What’s Next for Barbi Leifert? She is expanding by using the moving figure to express something else beyond dance. “It’s not just dance for dance’s sake,” she says. “I’ve painted over sixty plus of new dance paintings where dancers are the harbingers of a deeper message rather than the message of dance itself.” This transformation evolved after her Dancers Palette series, which depicted imagery of dance for the sake of dance. In her next series, Moving Meditations, she began placing the figures in the environment: ocean, icefall, desert, garden, and waterfall. Her next series is motivated by bringing diverse people together and “praying for our future”—to move in the direction of the good energy and not toward the bad matrix that is motivated by greed, power, money and the oppression of others.
Six images have been laid—groups of people in various poses are suggesting that people are rising up together. People are concerned about the environment, finding a common ground, and are relating to the mountains and minerals, the forest and the atmosphere. And the earth.
What started out as dance for dance sake has now become dance for the sake of expressing something metaphorically more important than dance. This isn’t about being centered on yourself. The message has expanded beyond being twenty years old and relying on your body as a sole instrument. The new work is not about dance for the sake of technique but dance is an expression of choreography expressing a message and a meaning much larger than dance for the sake of dance itself.
This new phase of Barbi Leifert’s work could only could have happened after she created so many paintings and a new direction naturally emerged. Barbi Leifert says, “When your heart is broken, make art. - The making of art has a purpose in society. This is the time when people have to stand up for each other and for people who are less able to and for people who are afraid. I want to use my art for that purpose.”
New Expressions | Movement with a Message
by PR for People Team