Spring Split Bill ‘ 26 |
Rot At The Root
Performances by: Dancers of the University of Alabama & Nashville Dance Collective
Choreography: Kate Fleming & Taylor Randolph
Excerpt of Magnolia in the Mud at Dark Side of the Moon hosted by Satellite Dance. Video by Morgan Keen 2026
Nashville Dance Collective presents their annual Spring Split Bill ‘26 featuring Rot At The Root - two acts of intimately related dance choreography exploring how Southern purity culture and Christian doctrine shape women’s bodily autonomy and agency, and how the construction of white female purity is entangled with histories of racial violence in the American South.
Featuring dancers and work from Nashville, Huntsville, and the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa!
Saturday's show includes a silent auction with Arts baskets, workout classes, and more!
While not explicitly depicted, this work engages sensitive subject matter, including sexual abuse, self-harm, and suicidal ideation. Audience care is encouraged.
Arrival Details:
May 29 | FRI | Doors at 7pm. Show at 7:30pm.
May 30 | SAT | Doors at 7pm. Show at 7:30pm.
Price:
Free - Option for donations included
About ACT 1
Jezebel | Kate Fleming
Director's note: This work emerged from my lived experience within evangelical purity culture and the ways religious discipline inscribes itself onto the body. I am interested in how obedience, shame, and restraint are learned somatically — long before they are consciously understood — and how the body continues to negotiate those teachings even after belief has fractured.
About ACT 2
Magnolia in the Mud | Taylor Randolph
This work explores women’s relationship to bodily autonomy within Southern purity culture shaped by Christian doctrine. Through a lens of inheritance and expectation, the work considers how the female body is formed and regulated by communal belief systems that define what is “pure,” “good,” and acceptable.The piece reflects on how these inherited structures live in the body— and how they might be held, resisted, and re-imagined through movement.
White Mangolia | Kate Fleming
A dance work that interrogates the relationship between white female purity and its role in racial violence against Black men in the American South. Drawing on the magnolia as a literary symbol of white womanhood, the work exposes how this constructed ideal has been used to justify lynching and sustain racial hierarchies. The piece confronts the violence embedded in the identity of white women in the American South.
