Light: Ballet's Reflection on Holocaust Survival

Light / The Holocaust & Humanity Project wass a full-length contemporary ballet and Holocaust education partnership directed by Stephen Mills. This project “promoted the protection of human rights against bigotry and hate through arts, education, and public dialogue” turning the spotlight on discrimination and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit. The music aspect of the work was set to five infamous choreographers and the Ballet Austin first company performed the ballet aspect of the work. Together under Stephen Mills’ artistic direction, the music and the movement depict the story of a Holocaust survivor over seventy-five minutes (without an intermission). ("Light / The Holocaust & Humanity Project."). This paper specifically focuses

on the social awareness spread amongst the Austin community, nationally, and globally due to this project. By focusing specifically on the social awareness spread by this project, this paper demonstrates how abstract art forms such as dance, lectures, and billboards can be used to create an interpretation of a Holocaust survivor’s story, amplifying discrimination and emphasizing the importance of human rights through a timely reminder of mass genocide in Nazi Germany beginning in the 1930’s.
Stephen Mills went on a quest to bring meaning to the large catastrophes that occurred in America and what they meant to our country, such as 9/11. As a renowned choreographer and artistic director, Mr. Mills felt as though he possessed responsibility to create this project. He brought the community together to answer three essential questions aroused through his project to accentuate social awareness: “How are the issues of the Holocaust relevant in our community today? What is our responsibility when confronted by acts of bigotry and hate? What actions can we take to promote understanding in our community?” (Mills, Stephen). “How are the issues of the Holocaust relevant in our community today? What is our responsibility when confronted by acts of bigotry and hate? What actions can we take to promote understanding in our community?” (Mills, Stephen). Through Mills’ extensive research, he discovered that during the Holocaust, political prisoners, homosexuals, and artists were segregated, despised (as well as those with a Jewish association), and placed into concentration camps. Decades later, society continues to fire an incessant hate towards individuals and social groups that are different and do not assimilate. Through this project Mills emphasized that the responsibility of the American people is to put an end to the hatred and ostracizing of those who are “different”, as well as to set a precedent for other countries to follow suit. He felt that those who observe bigotry and hate are also obligated to share the story they witnessed and spread awareness for what is occurring to ward against any sort of segregation. This complex project, after much time and dedication, diffused across the nation and ultimately globally after its debut in April 2005 with sounding reverberations still resulting today.
Because everyone comprehends stories, lessons, and societal issues differently, Mills ensure that Light / The Holocaust Project provided a variety of ways for the community to become involved.

A large, well-publicized project with a multitude of varying mediums such as art, lectures, meetings, workshops, music, and dance, has a better chance of registering with a larger portion of society than a smaller, less-publicized project with a narrow-minded approach. That is was caused Stephen Mills’ project to stand out against all other Holocaust memorial dances or dance projects as well as have lasting, intrinsic, universal quality. Mills said his work was inspired by visits to Nazi death camps in Europe, the Holocaust memorial in Israel and interviews with Holocaust survivors, particularly an Austin woman, Naomi Warren. But he says "Light/The Holocaust and Humanity Project" is deliberately abstract to be about all forms of intolerance and violence. "We're not going to Israel to teach anybody about the Holocaust,” explained Mills, "I don't equate bullying with systematic murder ... but the other side of it is that suffering cannot be measured, nor can someone's capacity to endure. I didn't start this project because of my own demons, but through this project I was able to exorcise many of them," he said. He mentioned that the harassment he's suffered as a homosexual informed his work and added that he hoped it could do the same for others. (Tomlinson,

Chris).
Considering all of this, Stephen Mills extended the original idea of just a ballet, to an entire project to incorporate writers and visual artists and politicians as well.

