Dancing From the Heart

MCDC brings real issues to the stage

Comments (0) By Patrice Elizabeth Grell Yursik Thursday, Apr 26 2007

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Esteemed choreographer Ray Sullivan was a young ballet school student in New York City during the most fearful years of the AIDS epidemic. “If someone didn’t come to class, you were afraid to ask why. They might have been in the hospital,” he recalls in a voice still shaking with passion and grief. Having witnessed the ravages of the disease at close range, Sullivan remains incredibly aware that the plague continues unabated in poorer, less media-saturated corners of the world. “Africa today is everything that New York City would have been, were it not for the breakthroughs in medicine that we’ve had here in America. It’s actually much worse,” he says.

Instead of wringing his hands about the mind-boggling statistics on AIDS in Africa (According to UNAIDS, 2.3 million people died of AIDS-related illnesses there in 2003), Sullivan decided to do whatever he could to bring awareness to the issue. The hard work and dedication of the Miami Contemporary Dance Company will be on full display during tonight’s opening of Your Blood, My Blood, a performance that is bound to get audiences talking. This thought-provoking, socially relevant work will tap into the remaining hope of African cultures, and reveal the resiliency of the human spirit.
Thu., April 26; Fri., April 27