Inside the walls of New Mexico’s juvenile detention centers, dance has become a quiet act of creativity. For nearly three decades, Keshet Dance Company’s Arts and Justice Initiatives have transformed confined spaces into sites of creativity and agency.
Now, that work moves beyond locked doors once again with the fourth interaction of Movement for Mercy, a contemporary dance production that brings the choreography and stories of incarcerated youth to public audiences.
The latest iteration of Movement for Mercy will preview in Albuquerque on Nov. 7 and 8 at Keshet Center for the Arts before premiering in Los Angeles the following week at the Odyssey Theatre. Though the work is performed by Keshet’s professional company dancers, its origins are rooted in collaboration with young people who are still navigating the juvenile justice system.
“Keshet has a program called M3, it stands for movement plus mentorship equals metamorphosis,” says Elysia Pope, Director of Arts and Justice Initiatives at Keshet. “We’ve been running that program since 1997. We offer daily dance classes to incarcerated young folks in Albuquerque and Las Cruces.”
For years, the only audiences for the youth-created dances were staff members and CYFD administrators. The emotional impact of those small performances sparked an idea for something larger, a chance to fill the script.
Rather than bringing audiences to see the performance in detention centers, Movement for Mercy brings the voices inside the locked doors to the general public. The professional dancers who teach in the M3 program learn choreography and movement phrases directly from their students, carrying those stories into public performances.
“We, the teachers and dancers, will go inside, teach our regular classes, learn this choreography, and work on these collaborations with students,” says Pope.
This year marks the fourth iteration of Movement for Mercy since its creation in 2020. Each version evolves through new collaborations, depending on who is participating inside. The 2025 production includes choreography and ideas from young people at both the John Paul Taylor Center in Las Cruces and Bernalillo County’s Youth Services Center, as well as some choreography from several youth now post-release.
The process to create the production is deliberately slow.
“One of the principles of the M3 program is moving at the speed of trust,” says Pope. “We want to make sure that we are taking the time that we need to, to allow our students to feel safe and comfortable.”
Though Movement for Mercy is rooted in New Mexico, its reach now extends beyond state lines.
The company recently received the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project Award, enabling a partnership with two Los Angeles-based organizations: the Arts for Healing and Justice Network and Project Knucklehead.
“While Albuquerque is our home base, our grant has allowed us to tour this work and to have a wider audience,” says Pope.
The Los Angeles performances will serve not just as a premiere but as an exchange, linking advocacy networks across states. For Keshet, the goal is as much social as it is artistic: to amplify the voices of incarcerated youth, raise awareness around juvenile reform and support policy efforts through community engagement.
At its core, Movement for Mercy is both art and activism. Each performance is followed by a Q&A session, where audiences are invited into dialogue. The Q&A sessions are not just about the choreography, but about the systems it seeks to illuminate.
The work doesn’t shy away from the weight of its subject matter. This year’s production grapples with solitary confinement, among other themes drawn from the experiences of incarcerated youth.
“It’s some heavy content,” says Pope. “But we want to ensure that folks know that we’re not using dance as a way to water down this content and these conversations. We are using what we believe to be a universal art form through the lived experience of our students.”
That translation sits at the heart of Movement for Mercy. Through gesture, rhythm and repetition, the dancers embody the resilience and imagination of the young people whose words and movement ideas shaped the work.
As audiences enter the theater this November, they’ll encounter more than just a performance. Movement for Mercy asks its viewers to listen differently, not to the polished performance on the stage, but to the echoes of stories that rarely find their way there.
Movement for Mercy 2025
New Mexico Preview: Nov. 7–8, 7:00 p.m.
Keshet Center for the Arts
4121 Cutler Ave. NE, Albuquerque
$0–$40 sliding scale