ROMAN BACA: I met Roman Baca at Walter Reed Medical Center at a conference about the healing arts for Returning Veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. He is a Marine/ballet choreographer. He is the director of a dance troupe Exit 12 Dance Company of NYC. The piece he choreographed was his experience of the ethnicity of Americans and Iraqi and war and was descriptive of war but in the end they joined together in peace. His experience as a dancer was imbedded but he had a desire to conquer his fears and entered the Marines. The marines taught him to redirect his fears and use the adrenalin rush to survive “using the fear to keep going”. He was deployed in 2005-2006 in Iraq. He subsequently had great PTSD but his wife whom he married after he addressed the fact since she was the one to make him understand his PTSD. He was not being able to focus into what he wanted to do with his life. He decided to form the troupe and his purpose now is to use the art of dance as a communicator. He returned with the troupe to Iraq and they met with diverse ethnic groups Kurds and Arabs and then the troupe helped them all to interact through dance even between men and women. The two groups performed bringing the different families together in the audience and in the end the audience and performers as agroup picked flowers as a thank you offering to the troupe for what they had given them in understanding of each other. His statement is that art is the better way to conquer than violence through weapons of destruction. He hopes that his company will have a national tour. He states: Art gives veterans this vehicle to communicate their experiences in an abstract way, where they’re not being sensationalist or overly shocking’.