The freedom that does not exist in Blackness the birth child of whiteness, is not a request nor demand. It is part of humanness. Liberation is removal of the chains that still bind the freedom to breathe. How do we understand freedom? This is the research. How do we know freedom? When liberation is embodied, when it is a felt experience, beyond a moment. Freedom of mind, spirit, body, speech, freedom to express without fear…this is freedom and yet how can we be free when so many are still bound?
When I was a child I found my own darkness in which to grow
the darkness was amongst me but not of me. The world I existed in, as a child, was small.
I knew, right away, I didn’t want to be in it.
So, I would often leave this darkness for an invisible world so colorless I could no longer see it, feel it or hear it.
I took the sounds of music and nature with me, like the ocean and sound of breathing. I found peace, a safe space.
I even left my body behind to cover my disappearance
but my feelings insisted on drifting along
we danced a solo, we still do, in perfect alchemic syncopation.
Return to my light backdropped by the dark world, I attend to my liberty.
I have felt the freedom to breathe, freedom to move
and later, much later, I learned to express freedom of speech
although the price was high,
I did not give my gold.
This creative practice research argues for the acquisition of a new liberatory minded movement arts practice drawn from the liberatory embodied practices in yoga and dance that are rooted in African heritage and remembrance of the bondage experience of African diaspora ancestors. I look at ancestral continuity and movement of freedom or lack thereof through an analogical lens, focussing on the aftermath, or as Christina Sharpe refers to, ‘the wake of emancipation’. This research looks to the joys and perils of dancing in that wake through in depth study of the free movement of oceans, as a unifying intersection for the incomplete emancipation of the Black moving creative spirit within the UK.
CDTL Dancers. Kirsty and Amanda.
Fight Scene. Fenella and Loraine.
Out of the Dark. 1992.
Rehearsals. Out of the Dark.