Culturs TV sat down with Kayla Banks, a multicultural dancer, to talk with her about her impromptu video dance piece, “Eye for an Eye” in the first of a three part series. Banks’ dance piece is all about connection mainly highlighting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Banks said she doesn’t see herself in the piece but sees the dancer as a symbol and a way to communicate the topic.
Banks, whose mother is Caucasian and father is African American and Native American, really has no familial ties to Israel or Palestine however the conflict still finds ways to pop up in her life.
Banks created this video as an improvised dance to submit to Murals (Multicultural Undergraduate Research Arts Leadership Symposium) at Colorado State University. Banks decided to do a dance piece on the conflict after watching BBC’s Honorable Women. She said, when creating a project like this you “find this topic and it just speaks to you,”
After realizing her godmother’s connection with the conflict, living in Saudi Arabia, and running into a stranger and talking with him about an Israeli Summit in Fort Collins, Banks decided that the conflict needed to be addressed so everyone could work together to improve the situation.
“Everything pulled and tugged at my heart,” Banks said
In the next part of this three part series, Culturs will talk with Banks about how some of the movements in the piece came to life.
