How To Be Generous: Bluebird Uncaged Shares the Stage with the Atlanta Dance Community
How did you come up with the idea to share your stage and create a festival with other Atlanta dance companies?
BlueBird Uncaged is about 5 years old and our mission is to bring hope and dignity through dance. We chose the words “hope” and “dignity” because hope keeps us going in life, and dignity because everyone was put on this planet for a purpose. We need the reminder because we have a lot of people telling us who we are or who we’re not. The company members are all classically trained in ballet, but if you come to a show you will see all genres of dance.
This is our 4th official year doing our holiday production, Uncaged Christmas, but this is the first year that we have expanded it to include a festival. We’re back at 7 Stages and we have the space, so we we thought, ’let’s be generous with the space!’
{Pictured: ‘Uncaged Christmas,’ Staibdance in ‘Moat,’ Fly on a Wall, and ImmerseATL.}
Community is something that is very important to us, and the dance world is very territorial sometimes. To invite and find artists, I did a lot of fearlessly pressing send with emails. We invited everyone in our network to come dance with us. I trained at Atlanta Ballet and I’ve been part of the Atlanta dance community for a while, so I’ve been building friendships and relationships. This is the first year we’re letting other people have their individual shows during the week [when the theater wasn’t in use], and having the festival in this format.
The idea is to expand each company’s audience through the festival. I want the audience to see the range of stories that dance can tell, and maybe expand their arts vocabulary. But I’d also like to inspire and encourage the audience to keep exploring art. Hopefully the Uncaged Community Dance Festival can become an annual event. It’s really cool to see everyone collaborating and I feel very honored to have so many artists come together at once. It was a crazy idea, but now it’s really happening.
words by Rebekah Diaddigo | images courtesy of the artists
UNCAGED COMMUNITY DANCE FESTIVAL SCHEDULE
Tuesday, November 27th
5 p.m.- 6:30 p.m. Master class
6:45 p.m.- 7:30 p.m. panel discussion about finding your identity as an artist
7:30 p.m.- 9 p.m. performances by ImmerseATL graduates, Little Minute, Watershed Dance, and Kit Modus
Thursday, November 29
Friday, November 30
8 p.m. An Evening with Staibdance and Fly on a Wall
Saturday, November 1
5 p.m. An Evening with Staibdance and Fly on a Wall
Sunday, December 2
