Dancing Through Walls

DANCE PROJECT

Dancing through walls is a dance exchange film project. The project takes dancers from Reading into our cities and brings dancers from those other cities to dance in Reading. This project is meant to showcase the beauty of our city as well as give local dancers a chance to explore other cities. 

On October 25, six children and their parents jumped into two vans (to social distance) to head to New York. Their destination was the Populous in Queens, NY to perform two typical Mexican dances. The youth and some of the parents had never been to New York before and were happy to see parts of the Big Apple for the first time.

Dancing Through Walls is a new dance film project by Barrio Alegría that hopes to address the old saying "poverty builds walls." We hope to transform this narrative to one of positive, opportunity, and as a way to open the invisible walls that enclose some of our city residents. This project is an opportunity to exchange information, culture, and traditions between our residents and other cities.

Artists from Reading were partnered with artists from cities like Hershey, Philadelphia, New York City and New Orleans as a community exchange. Artists traveling to Reading were filmed dancing throughout our city, and Reading artists did the same with their respective partners cities.

The 2020 Dancing Through Walls Dancers come from a variety of backgrounds and show how diverse our community is. This project reminds us how important it is to create spaces for art styles to thrive and to encourage research, exchange, and exploration in artists in order to grow understanding and empathy.

Dancing through walls dancers showcased a variety of dance styles, and their music was eclectic! 

Click on the videos below to listen to the music tracks that some of the dancers choreographed to.