Rest.Rise.Move.Nourish.Heal. Premieres

In June 2023 Red Clay Dance Company returned to the land with Rest. Rise. Move. Nourish. Heal., a site-responsive dance ritual choreographed by our Founding Artistic Director & CEO Vershawn Sanders‑Ward in collaboration with composer and music director avery r. young, filmmaker Jovan Landry and costume designers Kelley KFLEYE Moseley and Evelyn Danner. The world premiere closed out our 14th season at Art on the Farm in Grant Park and fulfilled a dream seeded by our 2021 National Dance Project award from the New England Foundation for the Arts. Developed on urban farms stewarded by Urban Growers Collective, the work was envisioned as “a practice, a process, an uncovering of the beautiful labor of bringing us ALL home to land, reclaiming ancestral cultural traditions, technologies, and tools that can lead to individual and collective healing”.

A Ritual Rooted in Artivism

Rest. Rise. Move. Nourish. Heal. is more than a performance—it is a dance ritual. Guided by the rhythms of avery r. young and filmed by Jovan Landry, dancers and community members moved together across the farm, re‑enacting practices of care, nourishment and spiritual return. As part of our ongoing commitment to Artivism—art + activism—we offered sliding‑scale ticketing to ensure equitable access and invited audiences to bring chairs or blankets to witness this embodied journey. The performance encouraged participants to reconnect with ancestral relationships to the land and to imagine collective healing through movement and story.

Looking Forward

The success of Rest. Rise. Move. Nourish. Heal. set the tone for our upcoming 15FORWARD season. We remain grateful to NEFA, the National Endowment for the Arts and our community partners for making this project possible. As we move into our 15th anniversary year, we carry forward the lessons of this ritual—rest, rise, move, nourish and heal—into every aspect of our work.