Aniya Wingate is a radiant and talented African American dancer in high school in Houston, who was displaced from her home for half a year by Hurricane Harvey. Shoulders Deep translates her experience of displacement through dance, poetry, and performance. Aniya’s fear, despair, and alienation give way to the salvation, comfort, and love of family and village, where she finds the support to transform trauma into artistic expression. 

The film is about the existential threat to our home in the era of climate chaos and the regenerative power of coming back home after disaster strikes. Love is central to Aniya’s journey of recovery, and her movement becomes the physical expression of that love.

Director’s Statement: John Fiege 

When I first began to develop a film about art and environmental justice on the Gulf Coast in 2016, I soon found Walter Hull and Urban Souls Dance Company in Houston. They were working with young dancers in profound ways, mentoring them in the exploration of their own stories and vital social issues within the Black community. Walter wasn’t just training dancers, he was mentoring powerful, capable, compassionate, and inquisitive human beings and helping them develop the skills to use art as a force for social change. 

Shoulders Deep comes out of their work and is related to the feature documentary we’re making about Aniya Wingate and her journey, called Raising Aniya. Environmental justice is a difficult issue, but Urban Souls shows how an artistic engagement with difficult issues can produce both beauty and change.