Justice Dance Performance Project Presents Staged Reading of ‘With These Hands’

“With These Hands: Connecting Self, Community, and the Earth” was first performed at York Correctional Institution in 2024 as the culmination of a year-long performance residency overseen by the Justice Dance Performance Project (JDPP). Graphic courtesy of JDPP.

OLD LYME — A staged reading of ‘With These Hands,’ a piece developed by incarcerated individuals at York Correctional Institution, will be performed next month at the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme. 

The free performance will be held at 11:30 a.m. on May 4.  

“With These Hands: Connecting Self, Community, and the Earth” was first performed at York in 2024 as the culmination of a year-long performance residency overseen by the Justice Dance Performance Project (JDPP).

Participants at York created written pieces, dances, and songs, while working with JDPP teaching artists to develop the performance. 

JDPP will bring excerpts from the piece as a staged reading that includes narrative, song, and dance. The cast includes JDPP teaching artists from the project and women who are part of JDPP’s Stepping Out program for returning citizens in the community.

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Elizabeth started her journalism career in 2013 with the launch of The Salem Connect, a community news site inspired by digital trailblazers like Olwen Logan. Elizabeth’s earliest reporting included two major fires — one at a package store and another at a log cabin where she captured, on video, a state trooper fatally shooting the unarmed homeowner and suspected arsonist. The experiences gave her a crash course in public record searches, courthouse procedures and the Freedom of Information Act. She went on to report for The Bulletin, CT News Junkie, The Rivereast, and The Day, where she covered the Lymes and helped launch the Housing Solutions Lab on affordable housing. Her work has earned numerous awards from the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists and the New England Newspaper & Press Association. Now, after more than a decade in digital, weekly, and daily journalism, she’s grateful to return to the place where it all started: an online news site dedicated to one small corner of Connecticut.