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Decolonizing Somatic Care Practice For The Body in Protest with día bùi and Orlando Zane Hunter Jr. – Danspace Project
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Decolonizing Somatic Care Practice For The Body in Protest with día bùi and Orlando Zane Hunter Jr.

July 10, 2020

 

What protections should adorn a body in resistance? What kinds of care? How have somatic practices of the Black diaspora been colonized? Organized protest calls choreographies into action.

An estimated 15,000 New Yorkers gathered on Sunday, June 14th, 2020, for Brooklyn Liberation: An Action for Black Trans Lives, organized by The Okra Project, Marsha P. Johnson Institute, For the Gworls, G.L.I.T.S., and Black Trans Femmes in the Arts. This was a landmark event.

Artist, organizer, and strategist, día bùi, led the emotional first aid response and healing justice component of the June 14 action. In this video she shares safety protocols and practices used during the rally and march. Through a decolonizing lens, choreographer and dance practitioner, Orlando Zane Hunter Jr., offers their perspective on somatic care history and practice to help sustain bodies in protest. Together día and Orlando share personal testimony and information on upcoming work and demonstrations, including, Juneteenth: Black War Dances.

This recorded gathering [held on Zoom, June 18th 2020]  begins with a 5 minute slideshow directly followed by Angie Pittman who gives a land and an acknowledgement of people enslaved by members of the congregations of the Stuyvesant Chapel and St. Mark’s Church In-The-Bowery.

Opening slideshow design and zoom video editing by Yolanda Royster
Opening slideshow photography by Bella Morais
Main presentation design and slideshow audio by día bùi
Main presentation photography by Cole Witter

 

LIST OF RESOURCES HERE

 

Reparations in Black Dance: I Will Repair
A word from día bùi, a non-Black Queer Vietnamese in solidarity and alliance:
“Repair work” has a deep lineage of labor which necessitates vital understanding and acknowledgement. I am utilizing “repair work” in this context as rooted in my collaboration with mayfield brooks and their work with Improvising While Black. Please read mayfield’s Viewing Hours zine as source and navigation through the lineage of this work. The “I Will Repair” statement derives from my work over a decade ago at the Peace Village in Hanoi, Vietnam where children and families affected by and living with Agent Orange reside. They, too, have never received reparations from the U.S.

Orlando Zane Hunter Jr. is an international artist who creates from a Black womanist framework. Hunter is a co-founder of the collective Brother(hood) Dance! and a 2015/16 Dancing While Black Fellow. They are also proud to be a founding collaborator of AfroAZN, a diasporic alliance with día bùi. In her work, Hunter tackles issues resulting from a white supremacist system. She grew up dancing hip-hop and graduated with a BFA in Dance from Univ. of Minnesota where he acquired movement vocabularies such as Afro-Brazilian, West-African Guinea, and Contemporary Yorchha, a mix of yoga, a martial art form called Chhau, and Oddissi. While attending he performed works by Donald Byrd, Bill T. Jones, Carl Flink, Louis Falco, Colleen Thomas, Uri Sands, Stephen Petronio and Nora Chipaumire. His solo “Mutiny” was selected to represent the University of Minnesota at the 2011 ACDFA gala in Madison, Wisconsin.In 2014  he co-choreographed “Redbone: A Biomythography” that debuted at the Nuyorican Café, Wild Project Theater, Duke University: Women’s center, and Flight deck theater in Oakland, CA. Hunter studied GLBT activism and history in Amsterdam and Berlin. He has performed with Christal Brown/INspirit Dance Company, Contempo Physical Dance, Forces of Nature, Germaul Barnes, Andre Zachary/ Renegade Performance Group, Makeda Thomas, Erick Montes/ Danceable Projects, Threads Dance Project, TU Dance and Ananya Dance Theater, an all women of color company where they were the first male bodied member and toured with them to Trinidad & Tobago and Zimbabwe.

 

día bùi is a Queer Vietnamese artist, organizer, and strategist with diasporic roots and deepening spiritual practice. Her lifelong commitment to liberation work is woven from her experiences growing up in a refugee family, and living in a low-income, immigrant neighborhood of El Monte, CA. She has over seventeen years of experience in organizing, advocacy, and activism across immigrant rights, racial justice, reproductive rights, health equity, economic justice, youth empowerment, and Queer/Trans rights. Her passion in story-telling is anchored through poetry, performance, media making, design, and film. In 2017, she directed and co-produced “Resistance Vol. 1”, a short documentary highlighting activists and artists on the frontlines of the resistance at the presidential inauguration. día is a founding collaborator of AfroAZN, a diasporic alliance with Orlando Zane Hunter Jr. of Brother(hood) Dance!, a Cypher Apprentice & Collaborator with Ni’Ja Whitson, and producer of Study Sessions: Field Stories with jumatatu m. poe. Connect with her @diaqbui and www.diabui.com.

 

Angie Pittman is a New York based Bessie award-winning dance artist, dance maker, and dance educator. Her work has been performed at The Kitchen, Gibney Dance, BAAD!, Movement Research at Judson Church, Triskelion Arts, STooPS, The Domestic Performance Agency, The KnockDown Center(Sunday Service), The Invisible Dog(Catch 73), and Danspace Project. Angie is currently working as a collaborator and dance artist with Adam Linder, devynn emory/beastproductions, Anna Sperber, Stephanie Acosta, and Donna Uchizono Company. Angie has had the pleasure of dancing in work by Ralph Lemon, Tere O’Connor, Jennifer Monson, Kim Brandt, Tess Dworman, Antonio Ramos, Jasmine Hearn, Jonathan Gonzalez, and many others. Angie’s work resides in a space that investigates how the body moves through ballad, groove, sparkle, spirit, spirituals, ancestry, vulnerability, and power.  angiepittman.com

Tags: Angie Pittman, día bùi, Orlando Zane Hunter Jr.
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