Celebrate the launch of FREEDOM TIME, a new publication from Sming Sming Books featuring dances written by incarcerated collaborators. Join us for a reading, performances of dances from Michigan and Bayamon Correctional Institution (Puerto Rico), and a community conversation with Puerto Rican abolitionist partners Kilómetro Cero.
Performances include:
- LOCKDOWN POETICS by Justin Rovillos Monson, performed by Jay Carlon
- El Final by Yarelys M. Rossy Pérez, performed by Selina Ho
- un, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis by Francesca Nadal Cruz, performed by Amy Oden
- Hora de visita and others by Amneris Manzano Díaz, Zulis G. Piñein, Neilyann Rivera Rodríguez, Sheyla Rosa, performed by Brianna Mims
Part of Recess’s Session program, FREEDOM TIME embodies abolition through movement, publication, and imagination.
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About the Artists
Dancing Through Prison Walls is a California-based dance and performance project whose mission is to dance with, choreograph with, and tell stories within embodied carceral landscapes and beyond, amplifying voices of incarcerated people, and addressing mass incarceration. Begun in 2016, the work embraces a porous community of incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, and “free world” dancers, choreographers, visual artists, and performers. The resulting hours of dance, dance making, performance, film creation, writing, and community conversations comprise a body of work that is at its essence a critical dialogue about freedom, confinement, and ways for surviving restriction, limitations, and denial of liberty through the act of dancing. Moving towards our North Star goal of decarceration and abolition, we dance through prison walls.
