Post 8: Make America Love Again
“Sometimes you need to BE AGGRESSIVE, and other times you can be less, but it doesn’t ever mean that that person isn’t coming to you with love. It’s just a different type of love.”- Prof D.
As poets, as dancers, as artists we are taught to speak our minds. But the people (the white cis-gendered men) whom give us this permission, they want us to speak our minds politely. They might tell us to “use art to make a statement,” but in reality don’t want us making a ruckus. They want us to produce beauty that coincides with their beliefs, art that makes them look morally and aesthetically acceptable.
But sometimes, you have to be aggressive.
Sometimes, creators have no other choice, so they must use there platform to speak and to spark change. And, commonly, they upset the oppressors, and they destroy themselves in the process.
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CBjXbypl8oP/?igshid=1ll7jfffle6tc
(above is a short piece of choreograpgyy that was the basis and inspiration for “Make America Love Again.” We do not have these peice recorded, due to the exposure of minors.)
This choreography and score is the foundation of “Make America Love Again”- a 9 minute dance set on a group of 18 young women at the Dance Studio of Fresno. It was choreographed by Peter Chu, the dancer in this video. These words and this movement is a lot to digest at 16 years old. As a teenager, we don’t really know our political stance in this world as we are heavily influenced by our parents. But in order to do this speech justice through our dancing, we had to understand the heart and soul of the message.
“Make America Love Again” is an aggressive title for what is supposed to be a
Although this dance is political in nature, I don’t think the dancer’s responsibility is to extend a political message. The speech by itself does this job. But when you pair her words with human gestures, movement, and emotions throughout a body it becomes less of a political statement, and more of a testimony. A testimony about love, and unity, and in the end, human dependency. The piece speaks volumes to loving thy neighbor, “no matter what color our skin is, what religion we practiced, what country we came from, our sexual orientation, or language we speak.” It was our obligation as artists is to make this statement- a statement that reminds society to not let our experiences strip us our humanity.
Sometimes dance is political, and sometimes we have to use our voice. But, as artists we have this responsibility to not only speak our minds, but speak the truth. The truth commonly gets distorted by society and the oppressors, it is hard to get people to hear artist’s testimonies and life’s truth. So, we have to speak loudly and be aggressive. But it is for the greater good- to expose people to the delusions of life they are being fed.
