A body, home
A body, home is a mobile performance and engagement project that explores themes of consent, trauma, toxic masculinity and more while celebrating the brilliance and resilience of survivors of sexual violence.
Who gets to dance?
Dance Exchange artists—diverse in age, race, and gender identity—as well as students, faculty, administrators, local leaders, and community members in workshops at colleges and universities, community centers, and more around the country.
The project is co-directed by Dance Exchange Associate Artistic Director Elizabeth Johnson Levine and Nik Zaleski, a theatre artist and cultural activist. The work was commissioned by Arizona State University as part of CounterAct, a multi-year arts-based sexual assault prevention initiative.
What is it about?
With a cast representing a range of lived experiences and a narrative soundscape that captures an even broader spectrum, A body, home uses the metaphor of the moving truck to ask:
What are the traumas we’re moving from?
What needs to get packed and unpacked to move beyond a culture in which sexual assault is prevalent and normalized?
What is the world we want to move toward?
By asking and exploring these questions through movement and words, A body, home posits that because the body is the site sexual violence, it must also be—and undeniably already is—the site of healing, of strength, and of resilience.
Where is it happening?
Performed in and around a 10-foot moving truck, A body, home is a truly mobile performance that can be shared in a wide range of locations including college campuses, sports stadium parking lots, arts festivals and more.
To date, A body, home has been performed at Arizona State University, University of Maryland, and at the Dance Exchange Community and Creative Hub.
Why does it matter?
A body, home is part of an ecosystem of interventions that invites structural solutions—as well as solutions that emerge from our bodies, our stories, and the ways in which we are all connected.
Dance Exchange and its partners are currently seeking partners within universities, social service organizations, and more to host the live performance, a screening of the film version, and/or related public programming. Learn more about these offerings (which can be offered together or separately).
With committed partners, sustained collaborations and engagements around A body, home and other elements of CounterAct are possible, bringing us closer to a world in which we are all at home in our brilliant, resilient, connected bodies.
“A body, home situates healing in the site of trespass for survivors: in the body. In doing so, it paves pathways for celebrating the brilliant, resilient magic of survivors and for each of us to feel at home in our bodies.”
- Nik Zaleski, Co-Creative Director
Photos on this page by David Andrews.