Donald Byrd And Spectrum Dance Self Analysis

When dance and social activism intersect, I get excited. All of my experiences with dance as a tool for social change have been profound and evoking. The work I do with Donald Byrd and Spectrum Dance Theater company (SDT) is tremendously relevant. It unapologetically challenges and disrupts societal systems, people’s beliefs, thoughts, and their relations with others who are different from them. Working with SDT has taught me that dance, my passion, part of my identity, is a tool for social change. The fact that I can take action through my passion is extraordinary. It has also started me on my path to realizing my dream which is to use art to creatively expose and challenge harmful social constructs.

One of my first experiences with dance

It was a collaboration between Donald Byrd, Eva Stone, and the Academy of Spectrum Dance Theater. Its purpose was to make a statement about our experiences with and around race. It was choreographed, designed, and developed by us, the members of the Academy and supervised by Mr. Byrd and Mrs. Stone. This dance was made up of movement, live text, and live music--all of which was original. It was titled “Speech Acts” because the term speech acts is an utterance that has performative function in language and communication. Almost any speech act is really the performance of several acts at once, distinguished by different aspects of the speaker 's intention: there is the act of saying something, what one does in saying it, such as requesting or promising, and how one is trying to affect one 's audience. What a powerful process and performance it was. As a multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural female, to be able to share my struggles and discoveries about racism in my favorite art medium was terrific. Minority voices are not heard often, if at all, but I was given a platform through dance performance. We created this fifteen minute work to evoke some kind of action from our audience to at least think about their experiences with and around race and how to change their actions and beliefs to move closer to a just, and harmonious world. I 'm not quite sure if it was successful, but having participated in and having performed it, I most definitely checked myself and changed the way I relate with others. I stepped up and continue to step up to help push the world to be better for