Commissioned work by: Dance Ontario Creative Partnership
A prayer for radical responsibility
Perhaps humanity has done this dance many times before. Drawing from the wisdom of the ancestors, this piece invites us to go beyond the forms of ethnicity, color, race, and other dividing lines. To utilize our gifts of knowing, to tap into the memories woven into our cells, encoded in our hearts, and to remember who we really are. May we move beyond the blame and finger-pointing and take radical responsibility for what we create next on this planet.
A calling to remember…
Our ancestors stand each night looking over us as we sleep, reaching through the realms that separate the dimensions hoping we will hear them.
“You have the gift child”
We stir, we stretch, we awaken for a moment only to fall back asleep. This life is a dream within a dream, and we fall deeper and deeper into the trance of reality.
We dance, we fight, and we point our fingers outwards.
“It’s you!” “It’s you!”
“No, it’s you!”
“It’s your fault we are here in this place. You did this. Your race did this. Your people did this.” “You must hurt. You must be punished. You must suffer as I suffer. You must suffer as my people suffer. You must know the pain. You must feel our pain.”
And so we row this boat, this body of ours into the dark valleys of the earth; getting tangled in the weeds of blame.
What if our physical form has played with many colours? What if we’ve all been black, we’ve all been white, we’ve been brown, and everything in between? We keep coming back here, to this earth, replaying the same song, the same dance, wearing different colours and masks, and yet we do not remember.
We hurt, we kill, we maim, and oppress each other. We are disconnected from the pain of the other. We have forgotten that this is our own pain being projected, magnified, and amplified out into the world. What we do to the other, we have done to ourselves, and continue to do to ourselves.
What if we are both victims and perpetrators of every crime ever committed, and every hurt ever inflicted? Perhaps we have danced this dance many times before. We have created, cast, and danced circles around pain. We have given up our lives and taken lives.
The voices of our ancestors beckon to us....“You have the gift child. It’s time for you to remember.”
Artists: Jaedyn Richards, Soraya Lee Wo, Zachary Seto
Image Credit: Mark Mercado
