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“Abolition is….” a dance response. Held August 19th at Vashon Center for the Arts Breezeway. These notes were generated by the group and include some general responses to the performance.
“Abolition is….a dance response” was the nature of chaos and peace; it brought reflection and action, confusion and clarity. It was obscure, almost hidden in the breezeway of VCA, and it was blatant and exposing to those within range of receiving its gift through sight, sound and other ways of experiencing. Some, it appeared, had to run away.
“Abolition is… a dance response” was the inquiry of the body and of politics. It was a marriage of the experience of breathing, joy of moving, of being alive, with the confusion of relying on the destructive system to survive, and the question when did humans stop caring?
“Abolition is…. a dance response” was the nature of ritual healing and ritual envisioning. It empowered voices and visions of the past while shaking on shaky ground, while crawling through a dry creek bed and resting on pebbles while stones are placed around the outline of a body. The body rises and we see the form left on the concrete. A shiver of recognition ignites the response: Abolition is… no police, no prisons; is stop owning!; is white abolitionists getting in the way; is radical; is armed resistance to plantation economy; is Harriet Tubman; is organizing to get people out of prisons…..is questioning settler mentality domination, is asking how am I in relation?
“Abolition is…a dance response” was a durational performance that asks: what is performance? That knew how to rest, that knew how to lie down on the ground or stand for a long while or beat the wall and read the poem, “She had some Horses” by Joy Harjo, or dance in physical contact and touch, touch, touch each others’ bodies’ after years of pandemic lockdown; or nurture everyone — the audience, the performers, the ancestors called to witness– to care for each other through gentle movement, meditation, presence….it knew how to be together and apart, to be alone, lonely, and powerfully united.
The original project grant called for a majority Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) group of eight dance artists to interact with diverse communities on Vashon Island. The group’s work in dance improvisation, and practices similar to “somatic abolitionism”, a term coined by Resmaa Menakem in his book My Grandmother’s Hands, serendipitously fit with Patrisse Cullors’ installation at Vashon Center for the Arts. The project eventually streamlined intentions into one event: a pop-up performance under the provocative pink neon words “abolition is….”
One observer reported that the context of the performance set within Cullors’ words “abolition is….” influenced her view. She mentioned some images that came to her mind: “the vision of long strips of colorful fabric was making a wall, or jail; a dancer climbs painstakingly up a huge chair bringing to mind the journey of the oppressed, only to be knocked down again; a dancer crawling along a ditch disappearing out of view and then rising up at another location brings feelings of being shot down and rising again; another dancer looked at me and asks "what do you feel about abolition? I had no words, only contorted emotional expressions conveyed by my face that she spoke out loud for me...fear, sadness, confusion…” The viewer added with candor, “Being a privileged white woman with a low threshold for discomfort, when the chaos became too much for me, I made my excuses and left.”
Another observer said they were struck by how, “The piece didn’t have a typical start. The performers were calmly waiting for the beginning to happen which also calmed and attuned me to the performance, which I then noticed was underway.”
Many thanks to BIPOC guest artists Lesly Rodriguez (CA), S Arjunwadkar (VT and Pune, India), Helena Zhao (WA) and Skyla Miles (CA), who are multidisciplinary artists at varying stages of emergence, and the international performer mayfield brooks (NY) who brought “Improvising While Black” to Vashon in February 2019. White-bodied artists included Karen Schaffman (CA), and Alia Swersky (SEA), and local dancer Karen Nelson who also convened the project.
The audio mix by Lesly included Skyla’s spoken word, music by Jhene Aiko, Princess Nokia, Photay, and klankbeeld. Sweet vocals surrounded by water lapping contrasted high energy lyrics—“don’t f**k with my energy.” Skyla, impacted by recent Covid illness and complications of related work absence, couldn’t attend in person. Each moment their recorded spoken voice was heard, the poetry sent us straight to our hearts.
Thanks to white-bodied activists’ financial and in-kind contributions. The project received an Emergency Grant from Foundation for Contemporary Arts that paid BIPOC artists honorariums acknowledging the intense emotional and physical labor that accompanies cultural work. White-bodied collaborators chose to forego honorariums as part of their activism.
more Photos on VCA’s page https://vashoncenterforthearts.org/abolition-is/
Some looks into work that led up to our project:
[Part of project Connecting Communities Connecting Diversity] clip of performance titled: protection nest, video by Tseion Amare Aug 13,'22 at 12th Ave Arts// Seattle Festival of Dance + Improvisation// A collaboration between lesly, mayfield, S, karen n, and karen s, (skyla miles, spoke word) taking place at the entrance of the building. You are invited to witness from the lobby or from outside, you may pass through the nest to shift experience.
The work in this video inspires our upcoming project Communities Connecting, Connecting Diversity and includes several members of our project. Think Gravity Dance Tank was co-curated by Karen Schaffman and Anya Cloud and includes artists involved in the Vashon Project.