Let There Be Light

Let There Be Light is an annual outdoor exhibition celebrating light through art, installation, and community gathering. Emily has created two movement works for the festival, each responding to a different aspect of light while inviting audiences into shared experiences of movement, place, and connection.

2023 - Light and Synchronicity

Inspired by the synchrony of communication among fireflies, this evening performance explored light as a form of relationship and communication. Dancers used handheld flashlights to shape the audience's attention, creating shifting patterns of light and shadow, presence and absence, throughout the performance. Photo: Will May

 

2021 - Moveable Peace

Created during the COVID-19 pandemic, Moveable Peace reimagined community gathering through a singing and moving procession. Participants met at the Ting Pavilion on Charlottesville's Downtown Mall and traveled together to McGuffey Art Center, where other festival installations were on view. Along the way, movement and song transformed the walk into a shared creative experience, inviting passersby to join and exploring the connective power of procession through public space.

Photo credits: Will May

land acknowledgment:

I live and work on the ancestral lands of the Monacan Indian Nation, a Siouan-speaking tribe of the piedmont and mountain regions of Virginia. These lands were occupied by a government that also enslaved Africans and African Americans, and the legacy of this oppression continues to impact Black and Indigenous peoples today. I support the Alliance of Native Seed Keepers, Black Lives Matter, and Showing Up for Racial Justice.