Choreographer's Note - The Amazing Adventures of Grace May B. Brown

 

 

The primary components of The Amazing Adventures of Grace May B. Brown are dance, song, music, and narration. Each scene is written to move into and out of a dance sequence. The narration is spoken and gestured. Someone or something should always be in motion. Weaving together dance, song, music, and narration as what I call a contemporary folk/performance we set off for an adventure in multilayered and multisensory storytelling.

 

Grace and her supporting cast/family have learned to laugh, to imagine, to cry and to shout life into being what they want it to be. They receive life as a gift. The legacy of their ancestral lessons is what they take into the future as a way of making the world around us a better place to be/long.

 

Grace May is an idea, not a person. She is the irrepressible light inside of anyone who has ever asked, “Who am I and where does my strength come from? How can I make a difference? How are we important to one another and where do I belong now?” This dance theater work wants us all to know, “You are Grace and you belong everywhere.” Grace is always present and we have all earned it just by living life. Even for just a moment, living life is believing and believing knows Grace unbound.

 

Journeying with ancestors, friends, and sheroes our stories are part of a shared history. Shaped by curiosity about humankind, the cast treat life like an adventure full of gifts. These characters were raised as loved and valued in their homes. They were nurtured and sent on their way to share a sense of justice and humility. With a dash of thought-provoking salt and vinegar, humor and deep sincerity, this work speaks of self and others as treasures in a world that reciprocates with confusion and sometimes with hostility. In spite of it all one is reminded to move through filled with Grace. -A. E. Woods Valdés