuality or religion can make someone a target.
The modern dance company Blue Moves was founded in 1989 by then-students Amanda Cantrell Roche, Lee Anne Carmack and Don Sullivan, who have since built the troupe’s reputation for artistic democracy — the group has never designated a leader — and productions with activist themes. Against this backdrop of looking for answers, the company makes its return to the Sideshow Fringe Festival with Illuminated Beings. The program takes a global look at the struggle for social justice, through two dances and a short film developed within the company, as well as two guest performances.
Roche, who choreographed the two Blue Moves pieces and directed the film, explains that the program isn’t about commanding the audience to take a specific action, but to help break down the barriers that tend to stop people from even considering it.
“It’s [about] creating an intentional community of people that are willing to go out and make a difference,” Roche tells the Scene. “It doesn’t have to be like you’re out there holding a picket sign, or that you’re out there providing beds for the homeless for every night. Sometimes it’s more just about being open and kind.”
The show opens with “Freedom From Fear,” in which dancers wrestle with fabric to symbolize the nearly three-decade fight between democracy advocate and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and Myanmar’s military government. The work was first staged in 1996, while Suu Kyi was under house arrest, and the company revived it to celebrate her rise to power following her release in 2010. Though a constitutional amendment still bars her from holding her country’s highest office, her party won a landslide victory in November 2015 — during the country’s first free election in a quarter-century — and she retains an advisory position that in effect makes her its leader.
The untitled film features video and still photos that Roche took on a trip to Turkey. She initially organized the footage as an introduction to the cultural movement founded by Fethullah Gulen, whose supporters hosted her group in their homes, but recent events have made Gulen a more familiar name, and Roche has restructured her narrative accordingly. An influential cleric who promotes a liberal interpretation of Islam and was once an ally of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Gulen has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999. Though Gulen denies any knowledge of the military coup that failed to oust Erdogan on July 15, Erdogan blames him for it and has called for his extradition. In the wake of a crackdown on Gulen supporters in Turkey, Roche has carefully blurred out the faces of everyone she filmed.
The two guest contributors to Illuminated Beings are Ann Law of Chattanooga’s Barking Legs Theater and poet Joseph Powell. Law’s dance piece, “From the Gut,” presents a nuanced discussion of abortion, in which she portrays the voices of a woman who has had seven abortions as well as those who cannot understand making that choice. Powell’s spoken-word piece “Intifada (For the Family of Michael Brown Jr. and the People of Ferguson, Mo.)” was one of several strong works about the Black Lives Matter movement he submitted in consideration for another Blue Moves show. While none of Powell’s works fit that program, “Intifada” was the perfect complement to Illuminated Beings.
“He comes to [the subject] from a mature, beautifully compassionate perspective, so it’s not all anger, which anyone would be totally justified to have,” Roche says. “It fit in really well with this show because it was about hope as well, in bringing to light all these injustices.”
The finale of Illuminated Beings is “Divine Sparks,” another previously staged piece, which draws on Roche’s background in journalism. She choreographed the dance to accompany audio playback of interviews with four local activists: Lindsey Krinks, founder of the homeless advocacy organization Open Table Nashville; Ngawang Losel, a Tibetan refugee who speaks out against China’s program of cultural repression in his homeland, which he escaped by walking across the Himalayas at age 13; Tamara Ambar, who was born into a Jewish family in Israel and advocates on behalf of the Palestinian people, highlighting the cramped and dangerous conditions they live in while the conflict between Israel and Palestinians grinds on; and Sara Sharpe, a playwright who works with the Tennessee Women’s Theater Project and who uses the increased visibility of women around the world demanding civil rights as a lens to examine a wide range of issues, from immigration to the death penalty.
Bringing these activists’ voices together with movement addresses the issues they fight for in a way that makes them less remote and overwhelming. The piece familiarizes the audience with ordinary people who are making steps toward a change, either by taking direct action or by making sure that their causes don’t get forgotten among a vast array of worthy ones. Krinks, Losel, Ambar and Sharpe are also scheduled to participate in a talkback session after the show on Thursday night, so that the audience can approach them for more information about ways to help.
Ultimately, Roche hopes those who attend will recognize the good that can result from contributing whatever they have — no matter how inconsequential they may think that is — to making the world a better place.
“There’s some sacred being in us that’s really good,” she says. “Are you going to listen to yours?”
Email: arts@nashvillescene.com
