Name: What Does PURPLE Sound Like? by Sydnie L. Mosley Dances
Start: 2025-02-04T19:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-02-04T20:30:00-05:00
Location: Eisenhower Auditorium

What Does PURPLE Sound Like? by Sydnie L. Mosley Dances

𝙒𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝘿𝙤𝙚𝙨 𝙋𝙐𝙍𝙋𝙇𝙀 𝙎𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙙 𝙇𝙞𝙠𝙚?
A multimedia art installation with excerpt performances from 𝘗𝘜𝘙𝘗𝘓𝘌: 𝘈 𝘙𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘪𝘯 𝘕𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘚𝘱𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘴
By Sydnie L. Mosley Dances
7 p.m. Tuesday, February 4, 2025
7 p.m. Wednesday, February 5, 2025
2 p.m. Thursday, February 6, 2025
Eisenhower Auditorium
𝗣𝗮𝘆 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗶𝘀𝗵, 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝗱𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁:
Stage seating is limited for each performance. No tickets will be issued for this general admission event. You will receive a confirmation email with the option to pay what you wish.
Registration link: https://forms.office.com/r/nZMF9eBRZy
𝙒𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝘿𝙤𝙚𝙨 𝙋𝙐𝙍𝙋𝙇𝙀 𝙎𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙙 𝙇𝙞𝙠𝙚? is a visual and performance art installation that celebrates the older adult communities throughout central Pennsylvania. The experience features local community participants in performance alongside SLMDances artists in excerpts from the dance company’s work PURPLE: A Ritual in Nine Spells.
In the creation of the work, SLMDances looked to Alice Walker’s 1982 novel The Color Purple for inspiration: Textile arts are tools of transformation and liberation. Bolstered by two years of community engagements and re-imagined for the Eisenhower Auditorium stage, What Does PURPLE Sound Like? invites the audience to an on-stage gallery installation featuring quilts by Shani Peters and on loan by Dr. Kim F. Hall; short films by Orion Gordon and Veleda Roehl of RAH Productions; with photographs and additional video footage by Center for the Performing Arts multimedia specialist Michael W. Fleck.
Excerpt performances from PURPLE: A Ritual in Nine Spells invites participants reacting to instructions to an invitation to be comfortable in their seat, into a breathing ritual, to exchange roles and physical places between performers and witnesses, and to participate in performance as ceremony.
“The stage is our altar. Building a visual work of sacred objects, we break convention by having conversation in real time as an offering and an imagining about what PURPLE is and does,” Mosley says. “It enacts a world where Black communities and womxn live just and self-determined lives, where we all feel permission to tell our stories, healing through breath and community care, and joy.”
𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗯𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗘𝗻𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗿𝘁𝘀.
Event cover photo by Effy Gray.