Choreography & Artistic Direction: SARAH CARLSON
Original Music: VERNON J. MOBLEY
Performers:
REINYS M. BERIGUETE FLORES, SARAH CARLSON, NOELLE CYBULSKI, ADRIENNE KRAUSE, CHIEDU MBONU, MADISON MCCADDEN, NEYSHA MERCED, ISMAEL MOSCAT, SARAH PARKER, WILLIAM TUCKER
Lighting Design: BENJIMAN CARLSON
Performance text excerpted from:
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk
“Traumatic Stress, Systemic Oppression, and Resiliance in Post-Katrina New Orleans” by Racheal Goodman and Cirecie West-Olatunji
PREMIERE: March 2018
ICEHOUSE TONIGHT | BETHLEHEM, PA
DIRECTOR’S NOTE
"The historian Howard Zinn suggests, when you have models of how people can come together, even for a brief period, it suggests that it could happen for a longer period. When you think of it, that’s the way things operate in the scientific world, so why not socially? As soon as the Wright brothers could keep a plane aloft for 27 seconds, everyone knew from that point on that a plane might be kept aloft for hours. It’s the same socially and culturally…We’ve had countless incidents in history where people have joined together in social movements and created a spirit of camaraderie or a spirit of sharing and togetherness which have absented them, even momentarily, from the world of greed and domination. If true community can stay aloft for 27 seconds, it is only a matter of time before such a community can last for hours. Only a matter of time before a beloved community, as Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of, can come into being."
--"Community Resilience: A Cross-Cultural Study”
by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Howard Zinn’s notion that community healing might have something to learn from the scientific method and its persistence in the face of limits is inspiring. However, the unity aspired for cannot be attained without first tending to our individual and communal wounds.
In his book The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D. proposes that each wrong that has been committed lives in the body. Every trauma, abuse, or neglect gets lodged somewhere in our neural wiring which can make the act of coming together as a society seem inconceivable. … Crash and burns are pretty much unavoidable. And yet we must persevere.
Often, things have to fall apart before they can be built back up even stronger. This dance explores the nature of this process; the complex evolution of the individual body and the group body as it seeks holistic wellness in the face of trauma. This production is dedicated to all those who have been hurt, neglected or traumatized but especially to those peoples who have been historically mistreated due to race, gender, sexual orientation, disability or religion.
Sarah Carlson
The Body Keeps the Score: Dancing with Trauma and Recovery
received generous support from the Pennsylvania Partners for the Arts and the Cultural Coalition of Allentown.
