"I have always believed that dance can say things that words simply cannot reach. Every step is a word. Every series of steps is a sentence. And when a dancer is truly inside a story and not just moving through it, something happens in the room that no headline, no speech, no protest sign can replicate. You feel it before you have decided what to think about it."
"Across this country, people not unlike my grandparents are living in fear, afraid that everything they have built, everything they have sacrificed for, could be taken away in an instant, not because of anything they have done, but because of who they are and where they come from. People are hiding in their homes. Parents are being torn from their children."
"History has shown us this, from Alvin Ailey, who showed the world what the Black experience looks and feels like through dance, to Bad Bunny, whose Super Bowl performance was a masterclass in what bodies in motion can say, delivering a mess"
A dancer and granddaughter of immigrants from Mexico and Portugal uses her art form as a response to current immigration fears and community displacement. Drawing from the quote 'When you can no longer speak, you sing. When you can no longer sing, you dance,' she explains how dance transcends verbal communication to convey emotional and social truths. While communities face separation and fear, various forms of resistance emerge—from street demonstrations to documentation efforts to acts of community care. The dancer positions her choreographic response as equally urgent, arguing that dance creates visceral understanding that precedes intellectual processing. Historical examples like Alvin Ailey's work demonstrating the Black experience and Bad Bunny's Super Bowl performance illustrate dance's unique power to communicate complex social narratives and cultural identity.
#dance-as-activism #immigration-and-displacement #artistic-expression-and-social-justice #cultural-resistance
Read at www.amny.com
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