By Cassandra Hardman, Staff Writer

The light was dim, and everyone was focused towards the front of the room were the spotlight was on the performer and the dream. Each student performing had chosen to share what they saw as an expression of their own views, ideas and opinions towards civil rights. UNCG’s Guarantee Scholars Association presented an arts performance, “I Have A Dream 2.0,” which featured multiple spoken word performances and dances.

One performer, La’Diamond Lowery, a UNCG freshman, decided to perform a dance she knew from church. The dance was along to one of the most recently known gospel songs, “Take Me to the King”, by Tamela Mann. “Take Me To The King” is a Grammy nominated song and according to syntaxcreative.com, once the song had been released it remained at the top of the gospel radio charts for more than 25 weeks. Lowery said the power of the song and the feeling of just letting all worries and dark clouds go and giving it to God when you hear the song play, is the reason why she waned to dance to that specific song in the first place.

Another dance performance came from two members of our own UNCG’s Blue Dynasty Dance team, Tomarra Hawkins and Daesha Morris. The two decided to dance to the song “A Dream,” by Common that features Will.I.Am, a track that comes from the 2006 film “Freedom Writers”. The song also includes samples of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have A Dream speech. Although it’s not the samples of Dr. King’s speech that grasp your attention, it’s the 47 bars that Common drops on the track. The chorus of the song is Will.I.Am repeatedly singing, “I have a dream, that one day, we’re going to work it out, out, out”, which is accompanied by Dr. King’s voice playing over the track. Then easily moving to the beat, Common delivers complex lyrics loaded with illustrations of realistic pictures and quick rhyme schemes. The lyrics of the song itself gives it so much meaning but the dance performed built it into something even more striking.

Two others, UNCG Freshman Amber King and Junior Christian Fowler shared spoken word pieces. “I spoke on what I felt there was to still work on,” said King. She said that she feels we all as people still can progress in civil rights and the ways in which we judge one another, but that she believes it has gotten better. Fowler shared a piece that he said he had written in high school. He has since added more to it and arranged other things into his spoken word piece to fit into his performance for the night.

Everyone appeared to be very passionate about his or her involvement in the “I Have A Dream 2.0” performances and more than happy to have been able to share with others in the UNCG community.