“Hire” Knowledge and the Anthropocene

New video with dancers’ commentary: Check out this interview between UCI Community Resilience director Abby Reyes, UCI Dance Professor S. Ama Wray, and dancers from the 2019 premier of “Hire” Knowledge and the Anthropocene. The choreography surfaces insight about how university communities and others can navigate through and transform the multiple intersecting crises in our ecological and economic systems.

Interview excerpts:

Scene from “’Hire’ Knowledge and the Anthropocene” choreographed by UCI Dance Professor S. Ama Wray

Dancer and UCI graduate student Jehbreal Jackson on the gist of the choreography:  [The piece conveyed t]he whole idea of the capitalistic, kind of, ripping of something from its native location in order for your own use versus respecting the thing for what it is, maybe borrowing and also returning, or this kind of a circular action. [In the choreography, one could see that] it was moving in only one direction.

Dancer and UCI graduate student Brandi Kelley, on Nature’s response to humanity’s relationship with Nature: [In the choreography,] it felt like I could sometimes see her shaking. [I]t felt not like a last breath of air, but a last gulp of air to hope for something versus a last breath that everything [was] left.

Jackson, on what it took for the dancers to move as a team in these conditions: The rehearsal environment was one of constant listening, needing to be aware of each section of the music, where your colleagues were in relation to you, listening with your body.

Reyes: So what is it that [ ] enabled the cohort to engender trust?

Jackson: I think love.

Check out the new video with dancers’ commentary here.