Reflection

Reflection

“To Be Blown Away” is a self-choreographed dance piece reflecting my personal journey through Hurricane Harvey, which hit Houston, Texas in 2017. I was nine years old at the time, and almost immediately after I first heard the news from my parents, my school shut down for weeks in fear of the impending severe weather. Confined to my home, I watched in fear as the sky darkened with angry gray clouds and relentless sheets of rain poured down from above. Every day, the eerie sirens of severe weather alerts on my parents’ phones screeched as they warned us about flash floods and imminent thunderstorms. It became oddly normal to hear daily updates and see shared images of buildings and homes that have been destroyed beyond repair by the hurricane. As a little girl, I felt lost and helpless amongst all this chaos. I found myself looking out the window every day singing “Rain, Rain, Go Away” over and over again, clinging to the childish hope that the nursery rhyme could work its magic and keep the hurricane from tearing apart my city. Recently, the inclement weather in Houston made me once again recall the devastation during Hurricane Harvey. Now that I am older, I understand that this fearsome weather is not caused by angry, crying cloud fairies, but by climate change and excessive CO2 in our atmosphere. It breaks my heart to see the way we are carelessly destroying our planet and Mother Nature, who has sacrificed so much to allow for our growth. Why can’t we as a society, turn our focus away from profit and trends, and instead work to patch up the deep wounds our actions have inflicted on Mother Nature’s skin? This dance piece captures the anxiety and distress hurricanes impose on coastal citizens. It is a call to action, urging us to change our ways of life so we can mitigate the destruction caused by such terrible storms.