MFA

|

Thesis Concert

|

University at Buffalo

|

Dance

MFA | Thesis Concert | University at Buffalo | Dance

My journey as a graduate student was filled with joyous enlightenments and turbulent discoveries which have transformed my artistic process into one that combines theory, expression, and movement. Prior to my graduate studies, my artistry depended heavily on choreographic combinations and musical selection. My MFA Thesis Concert presentation was a survey of my somatic conceptual movement in practice. I realized when I began to infuse my secondary interests of Black Feminist Thought and Sociology and Somatics with my artistic voice that there was so much to explore in my thesis process. It was more than a thesis process, it was my Praxis.

Even though your heart is breaking…

The first video I showed was a piece I made the day after the riots that took place in Buffalo, NY in response to the murder of George Floyd. It was raining that morning and I decided to dance in the mud while wearing a long white lyrical dress. The symbolism of dancing in the mud was important to me. It symbolized the condition of the “freedom” Black people are living in. Yes, I have the “freedom” to move around but the dirty, heavy, environment of police brutality taints that freedom. I danced in the mud and the rain, I rolled around in the grass, and I showed footage of myself getting tired and wrapping my arms around myself to comfort myself all under a song about smiling even though you don’t feel like smiling. I was expressing my freedom even though my environment didn’t support the feeling of freedom. On the stage, I danced in pools of light as if my movement was restricted by those areas. I was given the prompt to assign meaning to those pools of light. The assignment for the first pool was to react to being confined. My movement reflected a desire to find a way out or to push my way out of that space. The movement in the second pool of light was geared toward trying to make the best of my confinement in that space. I tried to reach for opportunity and smile but I would fall or be dragged back down. The third pool of light was the place where I sat and watched my past self struggling and dancing in the mud. I sat with my arms wrapped around my knees, hugging myself, to comfort myself as I watched the metaphorical struggle of my past. That piece allowed me to embody my somatic response to living under oppression. Both on screen and on stage I dealt with limitations and unfavorable conditions that represent the oppression that is particular to Black life and my movement reflected sadness and struggle.

Don’t Fall!

When I first imagined this piece I planned to fall, actually fall on the ground as many times as I could in a three-minute span of time. Since this piece was about repeated failures, Professor Chanon Judson, Artistic Director of Urban Bush Women Dance Company, encouraged me to write down a list of failures in my life. Then, I was prompted to create a fall for five of the listed failures. This required assigning a somatic quality to each failure. One of the failures was attached to a feeling of disappointment. Another was embarrassing. The others were surprising, comical, and predictable. I was able to come up with a different type of fall for each one, but in the process of finding these falls, Professor Judson made the observation that the times when I didn’t fall were more interesting to watch than the times when I did allow myself to fall. After watching the footage of myself flailing and falling, I agreed that there was something more intriguing about seeing me not actually fall than watching me fall over and over again. I eventually developed the ability to briefly lose my balance and catch myself before I fell down. I can appreciate the turn from actual falling to extreme flailing because the meaning of the piece thrives off the resilience of continuously trying not to fall when it looks like I’m going to fall. Below are two versions of this piece. One is a short version that I shared on my social media pages. The other is the staged performance of this piece at my thesis concert.

Tethered and Maligned

This video filmed from my backyard is called “Tethered and Maligned” and it features the voice of Dr. Brittney Cooper as she discussed what defunding the police means for Black women in an interview in 2020. Cooper’s words were direct, intentional, and confrontational. I wanted my movements to reflect those qualities as well. There were moments where I looked into the camera to confront the audience about “America’s hatred of Black women”. There were also moments where I walked away from the camera or off-screen to dismiss myself from the topic and the responsibility of performance. The point of showing my movement in this piece was mostly about presenting a Black woman’s body while these difficult points about how Black women are treated poorly are spoken. Cooper points out that “everyone’s comfortable with what Black women say until they actually have to sit down and encounter a Black woman’s body”. That statement echoes sentiments that Black ontology is regarded as nothing because what Black people produce is regarded as more valuable than the bodies Black people exist in. Her words in this piece emphasize how oppression is applied systemically. My movement may not directly correlate to the words, but it does express my feelings about the subject matter.

When strange fruit grows on a 24hr news cycle

This piece is a melancholy enactment of day-to-day life with the constant reminder of Black death. As multiple audio clips of news anchors announcing the murders of Black men by police, I sat on the floor and performed completely unrelated movements. During this part of my thesis, I wanted to portray something that doesn’t get discussed often enough, in my humble opinion. I wanted this piece to touch on the subject of daily life under the constant reminder of Black death as a Black person.

Be Alright.

At this point in my work, I wanted to turn the corner to experience joy and fun. On the screen, I played a piece called “Be Alright.” I performed this piece in front of my church during the pandemic. “Be Alright” is about acknowledging that when life is hard and struggles are too much to handle, take them to God and He will take care of them. The movement at the beginning of this piece reflected struggle and worry. One moment that received a lot of comments was the hinge and release at the top of this piece. I wanted to signify the struggle of dealing with troubling situations and breaking away from them. Another notable moment was when I acted out gathering my problems and pulling them so I could give them to God (represented by the church building). That moment was satisfying to add to this piece because it was an honest embodiment of what I wanted the whole piece to be about. The live component of this piece was initiated by stained glass lighting cued by a bell in the music. I reprised the movements from the “Don’t Fall” sections until the music prompted movement that reflected a happier tone.

AnomalousJoy

Anomalous Joy is a fun piece that I made in a deliberate attempt to express and experience joy in unfavorable conditions. I called this piece anomalous joy because everything about this video deviated from my expectation of the expression of Black joy. I rarely ever see Black women in their thirties jumping around gleefully in the snow. I rarely see Black women and Black mothers allow themselves to be so outwardly goofy and allow themselves to make fearless choices in movement that result in falling down gracelessly. There was a time when I seldom had the opportunity to be this playful in my own life. I made this video as an intentional act of pure joy. In my thesis presentation, I made the statement that “Black Joy, anomalous, is the art of resisting Black anguish.” After having presented a few pieces that point to the hard realities of Black life, I wanted to show that finding joy is an important part of Black survival. Black joy isn’t an anomaly because Black people have a genetic impairment that makes experiencing joy implausible. It’s an anomaly because Black people are bombarded with troubles, injustice, past and present inequalities, and endless attacks on our humanity.

Just Black Joy

The last piece of my performance focused on joy just for the sake of joy. Without burdening the concept with metaphors, I wanted to take Black joy one step further than the previous piece and just express joy. Shared Black joy.