With the COVID-19 pandemic raging, the uprisings for racial justice reverberating, and the nation more politically divided than ever, the events from the week preceding election day 2020 through inauguration day in 2021 had a profound effect upon all Americans. Throughout this period, Recanati-Kaplan Scholarship students at the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center and company members from New York City area dance company MeenMoves recorded their reactions to these intensely charged historic events. These interviews were the source material for an intergenerational dance film that highlights the excitement, anxiety, mourning, shock and hope this diverse set of people experienced during one of the most divisive times in recent memory.
My Quadrennia brings this dance film to the stage as a dance-theater work, intensified by a telling of one family’s historical relationship with voting in the United States. It is a timely reminder of both the importance and fragility of the most fundamental of democratic institutions.
Special thanks to the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center: Taryn Kaschock Russell, Alison Manning, and Kristina Dominick.