How Dance Artists are Addressing the U.S. Prison System in Their Work, Both Onstage and on the Inside

Dance Magazine, November 7, 2022: How Dance Artists are Addressing the U.S. Prison System in Their Work, Both Onstage and on the Inside

“‘When you think about imprisonment or the justice system, you think about the ways our bodies are under attack,’ says Ana Maria Alvarez, founder and artistic director of CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater in Los Angeles. ‘Our access to liberation and our access to power is through our bodies.’

“Alvarez’s work joyUS justUS takes on the justice system’s disproportionate impact on communities of color and, instead of dwelling on hardship and deficit, focuses on the joy emanating from these communities as the root of freedom. The dancers don’t move only to music, but they also dance to the cadences of spoken text that incorporates elements of the U.S. justice system, like poetry derived from the Miranda rights and courtroom discourse.

“For Alvarez, combining strong, full-bodied movements with these emotionally and politically charged words underscores why embodied performance is such an apt medium for this kind of work. ‘Dance is such a powerful tool because it’s rooted in our bodies, in our movement, in our connection with one another and in the ancestral wisdom of continuing to move in the face of incredible struggle and violence,’ she says.

“Choreographer and prison abolition activist Suchi Branfman, who works with incarcerated men in the California Rehabilitation Center (CRC), a medium-security facility in Norco, California, explains that the same idea applies to her work. Plus, she says, dance is just a whole lot of fun. ‘To witness and be with people who are dancing while living in a cage is a direct antithesis to confinement,’ she explains. ‘We laugh a lot. There’s deep joy and community-building in dance, which is amplified when you’re dancing with folks inside prison.’”

Additional reading:

Uncle Ronnie’s Room: An art driven campaign to mobilize the general public and media around the story of Ronald Coleman Jr.

CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater: JoyUS JustUS

Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic edited by Suchi Branfman