Original Artwork

Follow the link to see a short dance that I choreographed to the song The Sun’s Gone Dim and the Sky’s Turned Black by Jóhann Jóhannsson. Dance is a wonderful medium for expressing emotions – whether abstract or corresponding to a concrete event. In this case, I hoped to capture the frustration of survivors who know that there are still people out there who refuse to recognize their pain. The short piece starts out with the dancer being pulled forward, to represent the pull for a survivor to share his or her story with others. After, the steps travel less and become more internal, as he or she reflects on the events he or she has witnessed. Following this, the majority of the middle of the piece includes faster paced steps that change levels from jumping to rolling and reaching out to anyone who will listen. One movement motif that I included in the middle section was the gesture of the dancer grabbing her own head – in this movement I hoped to portray the frustration and confusion that survivors feel when faced with those who read their accounts and (often illogically) proclaim them to be false. It was my intention to present the dancer as one struggling (physically and mentally) to grasp in her head how deniers can ignore this pain. The piece ends by the dancer walking forward in a final plea to find someone who will listen, and then ending on the ground, back to the camera when she realizes that she is not able to change the minds of Holocaust deniers.