Ballerinas perform piece about women's right to vote and go to polls for first time

Ashleigh Sewell has never voted. 

Twenty years old and focused on her dance career, she figured she would do it sometime in her adult life, maybe just not now.

Then she earned a role in a new ballet commissioned by the League of Women Voters of Nashville — a contemporary retelling of the suffrage movement — and she felt the fire.

"My vote's going to count now," she says, newly registered and ready to have her voice heard.

On Tuesday, millions of people across the country will head to the polls to cast their ballots in the 2018 midterm elections.

As they do, Sewell will slip on her ballet shoes and head to rehearsal, ready to re-enact the story of another vote that really mattered. One from nearly 100 years ago.

It's a performance with the power to inspire a company of young ballerinas, many who have just turned old enough to vote, to go to the polls for the very first time.

'Be a good boy' and vote for women

On Aug. 18, 1920 — after all the other Southern states rejected the 19th Amendment — Tennessee became the center of the women's suffrage movement.

That day, a young House representative named Harry Burn is said to have had a letter from his mother tucked into his suit pocket. It implored him to "be a good boy" and vote for ratification.

After reading it, as the story goes, he changed his vote for suffrage to a yes, and the legislature made Tennessee the deciding state to ratify the 19th Amendment.

With that as its cornerstone, Nashville Ballet's second company, NB2, will transport classrooms and audiences to the early 1900s as the fight for women's rights heats up and friends and families grapple with one of the most divisive issues of the time.

Because this is an original piece, nothing came set in stone.

During the creative process, choreographer Gina Patterson worked to give the dancers a deeper appreciation of the history they portrayed and incorporate their perspectives.

She would be in the ballet studio playing around with different movements when her face would light up. She would stop rehearsal to pull up an image from the suffrage movement and gather the dancers around to talk about it.

"It was part of the building blocks of the whole process," 19-year-old Marissa Stark says, "these little sparks of inspiration."

A few weeks ago, Patterson shared a black-and-white photo of a 90-year-old suffragette who was arrested fighting for the vote. In the image, the woman stood still, flat-faced and unemotional, holding up the dress she wore to prison.

“There’s nothing extravagant about the photo," Stark says. "It’s very plain, but it just makes you feel something. It makes you realize that something we take for granted now people were being arrested for not that long ago."

Because of it, Stark also will register to vote.

As the young dancers considered their role in the electoral process, Patterson also asked them to reflect on the civic issues that concern them. Outside of rehearsal, they wrote letters to relatives and representatives — similar to the one that Burns' mother wrote convincing him to cast that momentous vote.

Patterson used these letters and conversations to shape the ballet's narrative.

The ongoing battle for equality

"72 Steps" features a fiery climax set in the days surrounding the Tennessee legislature’s history-making vote. But it is more than that.

The piece speaks to the dancers. As first-time voters, they acknowledge the political themes that cut across generations. Their performance explores human rights, civic responsibility and the ongoing battle for equality.

"This is the first stance I am taking as a registered voter," Sewell says. "I am saying, 'This is what I believe.' "

In rehearsal, transported back nearly 100 years ago, Sewell walks through a crowd of agitated women. Around her, they are being oppressed. Their hands are over their faces, their voices stifled.

When Sewell takes a step back, she sees the form of a sheer dress standing on its own among them.

She circles it. She leans over, as if listening to its heart.

When she does, Sewell can't help but think about the heartbeat of her own great-grandmother and all the women who came before her to fight for the right to vote.

As the dress continues its theatrical movement, other young women step in and out of it, empowered and gliding across the stage. At the end, one last women steps inside the bodice. All the dancers stand behind her, holding each other's shoulders, linking arms.

"It makes me emotional every time," Sewell says. "We are all strong individuals, but we are united as one."

Except when we are not. Political change rarely comes easy, without discord. There's a specific duet, the husband and wife pas de deux, that Stark believes illustrates that tangle of expression.

In it, she plays a woman who has just discovered the suffrage movement. She runs to her husband, impassioned and embracing him, but he doesn't support it. They cover the stage, caught in the expressive push and pull of disagreement, and then he walks away.

For Stark, the vulnerability of that scene could reflect any contentious issue of today.

"It takes you to this place of not feeling heard," she says, "of really wanting that and not having the other person reciprocate."

That's why, she says, "it’s so important to voice your thoughts and your beliefs. Because even though big picture you’re only one person, you’re still a person and that one opinion could change the tides."

'Never been so excited in my life'

Skyler Levine is ready to be that one person.

The 18-year-old dancer went to the Green Hills Library for early voting two weeks ago. 

When she got there, the line stretched long, way back from the voting machine — and she was thrilled.

It was her very first time voting in a general election. 

"Waiting in a line for 20 minutes, I've never been so excited in my life, honestly," she says.

After she cast her ballot, she felt empowered.

She can't completely relate to the weight of what it was like to not have the right to vote, but in the 2016 election, she was too young to take part — and she felt silenced.

"I felt that desire to make my opinion matter," she says, "and I couldn’t because I was not old enough."

In this year's primaries, her voting location was quiet, "like crickets," she says, with only one other voter, a person who was at least 30 years older than her. 

With this ballet performance, Levine hopes to inspire young girls in the audience, instilling in them the desire to be heard.

Through their vote.

Reach Jessica Bliss at 615-259-8253 and jbliss@tennessean.com or on Twitter @jlbliss.

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See '72 Steps' and relive history-making women's suffrage vote

What: Commissioned by the League of Women Voters of Nashville, Gina Patterson’s "72 Steps" celebrates the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Through the lens of women's suffrage, it explores themes of human rights, civic responsibility and the ongoing battle for equality.

When: Saturday

Where: Harpeth Hall School's Frances Bond Davis Theatre (3801 Hobbs Road, Nashville)

Tickets: The performance is free and open to the public. Due to limited capacity, advance reservations are recommended. Go to www.nashvilleballet.com/72-steps.

More: After its premiere, "72 Steps" will enter a limited pilot engagement in Metro Nashville Public Schools as part of Nashville Ballet’s Community Engagement repertoire.

"Instilling the kind of, notobligation, but the desire to participate and vote and make your voice heard is something that I really hope the next generation is excited about," says 18-year-old Nashville Ballet dancer Skyler Levine, who voted for the first time this fall.

"I hope they’re hungry to be able to participate in a democracy and take part in issues that they’re passionate about. I am excited to hopefully have this piece bring that to people."