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WEKU
Brandon Gates

A dance about gun violence is touring nationally with Alvin Ailey's company

Ode is choreographer Jamar Roberts' tribute to Black victims of police brutality. (Paul Kolnik/Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater)

Jamar Roberts did not initially know he would create a piece to address gun violence. But he did know he needed dance to cope, after years of headlines about its victims: Michael Brown, Tamar Rice, Philando Castile, Jordan Edwards and many, many more.

"It's the first thing I thought I needed to do — just for my own self, to help process what I was seeing in the media," Roberts told NPR. "It didn't really come out like 'Oh, I want to make a dance about this.' I just started sort of moving. It just appeared."

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