Dances Written Inside Prison Come to Pasadena in Documentary Screening

When California prisons shut down visitation in March 2020, the men who had spent Friday afternoons dancing with choreographer Suchi Branfman at the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco began sending out something unexpected: written dance instructions, mailed from their bunks to the outside world.

Those choreographies—deeply personal, imagined in confinement during a pandemic—became “Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During A Pandemic,” an award-winning documentary that will screen on Wednesday at Flintridge Center in Pasadena.

The 36-minute film transforms six dances written by incarcerated men into performed works, narrated by formerly incarcerated artists.

The screening, part of the “Let’s Talk Let’s Listen Community Series” hosted by Pasadena’s Organizing for Progress, will be followed by a panel discussion that brings an unusual combination of voices to the same stage: the film’s director alongside a Pasadena police oversight commissioner, a formerly incarcerated advocate, and a Pasadena City College student who is also formerly incarcerated.

Branfman, a choreographer and professor at Scripps College, began working inside California Rehabilitation Center in 2016, creating what she has called “a critical dialogue about freedom, confinement, and ways for surviving restriction, limitations, and denial of liberty through the act of dancing.” When COVID-19 ended in-person visits, the project adapted. The incarcerated dancers—Brandon Alexander, Richie Martinez, Landon Reynolds, and Terry Sakamoto Jr.—wrote choreographies and sent them out. Outside artists then performed those written dances at sites throughout the Santa Monica civic center area, according to the project’s website.

The film won Best Documentary Short at Global Shorts and The Impact Docs in 2021.

Panelists include Branfman; Susan Bustamante, an organizer with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners who spent 31 years incarcerated before her sentence was commuted in 2017; Philip Argento, a retired Los Angeles Superior Court judge who serves on Pasadena’s Community Police Oversight Commission; and Rudy Martinez, a formerly incarcerated student in Pasadena City College’s CORE program, which supports students impacted by incarceration.

The venue itself reflects the evening’s themes. Flintridge Center, at 236 West Mountain Street focuses on breaking cycles of poverty and incarceration through workforce development and youth programming in Northwest Pasadena and West Altadena.

The screening begins at 7:00 p.m. Wednesday, January 29. Contact Florence Annang at 626-487-7259 for more information or visit poppasadena.org.

POP describes the “Let’s Talk Let’s Listen” series as community dialogue events addressing social justice issues in Pasadena, according to a press release announcing the screening.

“I always feel free when I dance,” wrote Carlos Rivas, one of the incarcerated choreographers, in describing the creative process behind the project.