What happens when dance stops entertaining and starts confronting power? In this Afro contemporary performance, Chicago’s Red Clay Dance Company weaves movement traditions of the African Diaspora with bold, theatrical imagery to explore Black stories of joy, resilience, and resistance. The Company performs an excerpt from the evening length work Freedom Square: The Black Girlhood Altar created by Artistic Director & Founder Vershawn Sanders-Ward. Blurring the line between performance and protest, the company invites viewers to feel the weight of history in their bodies while imagining freer futures.

Filmed at TEDxChicago, this work embodies the company’s Artivism: using the stage as a platform for community, conversation, and change. Red Clay Dance, Chicago’s premier Afro-contemporary dance company, is an award-winning ensemble of versatile and dynamic dance Artivists that tour and perform locally, nationally, and internationally. The company is the brainchild of Vershawn Sanders-Ward, the institutions’ Founding Artistic Director & CEO.

Red Clay Dance is committed to taking its signature “Artivism in Motion” from the stage into learning environments, with community engagement serving as a vital part of its creative process and village-building work. Over its 17-year history, the company has toured and performed at venues such as the Jacob’s Pillow, The Yard, The Harris Theater for Music & Dance, Dance Center of Columbia College, the DuSable Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, ODC Theater, Dance Mission Theater, The Painted Bride, Joyce Soho, and the National Theater of Uganda.