A Brief But Spectacular take on creating your own path

Transcript

Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Amna Nawaz: Hope Boykin and Terri Ayanna Wright bring together prose and dance. Boykin is a choreographer and a writer, and Wright dances her interpretation.

Tonight, they share their Brief But Spectacular take on creating their own paths.

Hope Boykin, Writer: As a choreographer and a writer, I have found that I would like to make my movement look less abstract. So, I write text, give spoken word to really display and unpack what I’m feeling.

Terri Ayanna Wright, Dancer: And I think, as the dancer, it’s my job to just bring all of that to life, to the best of my ability.

Hope Boykin: I don’t need to be like them, those, because my faith, my lane, my own is my, is my, is my own.

I made a piece called “Journey.” “Journey” takes you on a journey of what it’s been like to walk down my own path. And Terri’s body is the vessel. Terri is the artist that does the translation as you hear me speak.

Terri Ayanna Wright: The most significant part of performing “Journey” is how much I can relate to it not only as a performer, but as a woman.

It is my journey just as much as it is Hope’s.

Hope Boykin: To struggle to balance, to my own, to hold my own, to wait, to rest, to be still, and know.

It’s a duet, really. My voice and her body work together to explain that our path is our own, literally in this tempo of slowness, of thick quality to let you know that the way we move, the way we have been working has been tough. But we can’t compare our work to anyone else’s work. We can’t compare our lives to anyone else’s life.

It has been worth every single effort, mine and mine alone, this journey. My journey is not yours.

Once we realize that our path is our own, our journey is our own, then we really can find true joy, true success, true understanding and meaning in the work that we do. And it gives us ownership over that.

My name is Hope Boykin.

Terri Ayanna Wright: And I am Terri Ayanna Wright.

Hope Boykin: And this is our Brief But Spectacular take on…

Hope Boykin and Terri Ayanna Wright: … creating our own path.