Dance tour raises awareness to end trafficking

(Vatican Radio) Two professional dancers put their Christian faith and talent together to found a dance company, Without Words Movement, dedicated to the abolition of sex trafficking worldwide.
Only one year later, Mikaela Clark and Mackenzie Clevenger Valley brought their choreography, A Broken Road, from Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States, to the streets and stages of Bucharest, Romania, and Rome, Italy.

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Clark and Valley organized flash mobs on busy streets and public squares, as well as performances in subway stations and on stage. The response, they said, was very positive.

“Many women (who) are trafficked from Romania, from Eastern European countries, end up in Western European countries. So, many of the women here in the streets in Rome, for instance, are actually from Romania,” said Valley, explaining why these two cities in particular.

“We created a piece about the broken road that these women are unfortunately travelling,” she continued. “Often these women feel that the only choice is death or that this road leads to death. But with our hope in Jesus, we wanted to show freedom and perseverance and a hope for change and a hope for good.”

Clark said they saw many “different faces of sex trafficking” during their two-week tour. While dreams of a better life or romance may trick some women into being trafficked, and social ills, such as poverty and lack of education, seem to perpetuate the problem, Clark said the “common denominator… is that people need to be loved”.

“Ultimately, there’s a need to be loved… this need to love and to be loved,” she said. “And the only thing that we have found that can (meet this need) is Jesus Christ.”

The two dancers shared how Without Words Movement began. “We actually had no intention of starting a dance company,” Valley recalled. “(But) through prayer, we began to feel God’s heart for the broken and lost, especially those affected by this issue. And so it was really God challenging us to bring the kingdom of God through what we do best, which is dance and choreography.”

Dance, said Clark, is an effective way to raise awareness about this difficult issue because it “has a way of going past the intellect and really connecting to the heart and the emotion of people”.

In addition, Clark continued, “we would like to use our bodies as a redemptive and freeing method for these women and men”, whose bodies “have been abused through these acts of injustice”.

“We feel that as dancers we can use our bodies to speak for those who have no voice.”

Report by Laura Ieraci