♪♪ Hi, everybody.

My name is Melanie Person.

I'm co-director of the Ailey School.

It's exciting.

This is the final showing of Quilan Arnold's presentation for the New Directions Choreography Lab.

Quilan, why don't you tell our witnesses -- that's what I'm going to call them today -- what you've been working on.

Arnold: When I'm courageously moving from deep listening to my inner and outer worlds, I am moving truly.

Searching for a true move is an approach to courageously embody the Ubuntu philosophy in a multitude of contexts.

I am because you/we are.

My name is Quilan Arnold.

Go by "Cue."

It's spelled "C-U-E." It's an acronym.

It stands for Create, Unite, and Empower.

I'm a follower of Jesus first and foremost and an artist, liberator, and many more, many more things.

And what I've been researching, exploring, thinking a lot about with beautiful humans that you'll witness soon is something we're calling "searching for a true move."

And so, this is pretty much a practice, an exploration, an approach.

And we do that through multiple different contexts and ways and exercises.

A lot of what we've been working on is how to authentically, however we define authentic for ourselves, how we end up expressing, authentically expressing in the moment.

How do we embody what is meaningfully true in the moment?

We'll start with shark tag.

Anybody want to be a shark?

When the shark tags somebody, they end up sitting down where they're tagged at, and they become a part of the shark's army.

They're seaweed.

And begin.

The one thing that I love about games is that you're so focused on the task and doing the thing that a lot of other inner dialogue and talk, especially judgment, starts to silence its way out.

Let's switch to a different one.

Let's do some human cars.

So, human cars is just a name for this exercise where we are going to guide and be guided around the room.

What I love about this game is that I'm being forced to surrender, to trust.

So, let's do Mirrors, Zaporah, Repetition.

Mirroring is a marriage.

How do two become one?

Zaporah -- for now I'm saying respond more than react.

Repetition -- we've talked about setting a spark to a flame.

♪♪ ♪♪ As you feel and respond to that impulse, that sparks the Zaporah.

♪♪ Aah-aah-aah!

Aah-aah-aah!

Aah-aah-aah-aah!

♪♪ So, we've had many different exercises, as you've seen here, to get at this Ubuntu philosophy, understanding that that inner dialogue, wherever we're at is beautiful, is valid, is valued.

Something that we've ended up going more into recently is how this process is also an approach to kinesthetic storytelling.

And so, here we ended up snacking, took a bite of something that we really enjoy, and then we ended up expressing our experience of that snack.

And then we also switched the subject and imagined ourselves as the snack and its experience going from bag into us.

When you are ready, we'll end up eating and then expressing.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Very beautiful.

[ Applause ] Super dope, super dope, super dope.

I desire and imagine a life, spaces, dance cultures, artistic cultures, human cultures that enter a space with "I am valuable.

I am loved because I am, because I exist here."

And so are you and so are you and so are all of you.

Now, what do we want to do together?

♪♪ ♪♪