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Red Clay Dance Company explores transformational power of land cultivation in upcoming performance

The Red Clay Dance Company, which is based in Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood, is gearing up for it’s first performance in Grant Park

NBC Universal, Inc.

With their first performance coming up in Grant Park, the Red Clay Dance Company's show aims to explore the transformational power of land cultivation.

“Thinking about a process or a journey towards healing,” Vershawn Sanders-Ward, Red Clay Dance Company’s founding artistic director and CEO told NBC Chicago.

The group calls it "artivism," or art and activism in action. 

The idea is to educate the community about social and environmental issues.

The site specific performance, called "REST. RISE. MOVE. NOURISH. HEAL." will be held Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings at Art on the Farm, located across the street from Buckingham Fountain.  It will explore the healing and transformational power of reclaiming ancestral traditions of land cultivation.

“Land cultivation is in my DNA,” Sanders-Ward told NBC Chicago.  “ This is something that my people did, and I can do that here in Chicago, and I can also share that practice with other people here.”

The dancers creative process and preparation included a trip to both North and South Carolina to personally experience a relationship with the land.

Destine Young, who has been with the company for seven years, described the impact the organization has had on her to NBC Chicago.

“It’s been a very transformational process for me. Being able to just connect back to cultural traditions around farming and just gain a deeper understanding of my relationship to land," Young said.

Red Clay Dance Company also has a long-standing harvesting partnership with Urban Growers Collective in Chicago, a non-profit that builds urban farms and gardens, providing fresh foods to communities on Chicago’s South and West sides. 

UGC also stewards the Art on the Farm plot of land in Grant Park, which inspired Red Clay’s  upcoming dance ritual.

For ticket information, click here.

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