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The movement is the message: five dancemakers who dare to mix activism with art.

Article Excerpt
The war in Iraq. Breast cancer. Racism. Global warming. Sexual abuse. Torture tactics. Domestic violence. Environmental pollution. Homophobia. These diseases plague our daily lives and humble our souls. Their urgency affects how we think, what we do, and what we create. If we can agree that all the world's a stage, then it is not surprising that these topics are front and center in recent dance works by established and upcoming choreographers.

Dancemakers have responded to social ills throughout the history of modern dance. Racism captured the imagination of mid-20th-century Americans: Charles Weidman's Lynchtown (1936); Pearl Primus' Strange Fruit and Jim Crow Train (both 1943), and Slave Market (1944); and Katherine Dunham's Southland (1951) all dealt with this issue. In Germany, Kurt Jooss created The Green Table (1932), a "dance of death" about the horrors of war.

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A new crop of socially engaged works has contemporary artists following in the footsteps of their aesthetic ancestors, particularly since the wake-up call of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. For today's choreographers the circumstances have drastically changed, and societal injustices seem to have multiplied. Urban Bush Women, Compagnie JANT-BI, Spectrum Dance Theater, Jane Comfort and Company, and Ananya Dance Theatre are a handful of contemporary groups who are daring to chart this dangerous territory. In each instance there is no loss of artistic integrity in taking on socially conscious themes.

Urban Bush Women/ Compagnie Jant-Bi

Les ecailles de la memoire (The Scales of Memory) brings together Jawole Willa Jo Zollar's NYC-based Urban Bush Women and Germaine Acogny's Senegal-based Compagnie JANT-BI for an international collaboration. "The three themes are resistance, memory, and love," says Zollar. The dance explores the connections and chasms between Africans and African Americans, with...

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