THE ONES aka (Be)LONGING is a community-driven performance event reflecting our society’s collective emergence from large-scale tragedies featuring a choir of locally based performers. The project is realized in collaboration with Byron Au Yong, Aaron Jafferis and a stellar core of musical, movement-based and theatrical collaborators including Director Charlotte Brathwaite, Choreographer Ni'Ja Whi
tson, and Designer Ben Zamora. Prompted by our collective understanding and judgments around the Virginia Tech tragedy, (Be)Longing focuses on mental health and violence in a process for community performers culminating in a series of events with the performance as a central hub. Local professionals, college students, faculty, staff and community leaders form the backbone of this theatrical oratorio performance where music, neuroscience, sociology and theatre intersect in an attempt to ask and answer the crucial questions that linger. (Be)Longing is co-commissioned and developed in partnership with Virginia Tech's Moss Arts Center and New Haven's International Festival of Arts & Ideas.
