It’s been a while since I’ve been around art that’s so good it’s moved me to tears. That was my experience watching the Brooklyn based ‘FLEXN’ dancers at their show at Dartmouth Moore Theater tonight. Their show was rich and exciting, vibrant and packed with emotion that was conveyed through their intricate movements and passionate dance pieces. In a culture where popular entertainment and the dance scene has become overly sexualized and real issues plaguing society swept under the rug, I particularly appreciated the change of scene and atmosphere where potent issues were addressed through dance. Every single movement was carefully crafted to tell the stories of racial injustice, police brutality, suicide, incarceration, drugs and drug abuse, gangs, love, loss, and self-harm to name a few. The dance pieces were not just artistic in nature but told real stories about real people.
Dance as a form of art that impressed deeply upon me from a young age, and time again I have found myself wishing I was resilient enough to put in the time and energy to do it and do it well. But that’s almost always been because I thought it looked good, and it was always cool to have the label of a ‘dancer’ as part of my identity. But beyond the artistic display on a stage, and the applause that comes with doing a few cool tricks, FLEXN showed me how much more power dance can have. For the FLEXN dancers, their movements were a form of release, and more importantly in this war, it was a form of protest. Like the singers and toi toi dancers of South Africa who danced their way into the post apartheid era, the FLEXN dancers unapologetically brought their neighborhoods, families and friends to the stage and made the audience pay attention to their plight. Their style has been described as electrifying, the language of their music, ‘Strong.’ The Hopkins center at Dartmouth advertised their show as a ‘celebration of the new dance form, flex…’ No Dartmouth. They were not on your stage to celebrate flex. They were on your stage to give you a message. Black people are dying. Gun violence is real. Police Brutality exists. Racism is still with us. Low-income neighborhoods are unsafe. Poverty is in your borders. Something is wrong. What's your response?
FLEXN as a form of protest is genius and accessible. While members in the audience who share similar backgrounds as the dancers can relate to their pieces, those who do not, have an opportunity to engage in conversation with the artists in a safe enough space. After the performance was a question and answer session where the artists got to unpack the pieces that they did and share a bit of their lived experiences outside the stage. It was an opportunity for those in the audience who could thoroughly relate with the dancers to find some solace in watching their authentic experiences narrated by their own. On the other hand, it was also a good opportunity for those who may otherwise not go out of their way to find out what life on the other side of the racial, and socio-economic barrier looks like to be educated. People flood theaters to watch good performances – why stop the protests in the streets or on social media? Why not take them to the theaters too?
