Photo Flash: MADE TO DANCE IN BURNING BUILDINGS Comes to Joe's Pub

Made to Dance in Burning Buildings by Anya Pearson played to a sold-out house at Joe's Pub on Tuesday, April 24 at 7:00 pm.

This showcase production was directed by Jamie M. Rea and choreographed by Emily Bufferd. Anya Pearson played the character Lady of Utmost Perseverance.

Based on a true story, and inspired by the original choreopoem, Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls, the play seeks to revolutionize the theatrical experience by combining poetry, and gut wrenching contemporary dance, to tell an all too familiar story in a brand-new way.

Made to Dance in Burning Buildings is about Ava, a young black woman, who is raped by her boyfriend's friends while he watches; she develops PTSD as a result. Metaphorically, she fractures into five different women who each represent a different facet of her personality (Romance, Despair, Madness, Perseverance, and Missing You). Poetically, these women narrate her journey through PTSD while she, her first love, and her abusers explore through dance the trauma and the events leading up to it.

This performance of Made to Dance in Burning Buildings is produced by Joe's Pub and Urban Haiku Productions in association with Experimental Bitch Presents, with support from Community Partners Blue Panther Productions, NexTV Entertainment, Actor's Fast Track, Shades of Truth Theatre, and WOW Cafe Theatre.

More info available at www.urbanhaikuproductions.com

The cast includes Reese Antoinette (A Piece of My Heart/IATI Theater), Jennean Farmer (Blue Print Specials/The Public Theatre), Anya Pearson (Made to Dance in Burning Buildings creator), Aleca Piper (Graduate of Duke Ellington School of the Arts), and Monique Sanchez (Drunk Shakespeare/Meme Juice Productions).

The production features dancers Shannon Giles (Dance Captain/Celebrity Cruises Productions), Jamal Shuriah (American Idiot/UK Premiere), Jordon Waters (LUX Experience/Abrons Art Center), and Darnell Williams (After Midnight/Norwegian Cruise Lines).

Anya is the inaugural winner of the Voice is a Muscle Grant from the Corporeal Voices Foundation which is run by best-selling author Lidia Yuknavitch. The grant recognizes a writer of color from Oregon who demonstrates exemplary merit and a passion for social justice. Anya received a $10,000 grant from the foundation to help further develop Made to Dance in Burning Buildings.