YBCA is thrilled to present If I Give You My Sorrows: Women Exposing Prison through Dance, an elegant and imaginative apparatus-based dance performance that explores truths about women and incarceration. Dancers float, fly, and spin on two suspended beds engineered to hold the isolation and dreaming that women in prison live through.

Along with these performances, YBCA is excited to present The Only Door I Can Open: Women Exposing Prison through Art an immersive multimedia exhibition curated from within prison. For this show, co-curators Tomiekia Johnson and Chantell-Jeannette Black asked eight currently and formerly incarcerated artists to reflect on their relationship to their bed. For some it’s a place of safety and privacy, for others isolation and angst. Spanning murals, paintings, audio narratives, and an immersive prison room installation, the artworks and stories are varied—no two alike.

Both the exhibition and dance performance share the same inspiration: a poem by co-curator Tomiekia Johnson, in which she describes her bed as ‘the only door I can open.’ In addition to Johnson, the performance also features the voices of Betty McKay and Lisa Strawn, both formerly incarcerated women.

Join us to experience these profoundly moving pieces, and step inside the artists’ unique perspectives on women in prison, privacy, and creative expression.