Presented by Works & Process as part of the Works & Process Underground Uptown Dance Festival, see highlights from Company Stefanie Batten Bland’s (2023 Grantee) Embarqued: Stories of Soil. A ship mast rises from the stage and reaches toward both our past and our present—recalling slave ships, memorials, and monuments—as meanings unfurl through dance. This dance-theater work, performed by an extraordinary cast of five, is based on an excavation of self and country that is expressed through textiles, skin tones, labor, land, humor, and moving bodies, offering rich storytelling and a visceral journey toward wholeness, connecting people and places through an unfolding time continuum. The work invites reflection of our shared history and interrogates our relationship with memorialization, revealing post-colonial foundations and mythologies.

Woven into the performances, Jerome Robbins Dance Division Curator Linda Murray moderates a discussion with Batten Bland, Lloyd Knight, Jack Ferver, and Jeremy Jacob.