About 15 girls of high school age hold hands and, following the directions of an instructor, mirror one other. They press and pull without releasing their grip. The instructor then asks the girls for words that describe a location. They tell her "around, over, under and through." The participants watch as the instructor demonstrates each preposition by moving her body. The instructor is as graceful as a ballet dancer, and so are the girls.
Related video: Sisters of the Circle
The participants are part of Sisters of the Circle -- an after-school community theater program, produced in part by Roanoke's Jefferson Center that teaches 14- to 18-year-old girls from other countries language skills and promotes cultural awareness.
Theatre arts and women's studies professor Ann Kilkelly helped found Sisters of the Circle three years ago after the former artistic director of the Jefferson Center started a similar program in Maine.
"I think performance really has the capacity ... to allow young women to say important things that they have to say about their lives to other people," Kilkelly said.
Sisters of the Circle meets weekly for two-hour rehearsal sessions that offer workshops in varieties of dance, from Caribbean and West African rhythms to hip-hop and community singing. The girls also perform a variety of performance exercises, including story circles where each member of the group tells a portion of a sequential tale. Facilitators of the program take excerpts from the stories and other performance pieces and put them into a script. After months of rehearsals, the girls' work is showcased in a final performance.
The girls attend Roanoke City Public Schools but hail from Haiti, Honduras, Eritrea, Somalia, Kenya and Liberia (where most of the girls are from). Some of the participants are African American and a few are Roanoke natives. There were about 35 girls at the first meeting in January.
Sisters of the Circle encourages conversation among its members.
"Many things come up, (like) war, torture, rape. All kinds of experiences of women. But also they're teenagers and they love to sing and dance and they can be extremely silly and they're extremely energetic. And tend toward the wild a little bit, just behaviorally. They're amazing. They're vibrant," Kilkelly said.
Kilkelly recalled issues the girls brought up last year. The girls spoke of seeing various family members killed and of walking from Somalia to Kenya.
Kilkelly said that though the stories were upsetting, the girls wanted to share their experiences and used dance as a medium to express themselves.
Asha Mricle, a native of Ethiopia and an 11th grader, has been a part of Sisters of the Circle for two years and said sometimes they've discussed Ethiopian people's struggles, which include not having food or water and fighting.
While many of the issues the girls have experience are very serious, there are lighter cultural issues that come up in their meetings.
One day last year during a break in rehearsal, the girls got into an argument about food preparation.
The Liberian girls and Haitian girls were arguing with the African American girls about preparation of chicken.
The Haitian girls said that chickens knew Sunday was the day they were going to be killed, so if you wanted to eat chicken, it couldn't be on Sunday.
Kilkely said the Americans were shocked that one of the Liberian girls said she killed chicken herself.
"It was very funny, the Liberian essentially started teasing, 'oh, we love to eat the lips of the chicken and the best part is the feet,'" Kilkelly said.
The Liberian girls' retort was that the Americans didn't know what was in the chicken they bought at supermarkets and that Americans eat hot dogs, which are made out of intestines and other meat products.
This moment in rehearsal became a scene in the girl's final performance and Kilkelly described it as hilarious.
"We learned a lot from that," she said. "We learned about our sense of what was really important."
Kilkelly said the facilitators listen to the girls and give them back their words. Part of the goal of Sisters of the Circle is literacy.
"Many of (the girls) grew up in camps, in refugee camps, many had seen, I have no idea still how much misery, war, death in their own countries. But also some of them had been here for quite a while, like seven or eight years. So their command of the language was widely diverse," Kilkelly said. "They're beautiful, they're talented, but some of them aren't literate in our sense. Most of them are now because they've been in school for a while. Some of them came without a written language. Even the ones that can't write in any language speak in several languages."
As of right now, Sisters of the Circle is only open to girls.
"The need is really there for the young women. I think they suffer a great deal because of conflicting cultural expectations of them as women, adjusting to a new culture," Kilkelly said. "Listening to what they have to say about themselves intersects with broadening their opportunities and sense of themselves as smart, independent, empowered people."
