On June 6, 2021, Baltimore’s Full Circle Dance Company will present The Healing Project, a deeply collaborative new work funded by a Creativity Grant from the Maryland State Arts Council. With Artistic Director Donna L. Jacobs and company member Shaela Davis providing choreographic leadership, this work for film explores the ways we are feeling and healing in the face of multiple challenges, including the pandemic and the crisis of racial inequality and police brutality.

Filmed in Baltimore City at Harriet Tubman Grove and Wyman Park Dell by local filmmaker James A. Burkhalter, The Healing Project features an original score by Baltimore-based recording artist Jasmin “Jazzo” Walters. Tickets to The Healing Project film premiere and live post-performance discussion are free to all.

To create The Healing Project, Jacobs and Davis gathered raw material—movement and text— from an extremely diverse group of dance artists whose contributions reflect their individual, family, and community experiences of the extraordinary circumstances of 2020. The choreographers then layered and interwove these disparate stories into a finished work exploring such themes as isolation, injustice, and trauma, as well as the ways people and communities can build strength, heal wounds, and create hope.

The June 6 virtual performance will include the first public screening of The Healing Project followed by a live virtual discussion of the work and of the circumstances from which it emerged. Moderated by well-known artist, actor, and teacher Maria Broom, this open conversation is intended to foster connection, creativity, and a healing exchange of ideas.