ANNA PRESTON

Anna Preston’s literacy journey began as a child. Her father’s belief in the value of books resulted in her own passion for literature. His sponsorship guided her on a path laced with knowledge. However, her route took a sudden turn when she had an epiphany: visual literacy, more powerful than textualizing and conveying more meaning than textuality, trumps the written word. Using this knowledge to make meaning for herself, she now creates literacy that makes meaning for all stakeholders.

 

Collaboration is how Anna Preston describes her work. Indeed, her compositions break the boundaries of art literacy, dance literacy, community literacy, and testimony, which author Rhea Estelle Lathan (2014) calls “a viable sponsor of literacy” (p. 41). Not only does her work traverse multiple literacies, she collaborates with other artists, presenting what Lathan describes as strong testimony: 

 

Initiating innovative styles while testing inventive language in response to new expressions of traditional problems. Testimony thus gets situated as a critical literacy concept with a multirhythmic framework that accounts for formal, cultural, spiritual, and material ways of knowing, thinking, and being. (p. 31)

 

Preston’s work has meaning for the community. It has real-world effects. Not only does her rhetorical art attempt to sway the thinking of the “reader”/audience, it meets Lathan’s (2014) purpose for testimony, “to empower by communicating valuable, life giving, life-changing solutions” (p.34). Assuredly the testimony in Preston’s pieces sponsor community literacy. Addressing problems in the local and the global communities, Preston’s dancers hope to move the audience to reflect and take action.