Community Outreach
Glass Blocks/Steel Bars
Spring 2008
A Ludwig Dance Theatre reached out to Tempe and surrounding communities’ high schools by having special performances of Glass Blocks/Steel Bars. First performed in March 2008 at the Tempe Center for the Arts as a pilot study, the response confirmed the content was such that it should be presented to Valley high school students who might find themselves in a place that requires fast thinking and responsible decisions.
"In the jail I see people who have been arrested within the last 24 hours and give them 60 seconds of legal advice before they see the judge. I'm their un-official defense attorney for that day only. I hear a million stories so it's like working in a TV drama. The best way I can describe it is like working at the dog pound trying to keep the state from making an irretrievable decision that can have awful consequences." Laurie Herman, Attorney, Public Defender, Phoenix
That realization of only sixty seconds of advice before a decision that will impact a lifetime touched choreographer Ludwig and began a process that followed, through the medium of dance, the twenty four hour jail time journey: the arrest; the confinement; the anger; the remorse; one minute of counsel and then an official judgment.
Students' attendance and transportation have been underwritten, in part, by the City of Tempe, Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Board of Directors, A Ludwig Dance Theatre, and The Emeritus College, ASU.
Glass Blocks/Steel Bars, a multi media performance work that includes six dancers, full video, writing, and the accompanying live support of a public defender and a police officer.
The target audience: social studies students; students at risk; dance, theatre, music, video students; political science students; students intending to be teachers, plus a general student body of individuals who might be in places where quick or unpopular decisions need to be made.