rev•er•ie

Inspired by Hard Times Require Furious Dancing, by Alice Walker.

Since its inception, America has been unwilling to fully acknowledge the humanity of countless people, especially people who look like me.  As a Black woman living in America, true belonging, feels asymptotic, it gets almost there but never quite comes to fruition. I often feel the dissonance of wanting a place to just be and release. A place to be safe to experience the full-range of human emotions, including joy and peace, without being policed in the way I choose to experience that emotion or express my freedom. 

The feeling of belonging, of having space held for you whilst creating space for yourself is an idea that has been a large focus of my work over the past year. 

By definition, a reverie is a state of dreamy meditation or fanciful musing. In the case of this film it is a remembering. A lush returning to true freedom.

There is something extremely powerful to see yourself presented in artistic media. I strive to achieve this by creating work that speaks to audiences beyond the color of the dancers’ skin, but that taps into the universal innate human experience. By doing so, we hope to give the audience the space to recognize the humanity that is within all of us, and thereby acknowledge and celebrate our differences, rather than try to diminish and silence them.

Living in a country that often wants to quiet my voice, I feel it is my duty to continue to create art that highlights the stories of the silenced