A Brief But Spectacular take on dance as activism

Transcript

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Amna Nawaz: Joya Powell is an award-winning choreographer, activist, and educator whose work focuses on community and the African diaspora. She is the founder of Movement of the People Dance Company, a group that addresses sociocultural injustices through dance.

In collaboration with New York City’s Lincoln Center, she performed a piece called what’s left of spring.

Tonight, she shares her Brief But Spectacular take on dance as activism.

Joya Powell, Founder, Movement of the People Dance Company: For me, dance is activism.

Dance itself is what gets us through the world. It’s how we understand the world around us. And within that, dance itself is the resistance that we need in order to create change.

Today, my company, Movement of the People Dance Company, will be performing an excerpt of a work in progress piece called “What’s Left of Spring.”

“What’s Left of Spring” is an interactive piece that is Afrofuturistic, that looks at Africanist art and dance, that tries to ask questions about where we are today, thinking about our sociopolitical culture and the issues that we’re facing.

Woman: Sitting here in the atrium of Lincoln Center, 61 West 62nd Street, or so they think. They congregate here to be entertained.

Joya Powell: Some of the themes that we look at is the COVID pandemic.

Woman: I said it’s COVID in the house. Let me hear you say. Like you mean it, come on.

Joya Powell: Systemic racism.

Woman: I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.

Joya Powell: We also look at what rituals that we need to be in place in order to live in this world together. And we also look at global warming and climate change.

Woman: Welcome to mahogany’s battle of the natural disasters. Give it up.

Joya Powell: For me, one of the things I think about when I think of dance as activism is the thought of social movements and thinking about the fact that social movements has the word movement of it.

So we’re looking at the body. Where does the body live in creating change? We feel that there’s a dialogue between ourselves and our embodied practices and the audience and our communities in order to try to figure out how to be in this world together.

Woman: And so they continue their journey, and collectively figure out that the way back to the future is through hope and joy.

Joya Powell: My name is Joya Powell, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on dance as activism.

Amna Nawaz: And you can find more Brief But Spectacular videos online at PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief.