“100 Dances for Times of Turmoil” formed a living, performative archive of recent and current events.  This dance performance presented ways to simultaneously process, analyze, critique, and physicalize memory amidst the barrage of cacophonous and chaotic US news cycles and domestic political developments. It was incomplete, imperfect, and encompassed by absences.

“100 Dances for Times of Turmoil” manifested as a live stage choreography performed in a theatrical setting by seven dancers. Employing a dance-theatre aesthetic, this work used microphones, objects, spoken and recorded text, lip-sync, and movement scores.

The experiences of the current moment cannot be processed like before. “100 Dances for Times of Turmoil” held space for the unprecedented and the overwhelming, asking how can we begin to make sense of it?

Thirty-six dance vignettes were performed, while 64 additional scores were presented in the program. The dancers wore metallic rain ponchos and reflective goggles to open the show with the statement “I thought the future would be cooler.” This moved into a solo monologue about seeing darkness where the future should be while the undulating ensemble tossed across stage like ocean waves. A dancer succumbed to the atmospheric pressure of a tweet storm, while another journeyed across stage with her head buried in the sand. A dancer wrangled with a microphone, transforming it into a phallus in an ode to all the women who have been quieted by a dick with a mic. Dancers pantomimed eating broken glass while listening to news headlines. Dressed in fringed blazers, one dancer sings a heart-breaking song where “try to keep up” is repeated over and over with increasing desperation while the ensemble pushed down and rebounds up with increasing speed.