Composers and playwrights are teaming up with choreographers from San Francisco’s Robert Moses’ KIN dance company for three shows this month that focus on a growing global impulse toward educational suppression, caste restriction and censorship.
Moses created the “New Legacies” program as a way to bring groups of artists together to address contemporary issues through art-making and collaboration. Dance is a way of figuring out, of thinking into the causes and effects of a thorny issue such as censorship, he said. The guest artists are not tasked with making dances that act out the scenario of an oppressive classroom. They are invited to investigate through dance the ways ideas are hidden or exposed.
Performances of “New Legacies: One Act Dances” are March 15-17 at the Presidio Theatre Performing Arts Center. Guest choreographers Natasha Adorlee, Khala Brannigan, and Robert S. Kelly II will work with composers Bryan Dyer, B Dukes and Vicki Randle, and playwrights Anne Galjour, PC Muñoz and Julius Ernesto Rea to create works that respond to educational suppression and silencing.
“What’s happening in Florida with critical race theory and the fear that educators are feeling about whether or not to teach well-established topics without getting in trouble — it’s like ‘1984,’” Moses said.
In June 2021, Florida’s state Board of Education banned critical race theory from public-school classrooms. In March 2022, the Florida legislature passed HB 7, also known as the Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act. The bill targets and restricts the teaching and discussion of concepts around slavery in America, white privilege and antiracism.
Moses said the issue of educational censorship is not localized or specific, it affects everyone and highlights many freedoms taken for granted.
According to PEN America, during the 2023 state legislative sessions, 110 bills relating to educational gag orders were introduced, and 10 became law.
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“It’s not OK to muffle a generation of people,” Moses said. It’s not OK to eviscerate the history of any number of groups.”
The muffling of young people by educational gag orders is extending past topics and into the abstract silencing of humanity. On January 18, 2023, the North Dakota legislature introduced HB 1526, which would have forbidden public K-12 schools from teaching that a “student’s inner feelings are capable of guiding the student’s life.” The bill failed to pass.
Creating work together is a way to move forward and try to deal with this issue, Moses said — a new way to tell the stories and respond to issues.
“We hope this program is part of a multi-year program,” he said. “That it will be an anthology of work over years dealing with subjects of particular significance.”
But the “New Legacies” collaborations are not an indication that Moses plans to slow down his own artistic output. Robert Moses’ KIN is celebrating its 29th season as a dance company this year, and Moses stays busy with choreographic commissions and teaching at universities.
“In regards to my legacy, I plan to be around for 100 million years,” said Moses. “So I’m not concerning myself with that right now. Just make the work and do your thing.”
