"At the end of the show, we don't turn the lights off or fade them out. The lights fade up on the audience to drive home the point that it's continuing and involves the audience," says Shira Greenberg, Artistic Director of Keshet Dance Company, describing the end of the ballet Ani Ma'amin. Ani Ma'amin means "I believe" in Hebrew, and the piece is an exploration of the Holocaust and its many and reverberating implications. 

Ballet Austin's Light/The Holocaust and Humanity Project and Megan Kendzior's Witness deal with the same subject matter from different perspectives, and the concept of shedding light is common through all three dances. Each grapples with the fact of genocide -- both as an historical reality of unfathomable scale and as something with personal and immediate meaning at the level of the individual. All three dances remember and honor the victims and survivors, and each is committed to initiating dialogue and reflection on the power of choice.

"Every decision we make has value," says Kendzior. "It's a challenge and a form of empowerment to live knowing that each choice has the potential to snowball into something positive or negative."

Ballet Austin's Light/The Holocaust and Humanity Project Photo by: Tony Spielberg

Kendzior explores the power of choice not only by challenging the audience to reflect on individual responsibility, but also by incorporating it into Witness' creation and evolution. The piece has been staged in different forms and with different groups of dancers since its premier in 2009. Each time, Kendzior works with her dancers through an in-depth research and discussion process, then hands many of the choreographic and artistic choices to the dancers. The dancers have to constantly decide how to express their experience of the dance's content, which may be different every time. "The work raises so many feelings -- grief, anger, ferocity, hope," says Kendzior. "It's about the history and the research, yes, but it's also about our personal lives and what we make of these lessons and feelings every day. The piece itself is very improvisatory and it becomes a platform for the investigation of decision-making."

Raising awareness of the power of personal choices to shape the world is an important goal of all three works of art. Keshet Dance Company engages with high school students studying World War II and follows performances with extensive discussion sessions.

"It's amazing. Sometimes kids tell you that they hadn't heard of the Holocaust before. It's so important that we can bring this in a way they can understand from a human perspective. Often the discussions at schools move from what's happening in the world and current events to kids earnestly asking, 'What can I do?' Asking that question and thinking about the meaning of their actions at their own schools or in their own circles is a huge step," says Greenberg.

"I was in such agreement with the last woman who spoke [a survivor who delivers a message via video during Ani Ma'amin]," says a student of Keshet's curriculum. "She says that we still have not won the war of racism in the world today, and how she felt sorry for us. I just thought that statement was so true. Some people may think that nothing too bad happens in the world today, but we don't realize all the labeling we do, and at such a young age."

Keshet Dance Company's  Ani Ma'amin

"Sometimes dance can be very self-focused. This ballet isn't," says Ballet Austin's Aara Krumpe. "We have to do this together. The company grows together going through it as a family and having the audience want to talk about it is the best part."

Krumpe describes her experience dancing the lead role in Light/The Holocaust and Humanity Project as the most human and emotionally exhausting of her career. She's danced in this ballet twice, first as an ensemble member and then as the lead role. The part is based on the heartbreaking story and inspiring lessons of Holocaust survivor Naomi Kaplan Warren. Warren worked closely with choreographer and Ballet Austin Artistic Director Stephen Mills and the dancers throughout the creation of the ballet. "It absolutely changed the way I look at the world," says Krumpe. "I'm now the mother of two children. I think about what kinds of community members I want my kids to be and the lessons I want them to keep. We can't change the past, but we can learn from it. I hope it makes us more compassionate."

For all the artists involved in each of these pieces, balancing the emotional load of the subject matter with the day-to-day work of professional dance is a challenge.

Megan Kendzior's Witness  Photo by Todd Bedell

"We have to learn it in layers," explains Krumpe. "We start with all this research, and then we get in the studio and have to put it aside to just start learning the steps. We layer on the meaning as we work. By the end it's extremely difficult. We'll have to stop rehearsals to talk about it. It can be really disorienting when that rehearsal ends and your next one is for something like Midsummer."

Greenberg and Kendzior express similar sentiments. "Every time I start working with it again I have to take a deep breath and prepare myself," says Kendzior. "But I don't think I'll ever be done with it.

"It's hard to even give notes in rehearsals," says Greenberg. "There are some times when everyone's crying and we just stop and hold each other. But bringing the audience into that cycle and seeing and listening to their reactions, we feel like we have to be doing this."

Timing is another driving force behind the artists' commitment. As the generation of survivors approaches its twilight, there is a sense of urgency as well as torch passing to preserving their stories and conceiving new ways of sharing them. Organizations like the Shoah Foundation, which has collected over 50,000 video testimonies from survivors, do a vital job of ensuring these messages aren't lost. But the medium of dance offers unique and powerful modes of relating -- and relating to -- experience, for dancers and audience members alike.

"There are some things there aren't any words for," says Greenberg. Dance is such a powerful tool of communication and also of connection. This particular message is about what happens when that human connection is lost, but we try to move forward, rather than just devastate you and leave you in a puddle. It's so important to keep remembering why we need to stay connected and engaged with one another.  There is this human spirit that has to persevere and move forward, and we can only do that when we choose to, together. Ultimately, we try to reconnect ourselves and the audience to that idea. Hopefully people hold onto it and remember when making choices, no matter what is happening in the world or where."