Moving Bodies/Moving Hearts/Moving Minds IV: An evening of new dance works

Beacon Dance will present an evening of premiers of new dance works by several Atlanta choreographers working at the intersection of arts and activism. Moving Bodies/Moving Hearts/Moving Minds IV will feature four new works seeking to inspire dialogue around a host of themes and ideas, and will bring together choreographic voices through works by Bibby Agbabiaka , Lyrric Jackson, Merryn McKeough and D. Patton White.

Performances are free, and reservations are highly recommended. This program is supported by grant funding from the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs, the Fulton County Board of Commissioners and by contributions from individual donors. For more information or to make reservations: info@beacondance.org or 404.441.9243.

Beacon has commissioned Habibulai ‘Bibby’ Agbabiaka to create a new work he has entitled Nothing More to Say. This new piece stems from the feeling of so desperately wanting to say something, through actions or words, but not being able to get it out. Despite one’s best efforts, things seem to fall apart over and over again. We look into ourselves to ask these questions: what stops someone from finding their true voice? Is it to be found with others or alone? What is it that “I” have to say?

Beacon has also commissioned Lyrric Jackson to create a new work. The Last Rest Stop Before Jupiter is a contemporary solo movement work shaped by convergence, duality, and celestial mapping. Framed by the Gemini twins, Castor and Pollux, and the counting of a life in days, hours, minutes, and seconds, the piece unfolds at the threshold of a Jupiter Return, a cyclical moment associated with growth, expansion, and reckoning. Jupiter, a vast gas giant without solid ground, looms as both promise and pressure, its immense gravity, turbulent storms, and swirling bands suggesting a place where one is held, compressed, and carried rather than rooted. Drawing from Natasha Trethewey’s “Theories of Time and Space,” the choreography advances with the knowledge that movement forward does not offer a way back, carrying memory as both ballast and navigation. The work traces wavelength and orbit through the body, hovering in a state of suspension, where faith softens the weight of gravity and the future feels vast, unfamiliar, and still forming.

Rounding out the guest artist commissions, Merryn McKeough is creating a new work inspired by culture. This work, entitled True Middle, sees the dancers already immersed in their relationships, acting with the straightforward simplicity of familiarity. Inspired by the impenetrable culture of bodybuilding competitions, it explores how groups build their own values, languages, and community indecipherable to an outside viewer.

White’s new work, entitled These are a few of my favorite… is a response to our current political climate and the sense of feeling completely overwhelmed. “In working with the cast of dancers, I’m teasing out their personal feelings of where our current political environment has moved, and how we, as human beings, can find a sense of recovery,” says White. “What music do we choose to escape into? How does that energy and rhythm provide a healing balm to our souls?”