Premiere of Everett’s Peace with Columbus Modern Dance Company
Overview
Sunday November 2, 2026 marked the powerful Columbus debut of Everett’s Peace, expanded and reimagined in collaboration with the exceptional artists of Columbus Modern Dance Company (CoMo Dance) as part of LoCoMotion 2025, a first-of-its-kind bus tour bringing contemporary dance into unexpected public spaces across the city.
As one of seven featured choreographers, our Artistic Director Roman Baca premiered the newest iteration of Everett’s Peace within the tour’s centerpiece event at the National Veterans Memorial and Museum (NVMM). Audience members began their journey at the Columbus Main Library before traveling together by bus to performances at East Market, the Lincoln Theatre, the NVMM, and the Grange Insurance Audubon Center.
Artistic & Community Impact
At the NVMM, Everett’s Peace was presented alongside CoMo Co-Founder Kelsey Morozow Burbrink’s Valkyrie, forming a pair of works dedicated to exploring veterans’ lived experience. Performed in Gallery 33, surrounded by Matthew Modine’s evocative photographs from Full Metal Jacket Diary, the piece invited audiences into a deeply reflective environment where art, memory, and service intertwined.
The CoMo dancers brought the emotional weight of the work to life within this immersive setting. Their performance transformed the gallery into a living dialogue between past and present, war and homecoming, trauma and hope.
To frame the work and underscore its human impact, Román prefaced Everett’s Peace by reciting the U.S. Marine Corps Rifle Creed as a poem, using it to introduce the reimagined rifle structures within the choreography and spark deeper conversations about service and war. Years ago, Everett gifted Román a journal made from deconstructed military uniforms; Román wrote the Creed in its pages during this performance, tore out the sheet, and handed it to an audience member. Later, two dancers approached audience members and wrote “This is my rifle,” crossed out rifle and replaced it with heart, then crossed out he, turning the phrase into a quiet act of protest against violence, expressing guilt and moral injury while also signaling the possibility of post-traumatic growth. These actions became physical manifestations of the imprint of training, service, and war on the body and psyche. This sequence ultimately invited the audience to witness how transformation, personal, collective, and emotional, can begin through art.
Evolution of the Work
Originally choreographed in 2018 for the award-winning documentary Exit12: Moved by War, Everett’s Peace was inspired by Vietnam Veteran Everett Cox, a close friend who has spent decades searching for peace following his service. This new version expands that intimate story into a broader national reflection.
The Columbus premiere addressed:
The challenges facing today’s veterans
The nation’s call to reexamine and roll back militaristic training
The emotional and civic landscape of the United States
The universal struggle to reconcile conflict, identity, and healing
Through movement, the dancers carried forward the spirit of Everett’s journey, his longing for peace, his resilience, and the urgent questions his story raises for all of us.
Audience Engagement
LoCoMotion 2025 allowed audiences to experience Everett’s Peace not as a traditional stage work, but as part of a shared civic journey. The bus tour format created meaningful points of connection as community members traveled together, discussed the works, and witnessed performances in nontraditional spaces.
The NVMM stop, in particular, offered a uniquely resonant context. Many audience members expressed that encountering the piece among Modine’s photographs deepened their understanding of the human cost of war and amplified the emotional impact of the choreography.
Conclusion
The premiere of Everett’s Peace in Columbus achieved a significant artistic milestone: expanding the work in partnership with CoMo Dance and embedding it within a city-wide event designed to disrupt how, where, and why we experience dance. The performance honored veterans’ stories, sparked dialogue on the state of our nation, and offered audiences a rare opportunity to reflect, together, on the pursuit of peace, Everett’s, and our own.
This collaboration not only strengthened the work itself but also strengthened the community’s connection to the arts as a vehicle for remembrance, inquiry, and healing.