Poets & Writers Theater

In this 2016 New Yorker video, Robert Battle, former artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, reminds all artists, whether dancers, musicians, poets, or writers, that “it’s important for us to, at this time, see beyond our circumstances.” Battle continues: “I think we can do that through the arts.”

“This is how you tell a story,” says narrator Tilda Swinton in a short film written and directed by Andrew Ondrejcak, which goes through six steps of a writer’s process paired with a dance choreographed by Kyle Abraham. “There is a problem. It is an obstacle so monumental that it seems unlikely our tiny protagonist will be able to overcome something so impressive. It’s a mountain pressing down, it’s a witch, a curse, a giant.”

Erika L. Sánchez reads her poem “Forty-Three,” which reflects on the 2014 abduction of forty-three students in Guerrero, Mexico, as Ashley Rockwood interprets the poem through dance for this video produced in partnership with Chicago magazine. The poem is from Sánchez’s debut collection, Lessons on Expulsion (Graywolf Press, 2017), and her debut novel, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2017), is a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award in young people’s literature.

"What hit me first before the meaning of the poetry was the musicality, the phrasing, the rhythm of it." Inspired by a recording of Dylan Thomas poems read by actor Richard Burton, choreographer Christopher Bruce created this performance piece for the Scottish Ballet. The dancers move without music, using only Burton's voice and Thomas's words as inspiration.