When COVID 19 shutdowns shuttered Kansas City in 2020, the arts community – both performers and audiences – were hit hard. At the Westport Center for the Arts (WCA), an organization offering affordable, accessible, and creative programs, plans were underway for a poetry exhibition. Kansas City Poet Glenn Stewart’s words would be posted on the walls of the WCA venue and she would read aloud. COVID stopped that type of performance in its tracks.
“We were really frustrated, but had no intention of giving up,” Stewart said. “We wanted to get the words out, literally.”
WCA President Scott Myers had noticed that Stewart’s poems were very visual. After the shutdown began, he and the WCA board had a new thought: could it perhaps lead to a more impactful online performance if the poems were interpreted by professional dancers?
Kansas City’s Dancing Word is Born Online
Poets and dancers began collaborating and rehearsing and offered their first performance live via Zoom in October of 2020. Myers found that putting the two arts together enhanced both.
“In The Dancing Word, the arts of dance and poetry merge to create a performing art and an interpretative art,” he said. “This original art form invites the viewer-listener into a unique, inner experience of beauty and meaning.”
WCA is now working with choreographer Suzanne Ryanstrati and professional dancers on Dancing Word performances. Ryanstrati says that dance has an unspoken language. “Through collaboration with spoken word artists and poets we are able to expand both of our art forms in a different way than they would be able to otherwise,” she said.
For the poet Stewart, the body movements, which may be choreographed or improv, interpret what is being read aloud. “The spoken words and movement naturally flow, to enhance the intention of the work,” she said.
While the concept of combining dance and poetry is not new, WCA believes it is being used in new and meaningful ways in its Kansas City form, the Dancing Word. The dancers and poets who are participating say it has been a valuable outlet for them during COVID, when opportunities to perform and collaborate have been limited for both.