Steps and Strikes is a choreographed film and essay layering contemporary dance with natural and industrial imagery on a foundation of personal narrative. Designed to engage audiences, from the dancer who spends little time thinking about climate change to the labor activist new to contemporary dance, the artwork’s multimedia and multi-philosophy methodology aids in its approachability. Addressing the environmental crises of our time demands the speculative imagination of artists. Ecological catastrophe intersects with environmental, social, racial, economic, LGBTQ+ justice, and other socio-cultural inequities. As culture creators, we have a moral obligation to dream of liberatory and socially just futures.
In this work, I question why the environmental movement has failed to protect us from ecological crises? The most egregious shortcoming for the environmental movement is the likelihood of mass extinction and mass human suffering during the 21st century from climate catastrophe. I argue that the environmental and climate movements neglect to place capitalism as the root cause of ecological crises. In its five-hundred-year existence, capitalism has fortified a worldview that separates people from the biosphere. As a system, it relies on the cheapening of everything from nature to energy to lives, and it stabilizes hierarchies between people and between humans and the more-than-human. By neglecting to center the ecological destruction of this global economic system, the environmental movement ineffectively advocates for change when it matters most.
Steps and Strikes is my first artwork that takes a clear anti-capitalist, leftist stance. In this regard, I take inspiration from the radical leftists, mostly forgotten modern dance matriarchs from New York City in the 1930s and 40s, such as Miriam Bleacher, Edith Segal, and Sophie Maslow. These women, with others, made up the Workers Dance League and rallied behind the statement, "Dance Is a Weapon in the Revolutionary Class Struggle." My piece is a 21st-century manifestation of this ideology with one small addition. Dance is a weapon in the revolutionary class struggle for a livable planet for all.