Things to Remember from Virtual Teaching and Learning Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic

Abstract

In 2016, I began a five-year choreographic residency inside the California Rehabilitation Center, a medium-security state men’s prison in Norco, California. The project developed into a critical dialogue about freedom, confinement, and ways for surviving restriction, limitations, and denial of liberty through the act of dancing. The in-person residency abruptly ended in March 2020, when the California state prison system shut down programming and visitation due to COVID-19. I rapidly revised the structure, and the incarcerated dancers began sending out written choreographies from their bunks to the outside world. The resulting collection of deeply imagined choreographic pieces, written between March and May 2020, was dubbed “Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic.”

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Scripps College Internal Review Board (IRB) determined that this project does not require IRB review. Names used in this article have been changed in the spirit of care and confidentiality.