Empathy

In the utopia of Peace, Love, and Dance, empathy provides the foundation for a compassionate and just society. Empathy is the ability to understand someone else’s emotional response to an experience whether or not you have been exposed to a similar situation. Active listening—concentrating on what is being shared rather than inserting one’s own thoughts—is necessary to achieve empathy. Empathy and active listening are manifested in the way the dancers feed off of one another for movement vocabulary and energy throughout the performance. During the performance, dancers provide unspoken support for their peers by extending a helping hand, enduring the same pain, and experiencing the same frustrations. Dancers in the production share in the experiences and emotions of their peers like community members do in everyday life.