She also said that during performances, they try to teach the girls to break away from mass media stereotypes of women which are unrealistic and hyper-sexualized.
"I think it's really important for young women to have an environment in which they can be free as women. I think that gender boundaries, gender distinctions, especially on young women have an effect. I think they have an effect on men as well," Kilkelly said.
Sisters of the Circle will try to get the Jefferson Center's visiting artists to speak with the girls.
"These artists that are from their home country or working in different ethnic traditions or just women are really inspiring to the girls, especially someone who is from Africa for example who is an international star. And comes in and says to them, 'You need to understand you have a place in the world. You can go back to your countries and help girls get educated and many other issues we discuss,'" Kilkelly said.
Jefferson Center visiting 24 year-old artist Esperanza Spalding, a jazz and instrumental music bassist, composer and vocalist, spoke to the girls on the afternoon of Feb. 4.
Spalding, whose bass instrument is a few inches taller than her, began her presentation by teaching them an important element of jazz music: Improvisation. She asked the girls to shout out a line individually and then add on to the original story.
Spalding reflected on how what one girl said changed the meaning of what the other before her said and how that is reflective of how fluidity of jazz music.
"You can never convince anyone to work harder than you," Spalding said, suggesting the girls should stay in high school.
Spalding also mentioned that she observes people and when she meets someone with a skill she's like to have, she practices for it.
"A teacher can show you exercises on a sheet you can draw from. The important thing is to be your own teacher," Spalding said.
She emphasized the importance of being an expressive individual.
"No one knows everything about the world around you. If you can take it and break it down, that's a useful tool."
Volunteer and theatre arts alumna Sarah Hoffman said the girls were "mesmerized" by Spalding's appearance and hopes the girls gained a great appreciation of their own imaginations.
"Your creative process is your own. And there are lots of ways to be creative. And lots of ways to do your own thing and that's an OK thing to do," Hoffman said.
This is her first semester working with Sisters of the Circle and she became involved because of her interest in how performing can make a statement.
"I'm really interested in the way that theater helps facilitate communication," Hoffman said. "The whole idea was using theater and dance to help create this alternate mode of communication between these girls."
Hoffman said what they're doing in the early phase of rehearsal is teaching the girls how to use their bodies to communicate ideas.
Despite the age gap, she and volunteer and junior theatre arts major Alisha Saunders have shared some of the same interests with the girls.
"Everybody loves Beyonce," Hoffman said.
Saunders has noticed that the girls want to intermingle. Sanders said they don't hang out in groups based on interests, like dancing or singing; they've all been good at meeting each other.
"They're so expressive and even the ones that are really quiet in the corner, if you give them the right thing to make a machine of, they're there and they're loud," Saunders said.
Working with the girls allows Saunders to show the girls what she is passionate about.
"It gives me a chance to spread what I love to do. A lot of times when you're in theater, you do a show and only the people that come to see are the people that are affected. But I like doing community stuff and getting it out there. Especially for girls that are younger, it's good to help people find the things they love to do," Saunders said.
Eighth-grader Brittany Brizendire said she likes how she can come to Sisters of the Circle and express herself.
"When you come in here and have the worst day, it will make you feel better," Brizendire said.
At the end of the Feb. 4 session, Kikelly had the girls gather in a circle and asks for new members to share where they're from.
One is from Sudan, another is from Haiti and one hails from Liberia. Newcomers also include two girls from Iran, which is the first time Sisters of the Circle has had anyone from that country.
Stephanie Cheridieu, a William Fleming High School student, is from Haiti and said she has learned about new people and cultures.
While the work of the graduate and undergraduate students, facilitators and volunteers is important, Kilkelly said the spotlight needs to shine on the sisters of the circle.
"There's a lot of people that make theater and performance with communities," Kilkelly said. "I also have to learn this lesson over and over again. The communities have the knowledge, the local knowledge that is important."