After working odd jobs for a couple of years in Traverse City, Andy Buelow, a graduate of Wisconsin’s prestigious Lawrence University, wasn’t sure of his career trajectory or what to do with a music degree.

Almost 13 years ago, the Grand Rapids Symphony (GRS) ventured beyond Michigan’s borders for the first time. The destination: Carnegie Hall, New York City’s iconic concert venue.

Dance has the power to interpret and recreate worlds of experience without explaining or intellectualizing. Without words, it invites us into an experience through the universal language of the body, of movement. When done well, that experience is transcendent, and elicits an emotional response born of communal creation as well as private connection.

A conversation was sparked after the first production of “Building the Wall” by playwright Robert Schenkkan premiered in Michigan last night. The 70-minute-play, directed by Carrie McNulty, has already sparked controversy and confusion in the city with its artwork of an angry Donald Trump on the poster. What’s important to be pointed out though, is that the Actors’ Theatre Grand Rapids production is less about Trump and more about the messages and ideologies that existed long before the last election.