The first seeds of Visions of Peace were planted after USF dance professor Jeanne Travers attended the International Book of Peace unveiling in Caen, France. "I was just so inspired by the idea that someone would put such an amazing work together," she says of the experience.
The book — which contains messages of peace by princes, presidents, Nobel Peace Prize recipients, dignitaries, artists, scholars, religious leaders and poets — was organized over a period of 20 years, and after speaking with its engineer, Madame Chantal Bernard, Travers decided to choreograph a program based on the message.
After more than a year of planning and searching, Travers recruited what she calls a "wonderful, eclectic, multicultural international group," featuring Moving Current dancers and guest dancers from Paris, as well as musicians from Algeria, France, Iran and Tunisia. "Peace is an easy concept to buy into, so it wasn't hard to get the people on board; the hard part was getting funding."
A few fundraisers later, Travers had the financial support to produce Visions of Peace, and with patronage from the Mayor of Paris himself, the program premiered in France last year.
Basically, Visions of Peace is a modern dance program set to live music and chanting, with seven separate passages from the International Book of Peace recited in French, English and Arabic, before, during and after each of the program's seven sections.
For Travers, the most powerful part of the program is a dance based on a passage by Itzhak Rabin, the former prime minster of Israel, who talks about how war and terror has negatively affected humanity as a whole. "In this section of the program, I address war; to talk about peace, you have to address war," says Travers, who does so with loud percussion, chaotic movements and military-themed dance.
Visions of Peace made it debut in Tampa on Wednesday, but if you happened to miss it, you can see it this week in Sarasota.
Visions of Peace, 8 p.m. Mon., March 13, at Players Theatre of Sarasota, 838 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, $12 general/$6 students, 941-365-2494.
This article appears in Mar 8-14, 2006.