She never dances alone

Dance, dance evolution

Aeon Video has a monthly newsletter!

Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.

A joyful dance-celebration of Indigenous matriarchy

Warning: this film features rapidly flashing images that can be distressing to photosensitive viewers.

Since 2012, the video billboards in Times Square have synchronised each night – with the exception of New Year’s Eve – to showcase video artworks for the three minutes between 11:57 pm and midnight, transforming the intersection into a massive open-air art gallery. When the artist Jeffrey Gibson, a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, was invited to present his work in March 2020, he used the opportunity to celebrate the strength of Indigenous women.

The result is She Never Dances Alone, which features an ecstatic performance of a jingle dress dance – a women’s healing ritual performed at powwows – by the dancer and artist Sarah Ortegon, who is a citizen of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe of the Wind River Reservation and a descendant of the Northern Arapaho Tribe. For this piece, Gibson transforms the traditional dance by creating kaleidoscopic permutations of Ortegon’s image and pairing them with an electronic beat by the Aboriginal Canadian music collective the Halluci Nation, forging a cultural connection between the past and present. By bringing this ancestral dance to Times Square’s glowing billboards, Gibson turns a space of mass consumption into one of visibility and spiritual invocation – what he describes as ‘an ancestral call for strength and healing for all Indigenous people’.

Director: Jeffrey Gibson

Website: Times Square Arts

A riveting collage portrays a century of Inuit history, and envisions a vibrant future

videoNature and landscape

From canoes to cities, a frenetic celebration of the power of indigenous Canadians

videoDance and theatre

Dance seems to be the ultimate frivolity. How did it become a human necessity?

videoRituals and celebrations

How a village’s first totem pole ceremony in a century sparked a spiritual awakening

A night-time drive through Tokyo transforms into a dizzying sensory experience

videoBiography and memoir

As her world unravels, Pilar wonders at the ‘sacred geometry’ that gives it structure

We publish hard-won knowledge from real people who have grappled deeply with their subjects.

We publish hard-won knowledge from real people who have grappled deeply with their subjects.

Your donation, whatever the size, supports our mission to ask the big questions and deliver fresh, original insights from leading thinkers.

If you value what we do, will you support us?

Your donation, whatever the size, supports our mission to ask the big questions and deliver fresh, original insights from leading thinkers.

If you value what we do, will you support us?

I would like to donate:

Select amount (US dollars):

videoDance and theatre

Deep, free, elemental: a dance to celebrate women, in the world’s deepest diving pool

Come ice-fishing in the deep Canadian winter with an all-Indigenous, all-female crew

videoFilm and visual culture

It’s a beautiful, brutal life in this award-winning animation from 1977

Sign up to our newsletter

Updates on everything new at Aeon.

© Aeon Media Group Ltd. 2012-2026. Privacy Policy. Terms of Use.

Aeon is published by registered charity Aeon Media Group Ltd in association with Aeon America, a 501(c)(3) charity.

© Aeon