The first leg of project was a large art exhibit from Israel that was displayed along the river of Austin promoting tolerance and coexistence. Thirty-two billboard sized posters sat on Town Lake for a month in busy downtown Austin, open to the public for viewing. Exposing intriguing artwork such as these canvases captured the eyes of general “Austinite’s” as well as the eyes of tourists. The posters embodied keywords such as ‘bullying’ and ‘discrimination’ and ‘bigotry’ through imagery to portray a larger-than-self concept (hence the billboard

size).
The second leg of the project was a series of lectures, including Dr. James Young and holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, addressing the concept of not being a bystander. A Rwanda Genocide survivor revealed a contemporary example of genocide. As a result of these first few pieces of the project, Town Hall meetings were called by the mayor to converse about the conflicts occurring within the community between the police department and the Austin African American community. Survivors had the ability to spread awareness through empathy, while doctors utilized recent studies and reports to establish facts.
Another leg of this project was a teachers institute, where 70+ social studies teachers gathered for a three-day-intensive packed with lesson plans covering previous bullying and discrimination cases in school. They studied with the education committee of the National Holocaust Museum in DC in hopes to translate a change within the classrooms predominantly with bullying in schools. The local PBS constructed a live discussion about the project to continue to diffuse the information being displayed throughout the different legs of the project as well as to acknowledge the various unique ways the Austin community was coming together to combat these issues.
Finally, the dancers were all educated on the subject matter and a ballet was created beginning with the biblical story of Adam and Eve, the Earth being propagated and rituals being developed. This was then counterbalanced with the story of what happens once someone becomes a target, and is grudgingly transported to a camp, and who watches others step off of the circle of life right before her eyes. Most importantly however, at the end of the ballet, after revealing such degradation and humiliation, the final scene takes a startling turn toward lightness, with a happy almost pastoral theme set in a blue light, impacting the audience through movement, music, and lighting. “Even Mills said he finds the ending challenging, but he wanted to stay true to what Holocaust survivors had taught him during his research: there was still life, there was still love, and there was still opportunity.” (Tomlinson, Chris).
Critics raved about the piece when it debuted in Austin, stating that the project “marked Ballet Austin’s most ambitious- and successful- venture in linking extraordinary art and social consciousness” (Lomax, Sondra) and “aimed to teach about hate’s effects” (Van Ryzin, Jeanne Claire) with “compelling impact” (Lomax, Sondra) and “the vulnerability of their nakedness.” (Faires, Robert). The praises continued as Light / The Holocaust Project swept across the nation, and community leaders and key figures (outside of Austin) began to pledge against bigotry, hate, and prejudice- especially in Miami, Denver, and Pittsburgh. Contrary to popular belief, using contemporary dance, lectures, and billboard-sized canvases as tools to convene society and portray a dialogue about the Holocaust, about genocide, about human rights, and about bullying was extremely effective and received a nationwide response that eventually travelled globally. Since its world premiere in Austin in April 2005, Light / The Holocaust & Humanity Project travelled to Pittsburgh from September to November 2009, culminating in performances by the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre. The project returned to Austin from January to March 2012 with forty-six community partners engaged in the community collaboration. Headlines in local Austin papers read, “Critically acclaimed contemporary ballet by Stephen Mills returns as the centerpiece of an unprecedented community-wide human rights initiative.” (Ballet Austin). The City of Miami hosted the project from late August to November 2012, with performances and community dialogue hosted by The Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. Denver, Colorado welcomed Light / The Holocaust & Humanity Project from January to March 2013, with performances by the Colorado Ballet. Finally, the work debuted internationally through a three-city tour to Israel, September 18th to October 2nd, 2013. ("Light / The Holocaust & Humanity Project.").
Finding the Holocaust to be catastrophic yet beautiful, Stephen Mills insists that artists must be rigorous about their thoughts and actions because he believes that’s when transformative things can occur. “Art provides this protective veil through which we can look at difficult subjects and we can see where we fall down, even catastrophically, but we can also see where we triumph... Art doesn’t change the world, people change the world, but art can be a catalyst for that change if it enables people to think about those issues.” (Mills, Stephen) Through art forms such as dance, lectures, and billboards, this project spread social awareness of individual human rights locally, nationally and globally providing a platform for other social art projects to follow.