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LOS ANGELES — A poet and a group of dancers from California came together to inspire kids everywhere to stop bullying.
Azure Antoinette has been a commissioned poet since 2008 and told KSL her mother inspired her to write.
“My mother is responsible for my interest in literature, the joy I have for words and the love I have for writing,” Antoinette wrote in an email to KSL.
Antoinette worked with dancer and choreographer Jessica Starr with Muse Dance Company to create a video about anti-bullying. The Muse Dance Company's mission is to “encourage dialogue on social issues through our art” and Starr decided to focus on cyberbyllying.
Starr asked Antoinette to write a poem to inspire others to stop bullying, and she says writing the poem was “challenging.”
“Jessica asked me to write it as my 11-year-old self,” Antoinette wrote in the email. “What I realized toward the end of the process was that it had little to do with my age. This has everything to do with basic human decency. On and offline.”
Jessica asked me to write it as my 11-year-old self. What I realized toward the end of the process was that it had little to do with my age. This has everything to do with basic human decency. On and offline.
–Azure Antoinette
The poem is called “953K- Inspiring Action Against Cyberbullying.” The video features school-age children in a classroom and begins with those kids bullying one girl in class, mostly through the Internet.
Antoinette appears in the video as their teacher, reciting her poem.
“I can't remember when laughing was for joy instead of making fun of the way someone looked or spoke or where they were from,” Antoinette recites in the video as kids dance around her. “You know, sometimes, it feels like it's safer to be alone. At least alone, we'll never have to face falling down in front of others.”
The video was made in support of National Bullying Prevention Month for October, but Antoinette said she wants the discussion to continue.
"We would love to see consistent support outside of Bullying prevention month,” she wrote. "Just because the awareness for the month is ending, does not mean that human beings are not still the victims of this terrible trend.”
The video has garnered almost 900,000 views on YouTube and Antoinette said they are “blown away” by the comments section.
“No one can actually have 953, 721 friends,” she says in the video. “No one person would be comfortable with 4.5 million human beings actually following them. See, we could all settle to be a little more heart and a lot less bully and a lot more human and shut down our necessity to live in a world whose religion is merely cyber.”
To learn more, visit musedancecompany.com.
