Dancing for social justice

by Katie Mears

Editor-in-Chief

When Jill Peterson ’03 and Barbi Rodriguez ’02.5 joined dance troupe as first-years, they began a conversation and have sustained it ever since. They’ve been talking about dance and its potential role in furthering social justice movements. And now, three years later, their conversation will take form.

They don’t know exactly what it will look like or where it will take place, but what they do know is what it will be about: the anti-war effort.

They considered other topics—the environment, death penalty, class inequality—but they kept returning to anti-war efforts.

“It’s the immediacy of it all,” Peterson said. “Everything else we threw around seemed not as urgent. [The war] is what people are talking about and thinking about and what needs to be commented about.”

Peterson is taking an independent study entitled “Protest Dance/Theater” with Chris Connolly that will culminate in the dance. “The goal,” she said, “is to look at how art, theater and dance can work together to create images that directly impact or inspire as a form of protest.”

Auditions will be held this Sunday and the pair knows exactly who they want in the piece.

“Everyone,” Rodriguez said. Peterson agreed.

“We want people against the war,” Peterson said.

“People with colds.”

“People not afraid of controversy.”

“People not afraid of being outrageous.”

They say that auditions will be very laid back with a little bit of moving and a little bit of speaking and a little bit of filling out questionnaires about why they’re interested in the project.

Peterson participated in dance troupe her first three years at Grinnell and says she loved it, but felt that she was ready for a change. She feels the same about activism; she was heavily involved here at the beginning of her Grinnell career but has cut back to just FTP. She says she’s “dried out.”

She said that she sees this project as an ideal combination of both passions. “In staging a dance, you have an amazing amount of power to make that time [in the theater] forward the audience’s social consciousness,” she said. “You have this stage and you get to put on whatever you want.”

Rodriguez was never as involved with activist causes as Peterson, but she says she’s very interested in how dance can be used to affect the audience. “With dance troupe, you don’t leave people feeling all that different from when they came in,” Rodriguez said. She’s excited about the opportunity to infuse dance with political messages.

Whatever the exact form, Rodriguez and Peterson agree that the audience will play a crucial part. Peterson said that the audience’s participation might be such that attendees don’t even realize they’re involved. “The audience can be used as a prop,” she said, “where you’re sitting and exactly how close.”

Rodriguez and Peterson are not yet sure what form the dance will take. The space is still undecided—possibilities range from the steps of the state capitol to a stage in Fine Arts.

Whether it’s an actual stage or someplace more abstract, the goal will be the same. “We’ll be trying to take advantage of the stage as a space,” Peterson said, “to communicate something beyond the dance.”