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

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,

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