SHEN JUN MOVEMENT EFFECT

When someone we love dies, our minds rebel. “She can’t be gone. She was just here. I can feel her.” Rationally we know the person is gone, but emotionally we hold on. She lives in our gestures and intonations, things we learned from her, habits we inherited, joys we shared. And continue to share.

Shen Jun lost his his mother when he was just five years old, but together they created a rich store of memories. Through the power of creative memory, Jun says, “She has been the most influential person in my life.” In his dance, “Intimation,” Shen Jun portrays the ways her love has sustained him, and he invites the audience to call their own loved ones forward. Jun is joined onstage by Stephen Anthony Dominguez and Ally Morales.

Together we will celebrate how our loved ones live in our memories--and how they continue to make themselves a part of our world while calling to us from another one.

Ellen Bartell’s contribution is called "Reclaiming Me," depicting a community of individuals longing to belong someplace, anyplace that is stable and their own. The idea came from images of refugees searching for someplace to live a normal life, from events surrounding our country's immigration policies and the effects of being uprooted because of being priced out of a community that was once affordable. The dance is communal, athletic and meditative. "Reclaiming Me" is a new work by Ellen Bartel in collaboration with her Dance Collective.

Together, Bartell and Shen invite our audience to go with us to Another World, exploring their own losses and reconnecting with their loved ones and fellow survivors.

In this collaborative circle, we combine our energies to reach each other people and traverse many worlds. The musicians working in Another World--Mario Gonzalez, Alexander Nobles, Maxx Mercer, and Ian McKinney, together as “Rebel Road”--developed their music in tandem with the dancers, sometimes provoking them, sometimes reacting to them.

This project is supported in part by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department.