Sunday, April 19, 2026 at 2:00 PM to Sunday, April 19, 2026 at 5:00 PM
18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica
**Dancing abolition, community, care, justice** **Sunday, April 19th | 2PM – 5PM** **1639 18th Street. Santa Monica, CA 90404** **Free + Open to the Public, Registration Required** *With Bernard Brown, Terry Sakamoto and other members of the Dancing Through Prison Walls community* Through performance, dance, poetry, storytelling, and conversation, we will engage the community with issues of caging, policing, and realities of life within the California prison system, as shared by system impacted and “free world” members of the Dancing Through Prison Walls community. Spanish translation provided. “In a world where we dance with, believe in, and cherish one another; we rise on wings of unity. Only together, may we be free.” -Forrest Reyes, DTPW collaborator inside CRC prison Bernard Brown will perform choreographies written inside Bayamon Correctional Institution in Puerto Rico, narrated by Terry Sakamoto Jr. - Poetry reading by formerly and currently incarcerated DTPW community members, (both in-person and on zoom from within prison.) - Discussion about experiences within, and implication with, the carceral system, in small break-out groups, led by the artists. - Salsa as sustenance session – led by DTPW dancers. - Closing; continuing the abolition conversation together and within our own Communities Supported by Santa Monica Bay Area Human Relations Council, 18th Street Art Center, and the Doan Foundation Spanish translation provided by the City of Santa Monica Justice, Equity, and Diversity program. **About the artist** Dancing Through Prison Walls is a California-based dance and performance project whose mission is to dance with, choreograph with, and tell stories within embodied carceral landscapes and beyond, amplifying voices of incarcerated people, and addressing mass incarceration. Begun in 2016, the work embraces a porous community of incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, and “free world” dancers, choreographers, visual artists, and performers. The resulting hours of dance, dance making, performance, film creation, writing, and community conversations comprise a body of work that is at its essence a critical dialogue about freedom, confinement, and ways for surviving restriction, limitations, and denial of liberty through the act of dancing. Moving towards their North Star goal of decarceration and abolition, they dance through prison walls. **For more information contact:** https://www.dancingthroughprisonwalls.org/ dancingthroughprisonwalls@gmail.com ##