The Word in the Wings
By: Kaya Prasad
Company artist Anna Si connects her performance in Walk This Road to a very personal experience with the grief of Holy Week, and she hopes the audience will feel hope through this story. Continue reading for a window into our conversation!

The Word in the Wings
By: Kaya Prasad
On the first day of the week after Jesus is crucified, he appears to Mary Magdalene and to his other disciples, demonstrating even to the most doubtful that he lives again (John 20). Later, while Peter and some of the others are out fishing, Jesus shows up on the shore, generates a miraculous catch, and prepares breakfast (John 21:1-14). Then Jesus has an important conversation with Peter. Peter’s answers to Jesus’s questions and the turn Jesus makes in the second part of the conversation include imagery and vocabulary that illustrate how Peter’s faith has matured since before Jesus’s death. The way this dialogue fits into the larger narrative of Holy Week shows the centrality of Jesus’s presence with his disciples for his call on their lives.

The Word in the Wings
By: Kaya Prasad
Amber Aufiero is a first soloist with Glorify Dance Theatre. For Amber, dance is a powerful medium that forges connection and expresses in ways beyond words. It’s both personal and communal, and dancing allows her to walk the line between vulnerability and security. Amber has graciously shared some of her heartfelt reflections on her expression in movement and her role in Walk This Road.

The Word in the Wings
By: Kaya Prasad
John’s Gospel gives an account of Jesus’s trial and execution that centers around questions of kingship and power. The dialogue in John 19 among Jesus, Pilate, the Jewish religious leaders and others who are present illustrates two drastically different approaches to power. Through the contrast between those who adopt a political philosophy of expedient violence, on the one hand, and Jesus who submits to violence against himself, on the other hand, John’s account of Jesus’s crucifixion points to the hope that the peace of God’s kingdom is more powerful than this world’s armies and emperors.

The Word in the Wings
By: Kaya Prasad
Jesus and the twelve are reclined at dinner…As they converse, the disciples are trying to understand what Jesus is telling them, but Jesus doesn’t exactly clear things up with simple answers to their questions. Instead, he often returns his own questions, challenging the disciples’ assumptions in order to lead them to deeper understanding of his purpose in departing. Along with repetition of verbs describing “going” and departing, a recurring theme throughout this dialogue is the nature of Jesus’s relationship with God the Father. Jesus uses descriptions of this relationship to help the disciples understand where he is going.

The Word in the Wings
By: Kaya Prasad
With performances of Walk This Road coming up this Easter, I wanted to talk with a few of the dancers about how they experience the story of Holy Week through this ballet. Join me for a wide-ranging conversation with Audrey Hammitt and Katie Mills-Yatsko where they share about themes of expectation and the tension between light and darkness that give the ballet its emotional shape.

The Word in the Wings
By: Kaya Prasad
Shape is a basic element of dance; every movement involves some arrangement of a dancer’s head, arms, legs and other body parts in relation to each other. Shapes of the body, as with shapes in geometry or visual art, may be symmetrical or asymmetrical. While symmetry conveys balance and stability, asymmetry is often more stimulating to thought and emotion (Humphrey 56). Moreover, an asymmetrical shape of the body must either work to maintain balance or move into a subsequent shape.

The Word in the Wings
By: Kaya Prasad
Doris Humphrey states that dance often strips down narrative to a small and particular subject matter (39), making room for abstract expression of affect and idea (57). The primary purpose of dancing is not always to narrate events chronologically. Instead, dance latches onto and exaggerates impulse, the idea that motivates a movement, rather than relating the events that precede and follow. Even so, dance does tell a story. But rather than relate ordered events or replicate literal actions, dance externalizes the development of emotions, relationships and abstract ideas that we often process internally and express through dialogue and relatively reserved social actions.