Multidisciplinary dance artists Sam “Asa” Pratt and Amadi “Baye” Washington (Baye & Asa) join UMD School of Public Health professor and activist Jennifer Roberts for a conversation about HotHouse, commissioned for The Clarice’s 2022-23 Season. HotHouse is a commentary on confinement by exploring how our failed response to COVID-19 has unmasked the greater systemic failures of America. This durational installation interrogates through a dance/theater performance lens how and why inequities that predated the pandemic–in healthcare, housing, education and incarceration–erupted at the center of our political discourse.

From themes of racial violence and cultural appropriation to multiculturalism and gender equality, the work of The Clarice's artists is complex, provocative and deeply sensitive. Arts Citizenship Talks (ACTnow) are opportunities to hear from these artists about the issues reflected in their works. These conversations are an invitation to act now!