Tracing Sacred Steps will be performed the following days and times:
June 3 at 7:30pm
June 4 at 2:00pm
June 4 at 7:30pm
There will be a talk back following all performances.
Tracing Sacred Steps (TSS) blends modern dance, figure skating, and Ring Shout. In her essay, “Hoodoo Religion and American Dance Traditions: Rethinking the Ring Shout” Katrina Hazzard-Donald states:
“It was from the African sacred circle, that the first truly African American dance was born: the ‘Ring Shout.’ The Ring Shout was a counterclockwise, sacred circle dance that appears to have been done universally among [enslaved Africans] and later among freedmen. […] In the sacred circle, the center was a vortex of spiritual energy and power which represented a separate and sacred realm, one not of the material realities of enslavement. It represented a reality which connected one to the ancestors and reconfirmed a continuity through both time and space. Within the circle, the interaction between the individual and the community was mediated by sacred spiritual forces evidenced in spirit possession.”
Tracing Sacred Steps engages elements of this practice to illustrate how it continues to serve as a pathway to healing within so many Black spaces. It 1) illustrates how this practice continues to be relevant, 2) pays homage to these important cultural rituals, and its practitioners: forcibly displaced Africans that found a way, amidst grave adversity, to work towards restoration and wholeness.
Tracing Sacred Steps features an all-Black cast of 4 professional skating artists and actor/vocalist Thomasina Petrus.