INSIGHT: Imagined Future
The Soul’s Language
Interview by Atiba T. Edwards
Four years ago, my friend Mikhael, sent me an email out of the blue asking me to be part of a concert at BAM. Kristin Sudeikis was creating “Stand with Revolutionary Love” and was looking to have voice paired with choreography. I shared a story of a friend who was killed by a stray bullet - something I’ve never talked about - to an entire audience inside BAM’s Fischer building. That moment helped lift my soul in ways I didn’t realize I needed. I reconnected with Kristin to talk about the power of dance, FORWARD__Space, her imagined future and how these all sync. Here are her words and images.
Atiba: Often times words and speech lead change and protests. In what ways do you feel dance and the body can connect to a betterment of the future? Kristin: This immediately makes me think that there is a reason we march, we become so undeniably moved that we must put our bodies in action. Change and progress are meant to be physically moved. Physically expressed. Spoken! Then moved through the human body, through each of our vessels. Dance has long been the way humanity circled together to grieve, cry, play, celebrate, imagine, gain clarity, community and more. I bow to the choreographers, artistic directors and dancers across time that have courageously embodied the truth and the human story so as to allow an audience to connect and hopefully, feel something, bear witness to either stories they themselves know or to ones they can learn from and feel into. I bow to the artists that create that sense of kinesthetic empathy, understanding, compassion, fire and curiosity.
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