As a dancer and choreographer, I wanted to push myself to create something new and different, something exciting for the audience regardless if they know what it’s about yet. So my idea when talking about race and racial categories is the idea of symbolic weight. Symbolic weight is the one thing that is all felt, whether you belong to the white racial category, the Hispanic, or African American. It’s the one thing we all feel regardless if we know it yet. So I wanted to give that weight an object, something tangible for the audience to be able to see and see the dancer-performer experience. So I experimented with several objects. The scarf was an object that entangled me, I had struggles taking it off my body - getting more knotted up, and having it choke me, blind me, and ultimately silence me, which I find these race concepts do. So, I wanted them to see that this idea isn’t just in the air, it’s really real. We struggle with it. And I think as a dancer a lot of times you can just show movement and they’re like “Oh, okay I get that’s really pretty.” But when I put an object of a scarf that stops me they are like what is that object? I want them to ask why what is it?

So I did another piece where I was working with a yoga ball, something that I can show that it’s heavy and big and how to interact with it. And so I was showing the struggle of having to carry it. I showed how I can also play with it. It’s very abstract but I think it can be grounded in an object in the- it. Whether it’s a scarf or a yoga ball, in which the audience can finally see the race concept. Can see the symbolic weight and that maybe they will have a connection to that.