The 1000 Year Dance Cure

Beezy Bailey, 2016 (South Africa)

Bronze, Edition 1/8, 95 x 52 x 29 in.

“At the gallery in South Africa, I saw what I call ‘Two Yoga Girls’. They make me smile. I love their vibrant colors. At first, I only bought the red one. But then I thought she would be lonely and bought her blue companion. I placed the blue one, Bowie Dancer, on the drive by a curve, because I wanted the bright blue to get folks attention and maybe get them to slow down around the curve and in life. I put the red one, 1000 Year Dance Cure, outside the building, so people would see it and wonder, ‘What’s that? Let me go see.’ I wanted the art to draw people outside.”
–Harriet Lewis

Often Bailey’s works are accompanied by poems, such as 1000 Year Dance Cure, in which he urges the world to dance a new dance, to abandon that which does not serve us, and to embrace each other in our humanity, and the Earth in her service to us. The sources of his imagery are elusive. In his own words: “frozen dreams, images and legends enter from my subconscious, the realm of my imagination. I act as a conduit for visual messages greater than I am.”

The poem ostensibly prescribes the 1000-year dance to the world as a cure for our most lamentable human qualities, including racism, brutality, environmental ignorance and negligence. However, as the idea took hold and the work started to manifest, the dance became both a vehicle to explore resolution of personal trials and an exhortation to the world to dance anew.

Photo by Mike Sears