WORTHAM CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
NEW DIALECT
21 Yeses
Fri & Sat, Oct 23 & 24, 2026 • 8 pm
Sponsored by
Craig Allen & Julie Cowden
Michael & Catty Andry
Iain & Ann Baird
Kirk & Lucy Borland
Leslie Connolly
John & Marsha Ellis
Clair Griffith & Richard & James King & Nancy Marilyn Hubbard in Geoffrey Mitchell Francee Healy Houha Memory of Bill Hubbard Jayne Cleveland
Hedy Fischer & Randy Shull
Peter Laine & Henry LaBrun Constance Ensner
Jill & Joe Amy Jerry Chris & Sharlene Juliet Shelia Rains & Ronna & Rob Kathy Robinson & The Stewart/ Lawrence Loether McAninch McGraw Rains Marjorie Sullivan Resnick Rosalynn Cimino Meredith Trust Dianne & David In Memory of Worley Diana Wortham With funding support from Media Sponsors
MAGAZINE
WORTHAM CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS 2026/27 SEASON
21 Yeses is a dance of light and void, a theatrical form of sensory perception that mesmerizes audiences as it awakens into a luminous hyperdream. Taking on the tech-aesthetic of a space odyssey, New Dialect plays with hi-grade electricity, the presence of absence, and the geometries of choreography to encounter light as a sentient form of movement and darkness itself as an action, a vast stillness. Combining the practice of contemporary dance with lighting technologies borrowed from the concert industry, New Dialect artistic director and choreographer Banning Bouldin and production designer Michael Brown (Bon Iver, Gracie Abrams) create an experience where motion and light capture and release one another inside an endless distance. Advisory: Performance contains intense lighting effects, strobing, and haze. CREDITS Choreographer + Lighting Design Banning Bouldin Production + Lighting Design Michael Brown Cast + Collaborators Madison Brott, Lenin Fernandez, Phylicia Roybal, Shabaz Ujima Music Fennesz, V.I.V.E.K., Portico Quartet, NikNak, Manu Delago, Philip Glass + felix taylor, Danny Scrilla, Ariel Kalma, Jeremiah Chiu, Marta Sofia Honer, and Exist Strategy Executive Producer Tracey Ford Creative Producer Teten Production Manager Rus Snelling Lighting Supervisor Joshua Weckesser Costume Designer Katrina Huckerby Special thanks to Scott Chambers, Ed Lanquist, Jr., The Danner Foundation, EOA Architects, Karin & Robin Eaton, Metro Parks Dance Nashville, Emma Morrison, Sharon & Doug Pugh, Rick Hoos, Kathryn Wilkening, and Manuel Zeitlin for your support creating 21 Yeses. This project is supported in part by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and Tennessee Arts Commission.
WORTHAM CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS 2026/27 SEASON
ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE 21 Yeses is a 50-minute dance of light and kinetic sculpture that exists in fourteen scenes. The topography of these scenes was inspired by nonspeaking autistic poet, Hannah Emerson, and her poem “The Center of the Universe,” which reads as an invocation to act, to react, to be, and to begin again. In the poem, Hannah repeats the refrain, “Yes, yes please,” in each stanza—a recurring invitation to readers to be courageous to mine the darkness within ourselves and, in so doing, to uncover our own inner lights. This call to bravery and Hannah’s twenty-one “yeses” became the genesis for our choreographic research— motivating the details of our movement vocabulary and explorations of light and void that are both intimate and epic, all at once. CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE by Hannah Emerson Please try to go to hell frequently because you will find the light there yes yes — please try to kiss the ideas that you find there yes yes — please try to get that it is the center of the universe yes yes — please try to help yourself by kissing the hot hot hot life that is born there yes yes — please try to yell in hell yes yes — please try to free yourself by pouring yourself into the gutter all guttural guttural yell yes yes yes — please try to get that you become the being that you came there to be yes yes — please try to go to the great great great fire that you created because you become the light that the fire makes inside of you yes yes — please
WORTHAM CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS 2026/27 SEASON
try to kiss yourself for going there yes yes — please get that you are reborn there yes yes — please begin your day
ABOUT NEW DIALECT New Dialect is a professional contemporary dance practice based in Nashville, TN. Choreographer, dancer, and Juilliard graduate, Banning Bouldin, founded New Dialect in 2013 out of a desire to foster a sustainable ecosystem for contemporary dance artists to live, learn, and collaborate in her hometown. Today, New Dialect supports the growing Nashville dance ecosystem and represents the South as artistic ambassadors within the larger national dance ecology. New Dialect offers year-round classes, intensives, and residencies to professional and pre-professional dance artists, and collaborates with artists to produce interdisciplinary performances and installations. They have received national recognition for their efforts in the form of awards, nominations, and fellowships, and have been featured in articles in Dance Magazine, Dance Teacher, Dance Spirit, and The New York Times. As a touring company, New Dialect has presented work at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, OZ Arts Nashville, Carolina Performing Arts, Tennessee Performing Arts Center, Perry Mansfield’s New Works Festival, Art Prize, Cheekwood, Zeitgeist Gallery, and Track One, among others. Recent productions include Broken Theater, a co-production with American Modern Opera Company (2022), and 21 Yeses, a mesmerizing light installation and contemporary dance performance choreographed by Banning Bouldin, commissioned and presented by EOA Architects and Tennessee Performing Arts Center (2024). New Dialect has received major funding support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Mellon Foundation, South Arts, The National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron, Tennessee Arts Commission, Metro Nashville Arts Commission, Tanne Foundation, Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, Danner Foundation, and several devoted individuals. For more information on New Dialect, our programs, and our collaborators, visit: newdialect.org
Anigiduwagi Land Acknowledgement The Wortham Center acknowledges that we are on the ancestral land of the Anigiduwagi, more commonly known as the Cherokee (ᏣᎳᎩᎠᏰᎵ).