The community center is an old run down building with two floors and several different rooms. Built in the 50's, it looks like it hasn't been kept up or painted in years. Water spots and old creaky floors line the hallway. The center is housed in a state funded facility with several other volunteer operations. Bunnies' free clinic and Sonia's Rhythms, a dance studio, are two of them. We enter the dance studio where Sonia is dancing alone. We see soft shots of her hands and feet dancing about the room. The fabric from her yellow leotard move gracefully in the wind as she dances to the sound of a solo piano. The slow speed of the film catches her face in the light from the huge old dirty window. The entire scene is in a sepia tone with the yellow very noticeable.
"Dark phrases of womanhood, of never having been a girl. Half-note scattered without rhythm..."
Bunnie, a nurse dressed in green and relentless volunteer stands in the kitchen of her modest apartment watering a plant. She goes back to her table where she has several hundred flyers printed. The flyers read, "Free Clinic Seminars on Thursday"...
"No tune distraught. Laughter fallin' over a girl's shoulders. It's funny. It's hysterical. The melodylessness of her dance. Don't tell nobody, don't tell a soul. She's dancing on beer cans and shingles..."
Sally , a high powered business woman stands in her posh penthouse apartment high above Manhattan, she is getting ready for work. Dressed in red, she stands in her closet. Her husband Kahn, in silhouette is in the shower. We see him in the distance. Sally picks his pants up off the floor, a card falls out. She picks the card up and looks at it, then puts it back in his pocket. She sighs.
"This must be the spook house. Another song with no singers, lyrics no voices and uninterrupted solos, unseen performances. Are we ghouls? Children of horror?"
Aleena, a religious fanatic walks to a closet in her small run down apartment. She sits in her closet and starts praying. She's dressed in all white, lighting candles on a makeshift altar.
"The joke? Don't tell nobody, don't tell a soul. Are we animals? Have we gone crazy?"
Blaze, an overworked social worker, is looking at a pregnancy test stick in the bathroom of her modest apartment. It's negative. She is dressed in blue. Silver her husband enters. She quickly puts it in the trash can and tries to hide her frustration. He kisses her.
"I can't hear anything but maddening screams and the soft strains of death. And you promised me. You promised somebody. Anybody. Sing a girl's song..."
A graduation is in full swing. We Amy dressed in purple, as she receives her diploma. Her mother Aleena beams with pride from the front row. Alice is dressed in all white with a cross on and a huge bible. Her older sister Rouge dressed in orange looks uninterested as she looks at a one of the male teachers making eyes at her. Amy smiles
"Bring her out to know herself. To know you, but sing her rhythms caring, struggle..."
Rouge eyes him, winking seductively in the process.
"Hard times sing. Her song of life. She's been dead so long, closed in silence so long..."
Tikal lays in the bed in a very run down apartment Knuckles is having sex with her. Her brown dress is pushed up above her thighs. A tear rolls down her face.
"She doesn't know the sound of her own voice, her infinite beauty. She's half-note scattered without rhythm, no tune. Sing her sighs... Sing the song of her possibilities. Sing a righteous gospel. Let her be born. Let her be born and handled warmly..."
...And this is for colored girls who have considered suicide but moved to the ends of their own rainbows.