HowlRound Theatre Commons: These are the opening lines of Piece by Piece, a multimedia dance theatre piece based on the memories of ballerina Rebeccah Simone Bogue, before and after her brain hemorrhage, which left her with memory and mobility difficulties. (Since the incident, Bogue has lost balance, speech, vision, and motor skills.) The show, though, is about so much more than this: individual resilience, disability visibility, creating successful dialogue between three different types of media, and, most importantly, challenging the assumptions and perceptions of each artist and audience member about what it means to be a dancer. And despite its somber subject matter, it’s full of humor and levity.
2 comments:
I think shows and arts like this are very important for our community. I like the idea of relying on theater to speak to our community about the necessary changes needed. This show is super important in the discussion of people with disabilities and how they can and should be able to do and be whatever they want to be. I like the idea that a dancer can be anything, they truly can transform into anything or anyone so why is there such a solid expectation that a dancer needs to be “perfection”. Those with disabilities should be able to be dancers to because they are perfect in their own way and dancers should never be confined to anything. Each person brings a different kind of perspective and style to the stage. I also think that dance should not be the only type of performance that they can do but our community should learn to be comfortable and encouraging when someone with a disability wants to be something they right now are told they cannot.
I agree with what Lily said about art being an important medium for dialogue about hard topics. In particular I like how dance piece is not just a dialogue being created about an issue, but an actual person telling their story, calling out the audience and thus creating a person to person connection and direct dialogue. I also think that the idea that "The power of theatrical visibility has the potential to create real change in society towards the acceptance of “othered” individuals, as we have seen from the power of queer characters onstage, which translated from the stage to movies and TV, and, finally, into the national vocabulary" that the author talks about is an important point and I think is something that could very easily happen more now that there is a sort of new genre of mainstream theatre. Now that there are more theatre pieces being watched by a non-theatre scene, there is definitely a larger chance that more issues that are more commonly talked about by theatre people can integrate into a larger conversation with a larger audience. I hope that art like this continues to happen, and that theatre and art continue to grow to create larger conversations with a wider community.
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