A Symbol of Me (A Dream Project) sifts the making and transference of the pieces of our identity. The students of ACES Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven, CT, grades 9 – 12, built an atmosphere of agency, and trust between themselves and the audience. This co-creative process, generated movement from black-out poems based on the dancers personal goals and aspirations. Crossing the four-sided stage, the dancers gave the audience a piece of fabric with words from their poems ranging from “reach” to “dinosaur.” In the midst of trios and quartets, the performers threaded the fragments of their aspirations onto a thin elastic string that once completed was taken and pulled from the audience to create constellations requiring collaboration with each other and the audience.
