EYES YIELD: The Importance of Healing a Rape Culture in Community
Directed and Choreographed by: Angela Newsham
Performance by: Angela Newsham, Titania Kumeh, and Jose Cital
Videography by: Tim L Schafer
Music by: Viktoria Leilani
This work sample was shot specifically for video so that the viewer can see the details in each dancer's movement. This performance "Eyes Yield: The Importance of Healing a Rape Culture in Community" is part of a three hour workshop called "Healing for Change" which engages participants in the importance of collective healing through movement.
"Eyes Yield: The Importance of Healing a Rape Culture in Community", features three performers dancing in trust and resilience, bringing awareness and balance to a person/community using Body-Mind Centering techniques.
This choreography is developed using Body-Mind Centering developmental movement process, "Yield, Push, Reach, (Grasp) Pull" and explores what happens when a person is witnessed, when we, the community, can lean on one another and how this helps to redefine, restore or rebalance our movement process.
In our "Healing for Change" workshop all performers worked with groups to explore the developmental movement patterns with our participants before our performance. Provided this opportunity, our audience may understand our message on a somatic level and participate in collective healing.
We received outstanding feedback from participants and from our collaborators, San Francisco Women Against Rape and OSHA, two organizations in the Bay Area that support survivors that participated in the development and review of this project. The next step in reaching a larger audience will be to tour colleges with this workshop and expand the cast.