When Megan Brandel started the Open Arms Dance Project she wanted a way to let anyone create art through dance.

And when Open Arms Dance Ambassador Heather Marie joined the group six years ago, she found an inner joy and peace.

The pair joined Gemma to talk about their upcoming performance of THREADS on Thursday, April 28 at the Morrison Center in Boise and their mission "to create greater joy and compassion with dance that opens hearts, minds, and arms."

Read the full transcript below:

Gemma Gaudette: You're listening to Idaho Matters. I'm Gemma Gaudette.

Gemma Gaudette: The music you're hearing right now comes from the group, the Afrosonics. It's a new outreach project between the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights and the Open Arms Dance Project. Open Arms is a community of dancers of all ages and abilities who use their diverse bodies to create art and healing. On Thursday, Open Arms will premiere their dance, which is called THREADS at the Morrison Center at Boise State University, and they want to invite all of us to take part. So, joining us live today are Megan Brandel, the founding artistic director of the Open Arms Dance Project, and Dance Ambassador Heather Marie. I want to welcome both of you to the program.

Megan Brandel: Thank you so much, Gemma.

Heather Marie: Thank you, Gemma.

Gemma Gaudette: So, Megan, oh, it's so great to have you guys and the music. Sounds so great. Megan, what is the Open Arms Dance Project and why did you decide to create it?

Megan Brandel: I created it in 2008, so over 13 years ago, and I created it to perform at the World Special Olympics that were held in Boise in 2009. And it is inclusive in the broadest sense of the term, but more specifically of people with and without disabilities. And those disabilities can be either seen or unseen. So, we might have a dancer in a wheelchair, or we have dancers who you're not even able to tell they have a disability.

And we try to blur the lines between who has a disability and who doesn't and who helps each other. And we all just are this big supportive community. The other aspect is we are multigenerational. So, ages seven to 76.

Gemma Gaudette: Oh, wow. So, Heather, how did you get involved with open arms?

Heather Marie: I got involved about six years ago. I was taking an adaptive dance class and some of our dancers were at that and they said, oh, come check out Open Arms. And one thing led to another. And here I am.

Gemma Gaudette: What's it like when you when you get on stage and you're able to perform?

Heather Marie: Oh, it's very uplifting and it makes me feel very happy. And it just makes my heart and my soul just full of joy. To be performing with our group.

Gemma Gaudette: So, Megan, you do a lot of dance performances. To us about this particular performance coming up at the Morrison Center and what people may see and experience.

Megan Brandel: Yeah. So, this is oh, this is our first time performing on the Morrison Center stage, which is amazing for us.

Gemma Gaudette: Yeah.

Megan Brandel: And it really, you know, being on any stage, but especially the Morrison Center stage, helps us literally amplify and project our message out there in really wonderful ways. The Morrison Center is brilliant in that they will be able to do full stage projection of this, these wonderful plants moving through water. It'll project all over our bodies during one of our sections of perspectives. That's our dance, one of our live dances. And there's just so many capabilities at the Morrison Center to make this performance both accessible for us as dancers. There will be over 12 dancers with disabilities on that stage, which is pretty trailblazing. I don't know that that has ever happened there before and then also accessible for audience members. So, there's a ASL interpretation which the Morrison Center does all the time. It's the first time that we have offered that as Open Arms and there's audio description for blind audience members. So that's all super exciting.

Gemma Gaudette: And Megan, you're also showing a mini-documentary. It's called "Upstanders with Open Arms." What's that about?

Megan Brandel: Oh, gosh, this is amazing. And I just got to see it two days ago, and I need to share it with Heather still because she's a big part of this. And I'll let Heather talk about this, too. I brought the ambassadors to two separate schools with second graders. I took the Wassmuth Center curriculum, Upstanders, anti-bullying curriculum, and we taught it through movement and really embodied it. And then one of the schools we taught at had students, lots of new Americans and refugees that spoke at least nine different languages. And so, I reached out to the Afrosonics and I said, can you make a song with a bunch of different languages that really then has this curriculum in there also? And that's the song you just heard. But Heather yeah, what do you think of the Upstander program?

Heather Marie: I really love it because it intertwines dance and also the importance of the anti-bullying in our schools, which is such a big topic today going on with the students. And it taught us how to teach them how important it is to love everybody using our dance, no matter what our disability or age, that we're all the same and we all have a message and we're all important. And that really was special just to see how the kids interacted with that and getting to dance with them was really special in that way, too.

Gemma Gaudette: And Megan, you mention that this amazing music that we heard at the beginning of this segment does come out of this new anti-bullying program. Can you talk about the song itself? I mean, it was just lovely and so uplifting.

Megan Brandel: Yeah. So I reached out and I've been working with Dayo and Todd of the Afrosonics, and I gave them a list of the languages the kids speak. And then through Global Lounge, they brought in different performers. There's a rap section and there's this lovely big section, I believe, in Swahili. I don't know what it says, but when I let those second graders dance to it, there was one little girl who speaks Swahili and she just came alive and she, like, stepped up and started dancing. And so I am really excited to figure out what that section says that inspired her to just jump right in there. And it spoke to her and in her own language. And that was beautiful.

Gemma Gaudette: Heather. What does dance mean to you? What is it like? And then even more so, what will it be like to be up on the Morrison Center stage? I mean, this is a big venue.

Heather Marie: Yes, dance is important to me. I have a disability that affects my balance. It's called cerebral palsy and it makes my balance really uneasy. And so dance has been very strengthening and empowering for me over these years. And it's given me an inner joy and an inner peace that I never really had. And so being able to express that through the movement that we've created on the Morrison Center stage is just going to be amazing for me and I'm really excited about it.

Gemma Gaudette: Yeah. Well, you should be. So, Megan, how can people get tickets? Because the performance is this Thursday at the Morrison Center.

Megan Brandel: Yeah, it is. And so just go directly to the Morrison Center box office or their website and that'll take you to Ticketmaster. And the tickets are we have $5 tickets for anybody with a disability. For students, seniors and military. And then you can choose between $15 or $20 tickets if you don't fit into any of those groups.

Gemma Gaudette: Well, best of luck to you. What a wonderful thing you are sharing with the community. We are going to actually play some more of that amazing song from the Afrosonics right now. A big thank you to Megan Brandel, the founding artistic director of the Open Arms Dance Project, and Dance Ambassador Heather Marie, talking about their performance of THREADS. It's this Thursday at 7:00 PM at the Morrison Center. Thank you both so much.

Megan Brandel: Thank you, Gemma.

Heather Marie: Thank you, Gemma.

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