Transition from military service often involves rebuilding the sense of identity, purpose and belonging that comes from being part of a close-knit team. Creative programs developed specifically for veterans are exploring how movement, storytelling and shared challenges can help recreate those connections, with international and Australian initiatives demonstrating how participation in the arts can open new pathways for community, self-expression and life after service.
When former United States Marine Dae Marcuz signed up for an unconventional veterans movement program in Los Angeles, he wasn’t auditioning for a professional dance company.
Less than a decade later, he is part of the technical team touring Brisbane Festival with internationally acclaimed acrobatic dance company, DIAVOLO’s production of ESCAPE.
It is a journey that captures everything the company’s decade-long Veterans’ Project sets out to achieve, not to create dancers, but to invite them into the tribe and help them discover who they could become after military service.
The program began when Diavolo’s former executive director and visionary behind the Veterans’ Project, Jennifer Cheng wanted to pay tribute to her own father’s military service recognising the company’s movement language could help veterans reconnect through trust, purpose and teamwork.
Veterans’ Program manager, former dancer and DIAVOLO’s Writer and Dramaturg, France Nguyen Vincent there were striking similarities between the company’s physically demanding, collaborative movement philosophy and the camaraderie, trust and teamwork ingrained in military life.
“By awakening the creative mind of people, even though they don’t necessarily consider themselves creative, and activating the physical body and creative mind, you access a lot of other places in the minds of people,” told OpOz in an interview from LA.
“I’m not going to say it’s therapeutic, we’re not clinical, we don’t do therapy, we are not therapists, we’re a community, and what we do is restorative.”
DIAVOLO Founder and Creative Director Jacques Heim recognised the company’s physically demanding, high-energy style could be adapted for veterans. By working together to navigate large architectural structures and overcome physical challenges, he believed participants would develop the same trust, teamwork and sense of tribe that underpins both the military and the company’s performances.
“He realised we could apply that with a group of non-dancers and that it would help create what you need to do to do this work, which is a group, a tribe and create a bond between people that can actually then act together and depend on one another,” Ms Vincent said.
Those themes echo similar work being done right here in Australia through Lieutenant Colonel Dr Rick Maher’s Dance for Veterans program facilitated by the Queensland Ballet, where movement, creativity and storytelling are also being used alongside clinical care to support veterans after trauma.
Much like Dance for Veterans, public performances are central (but not mandatory) to the program, where participants can showcase their skills and build an understanding between veterans, their families and the broader community.
Ms Nguyen Vincent explained that by recording their own voiceovers to accompany their movements during the performance gave the audience a deeper understanding of the veterans’ experiences they had never been able to express.
“It creates a huge bridge of understanding with the people we’re watching for the first time and hear that story,” she said. “It helps more than just see movement, but hearing a true story in the background is very impactful and it helps the audience understand, but it also helps the person who is telling their story to hear themselves.”
She said audience members often approached them after a performances saying they had a family member who had served but had never spoken about it and the performance had helped them understand what their loved ones must have been carrying for many years.
“It’s creating the bridge of understanding between performers, the performers together as a group and the people who are watching them,” Ms Nguyen Vincent said.
A decade on from when the veterans’ program began, about 500 veterans have taken part in workshops across the United States. Among them is former Marine Dae Marcuz, whose journey from participant to member of the DIAVOLO team will bring him to the Brisbane Festival in September.
DIAVOLO’s ESCAPE – a boundary-breaking fusion of human movement and physical structures – will be performed as part of the Brisbane Festival from September 23-27 at the Playhouse Theatre. For more information and tickets: https://www.brisbanefestival.com.au/events/escape
