- The collaborative nature of how contemporary choreographic processes work.

Being exposed to that for the first time, it's like I knew that that's what I wanted to do.

Hi, I'm banning Bolden.

I am the founding artistic director of New Dialect, and I am a choreographer.

There was no real contemporary dance training or a professional contemporary dance company available in Nashville in the eighties and nineties.

When I was growing up here, I started new dialect in Nashville after several years of working professionally in cities like Stockholm and Paris.

I, I worked in New York quite a lot after I graduated from Julliard there, I just saw like many of us did in 2007, 8, 9, 10, that God, why couldn't it happen in Nashville?

I was meeting talented dancers here who were taking classes, and the only difference was they just hadn't been exposed to some of the same influences that I had been able to have by traveling to other places.

Also, to have access to opportunities to collaborate with each other, create new works, and then ultimately bring to Nashville audiences a kind of performing arts and dance experiences that hadn't previously been available in Nashville before.

I would say a through line in my body of work is really, it starts number one with collaboration.

Another really strong through line is my interest in working sculpturally and using functional objects in non-traditional ways.

With 21 yeses, I would say that these LED tube lights also very much exist like lifelines between the dancer's bodies creating these sculptures, but adding a whole new dimensionality of light and lighting design, which also I think contextualizes the work in a really powerful way.

We're observing the power of being witnessed and being witnesses as we're bringing these physical affirmations forward in each dancer's body and in these powerful partnerships, we're watching them witness each other and also the audience taking in what it is to be witnessed.

If you are passionate about seeing performing arts continue to have a strong presence in our city.

There's so many wonderful projects and artists who are here in Nashville making work support.

We need your support.