the body

The summer of 2020 has cautiously crept towards us over the last few weeks, often retreating into hiding for a tad longer and then slamming us with sweltering humidity. Unpredictability in weather feels fitting to the social context we live in. Life is a contrast. Staying home, nestling with loved ones, trying in vain to develop any sort of  ritualistic routine for the day to day;  Masked up and marching, confronting as a recent college graduate the erratic world of pandemic and the uprising against the perpetual state of white supremacy of our nation.

This body always reminds me of rhythm when I feel it is missing. She is saturated with cyclical life; menstruation, emotion, blood, oxygen. Her heartbeat. When everything feels a bit lost, this is what I come back to. 

Black Lives Matter. I am encouraging, urging, insisting everyone get involved in this antiracist movement and support Black people. There are a wide variety of ways to do this and I hope we all take the time to make this work a sustained and profound aspect of all of our lives. It needs to combine some aspect of donating money (reparations), direct action (attending protests, making calls, writing letters, phonebanking for politicians), learning (reading texts by Black authors, listening to podcasts, watching movies that aren't white savior narratives), and listening (which includes AMPLIFYING Black voices).  

Vermont friends- I encourage you to check out the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance. https://vtracialjusticealliance.wordpress.com/. Consider joining and setting up monthly donations. They frequently have actions that we can participate in in the immediate sense, but also work on long-term policy solutions. 

Nationally- 

The Movement for Black Lives is an excellent place to learn about all sorts of actions nationally and participate. https://m4bl.org/

Also check out the Equal Justice Initiative if you are interested in an organization working to dismantle the systemic racism in our justice structures. https://eji.org/

Black Trans Lives Matter- 

The Marsha P. Johnson Institute is incredible! https://marshap.org/about-mpji/ learn more here.

Also, check out the Black Trans Femmes in the Arts (https://linktr.ee/btfacollective) to learn how to support an amazing arts-based collective supporting Black Trans people. 

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This video is from my last day in Maine with my dear friend Emma. Bodies are deeply political in many ways-- my white body carries as much history and context as non-white bodies and this truth is something I want to dive into, confront, challenge, and unpack. The work to decolonize the body is lifelong, and it needs to be active. I say this because in the dance world that I have been born, of modern and ballet forms, the white body is seen as neutral, shapeless, apolitical, just a form to be manipulated and moved about, while non-white bodies are immediately placed into a context of history, justice and oppression. It is extremely important to recognize this history in the dance world and work to dismantle this assumption presently. 

I am so grateful for my teachers, who have instilled in me and all of us dancers in the department the value and presence of humanity in the act of movement, of centering the body and the human in all our dances, of privileging authenticity and connection over aesthetic and white-washed beauty ideals. This is the start of decolonizing the form, but there is so so much more I have to learn. More reflections and concrete resources to come!