BORDERS UNCROSSED

CROSSING RACIAL BOUNDARIES IN WORDS
AND MOVEMENT
Full Circle Choreography Project Explores the Ideas and
Experiences that Divide and Unite Americans

How do white Americans view black Americans? How do black Americans view white Americans? What hidden assumptions do we carry and why? In today’s America, people of different backgrounds rarely come together for honest discussion of race. We don’t often ask these tough questions. It is difficult to share our ingrained ideas, to really listen to different experiences, to strive to learn from each other’s perspectives. Discomfort with the subject and frustration with sometimes painfully different ideas often keep us apart. But sometimes art can help to bridge the gap.

On February 24, 2007 at 7:30 pm, Full Circle Dance Company will present Borders Uncrossed at the Baltimore Museum of Art. This performance, created for Black History Month and featuring commissioned work by local and nationally known choreographers, is the culmination of a yearlong choreographic exploration of issues of race. Funded in part by a grant from the City of Baltimore, Borders Uncrossed features four brand-new works that wrestle with issues of race, history, and identity. Created through a unique series of workshops bringing together dancers and members of the community from different racial backgrounds, the dances incorporate the stories, ideas, and personal experiences of real people from the Baltimore area.

“We knew we were embarking on a really difficult and important journey,” says company director Donna Jacobs. “We’ve always been a multiracial company, and we felt that really exploring our different experiences would yield rich work. It has. We’ve been learning about each other while we’ve been creating and dancing. We are eager to share what we’ve uncovered. ”

Full Circle has a history of tapping the community for choreographic inspiration. Last year’s “Motherhood, Memories, and Movement” project included a dance based on the stories of nursing home residents and expectant mothers. The Full Circle Dancers and Writers Project in 2004 brought together teens, professional writers, and average citizens to record their thoughts about a performance. But Borders Uncrossed presented the company with new challenges. “Race is a subject that can be both personal and painful to explore,” says Jacobs. “But I felt we were ready to take it on, and that it would be our most important, relevant work of all.”

Ohio-based choreographer Travis Gatling, whose work was specially commissioned for Borders Uncrossed, divided Full Circle’s dancers by race as he created one section of his dance. “In America, there’s a real polarization,” Gatling explained. “You are either black or white. This section of the dance is full of suspicion and hostility. There’s also a very real sadness about the wall that sometimes divides us as human beings.”

Maryland Choreographer Madi Jackson set out to examine the assumptions that keep black and white Americans from understanding each other’s perspectives. Drawing on the words she heard in the workshops and on her own experiences as a biracial person, Jackson has created a dance that is stark, spiritual, and challenging. Her choreography, also entitled “Borders Uncrossed” provided the seed for the entire project. “I’ve found that while the face of racial discrimination has changed in our country in recent decades, it has not disappeared,” says Jackson. “It takes on subtler forms, but it is there, affecting lives. I hope people who see this concert will have their minds opened a bit, their vision enlarged. Perhaps they’ll begin to think in new ways about people of other races.”

Audience members can expect images from America’s past that retain resonance and relevance, as well as utterly contemporary material that addresses race relations in our own moment and in our own city. Because Full Circle dancers range so widely in age and background, their stories span the American experience. “We have a dancer whose house was shot at by the KKK when he was a child,” recounts Jacobs. “We have another who encounters racial epithets walking home from school in 2006. We have dancers who’ve never experienced racial discrimination personally and others who remember such milestones as the integration of their neighborhood schools. All in all, it makes for a fascinating picture.”

For more information, to arrange interviews, to watch the choreographic process, or to attend a rehearsal of Borders Uncrossed open to journalists, please contact Liz Pelton, 410-467-0989.

Full Circle Dance Company
Borders Uncrossed
February 24, 2007, 7:30 pm
Baltimore Museum of Art Auditorium
Tickets: $15.00
To reserve tickets, please call 410-235-9003
*2006 Baltimore Arts & Humanities Funding was provided by the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts and the Maryland State Arts Council.