For Nashville choreographer Diane Kimbrough, her route to a career as a professional dancer was influenced by her family history. A descendant of Ukrainian Jews who fled during the Pogroms of the Russian Empire, for Diane, leaning on resilience in the face of scrutiny is practically an inherited trait. Today Diane speaks with poet Patricia Alice Albrecht about the precariousness of breaking into the world of professional dance, how a family history of self-reliance helped propel her forward, and how her decades as a professional entertainer have given her the courage to face down intolerance and hatred. Then Patricia braids the parallels of Diane’s ancestral and professional histories into poetry.
Versify is a production of Nashville Public Radio and The Porch, Nashville’s nonprofit literary center. Editing for this episode came from WPLN’s Mack Linebaugh with additional editing by Anita Bugg. The episode was written, hosted and produced by Joshua Moore. Today’s story and poem were recorded by Luke Wiget at Congregation Micah in March 2018.
The music is by Blue Dot Sessions. The show is distributed by PRX.
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