Choreography + Film
“You can’t help it. An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.”
NINA SIMONE
reclamation: processing (through) lament
Commissioned by Duke University in 2022, this work explores the process of orienting oneself in the present moment within the excess, whiplash, and residue from 2020-2023.
Thoughts and Questions guiding this work are:
Where have we been?, Where are we now?
How are we navigating the present moment externally, internally, and collectively?
How and what are we processing (through)?
What are our practices of lament?, What does lament do for/to our present, how does it help us to orient?
What are our acts of reclamation?, Where do surrender and reclamation meet?
What are the roles of joy and play within our processing, lamenting, and reclaiming?, What acts of reclamation/self preservation are moving you/me/us through?
What is an erotic/embodied/somatic practice of lament?, What feels good in lament/in allowing ourselves to be present in lament?, If lament/grief/melancholy are constants when do they refresh? What are we gathering in the tide of lament & the waves of the wake (Christina Sharpe)?
Lament is a process that is about allowing the self to be moved through, not just the self moving through., Letting lament move, letting process process has to be out of our control.
Performers Pictured: Alyah Baker, Kahlila Brown, Lee Edwards, Ayan Felix, and Amari Jones
Photos by: Alec Himwich
Cyclical Navigations: In the In Between
Cyclical Navigations: In the In Between (2021-2022) is an interdisciplinary installation that takes the audience on a nonlinear journey of time through memory, story, movement, and location. Ethnography and memory-work are conducted through the Lettering movement practice and oral interviews. Within this project storytelling is a tool that aids in orientation within, and navigation of cyclical temporalities in the present, or the “In Between.” The “In Between” is the fleeting present space wedged alongside history and the contemporary. It is the liminal space that exists between an Afropessimist reality and Afrofuturist practice(s).
The installation takes on a geography of its own through the connecting of Black American stories across identity, generation, class, discipline, and region. This work is an offering that co-creates a container for Black folks to share their stories, explore their relationship to time, location, land, and investigate the memories within their bodies with care. By conceptualizing storytelling as a practice of embodied memory recollection the body is able to be acknowledged as an archive of individual and collective experiences.
Cyclical Navigations: In the In Between considers what is possible if Black history, and thus Black stories, are treated with care through the valuing of Black bodies and voices, both living and deceased. It interrogates what happens when land is viewed as a container that holds the stories of those who are and were, and what happens when we acknowledge what and who was while inscribing what and who is into space.
Pictured: Alyah Baker, Ayan Felix, and Juliett Irving
Photos by: Lee Edwards
Relics of the Afrofuture Film
A video collaboration between Ivy Nicole-Jonet and myself. Relics of the Afrofuture (2021) acts as a nonlinear portal of present relics and future possibility. In our co-dreamed visual landscape the link between Black life and nature is crucial. In our Afrofuture, natural resources are not weaponized against Black communities, and Black life is cared for and preserved as is the environment.
Screened at: Queering Film (2021) by metaDEN, New Women Space and Mott Haven Film Festival, Incu Arts Gallery: Past, Present, Future Exhibition (2021), Flick! Experimental Film Festival! at UNCG (2021), Durham Art Guild 67th Annual Juried Exhibition (2021), ADF’s Movies by Movers (2022), Alabama Screen Dance Festival (2022), and Afrofuturism849 Film Festival (2023)
Mending in Space
Mending in Space (2020) is a collaborative exploration and meditation on rest, safety, and (un)productivity between Black Femmes in public space.
Pictured: Alyah Baker, Lee Edwards, and Amari Jones
Photo by: Satsuki Scoville Photography at ADF’s Creative Healing Parade (2020)
Now or Then: Strange Fruit Film
Oringally created as a live performance for Evita Colon’s project “Speak to My Soul” (Philly, 2017), before being transformed into a film in 2018, this piece pays homage to victims of lynching’s across the United States.
The piece was recorded in Coatesville, PA where Zachariah Walker was lynched on August 13, 1911. During the filming we were harassed and threatened by a local person if we did not disperse. The remainder of the film was recorded at Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. At the time of this recording the most recent reported lynching was that of Danye Jones, age 24 in Missouri on October 17, 2018.
In October 2020 the piece was remixed with new editing and a new sound score sparked by the first Presidential Debate between 45 and Joe Biden. This remix, comments on the repetitive public consumption of Black death, and the normalization of Black life being politicized rather than humanized.
Pictured: Lee Edwards, Nyasha George, and Desiree Lovett
Photo by: The Wassaic Project
Original Filming and Editing by: Jasmine Lynea
Remix Editing by: Lee Edwards
Witness: Neither Here nor There
An exploration of Black existence within spiritual and earthly realms through land investigation and acknowledgement in collaboration with Nyugen Smith.
Filming locations: Duke Campus Farm, formerly Couch property where enslaved Africans labored on the stolen land of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation. Wassaic, a hamlet of Amenia, New York. Saint George parish in Central Barbados.
Funding for this video was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts 2020
Pictured: Nyugen Smith and Lee Edwards
Letters II Mama
Created in 2017, this piece is where my passions of teaching in K-12 education and creating intertwined. This work comments on the silence surrounding Black mental health within the communities I live and grew up in, while giving a glimpse into my own struggles with depression. It serves as an open letter to my mother, a critique of K-12 education systems, and a “thank you” to my students who unknowingly saved my life.
Pictured: Lee Edwards, Nyasha George, Desiree Lovett, and Mynesha Whyte
Photos by: Jaqlin Medlock at APAP 2019 with Booking Dance Festival
Faith
Faith, is a dance film and live performance choreopoem created in 2016. The piece asks how to navigate fighting for individual freedom, and collective liberation, while holding tight to one’s faith.
The film was recored on the Delaware River. A location where slave ships traveled, enslaved folks moved toward freedom, slave catchers patrolled, and where Black folks lived and are living.
Pictured: Lee Edwards, Clarricia Golden, Mawu Gora, James Whitfield, Mynesha Whyte, and Brionna Williams.
Photos: Mike Hurwitz at KYLD 31st Inhale (2017), Tony Turner at The Wassaic Project (2017), and Whitney Browne at iKada Dance’s Poetic Spirit (2018)
“why is your bouquet allowed to grow from flowers to trees, while my roses and daisies are picked like weeds from your garden?” — Perspective
Perspective
Created in response to the declination of charges against police officer Timothy Loehmann for the murder of 12 year old Tamir Rice. Perspective is a choreopoem and duet that examines the societal value placed on Black life through movement, props, and metaphor.
Pictured: Lee Edwards and Clarricia Golden.
Photos by: Levi and Gala Derroisne at The Outlet Dance Project (2016)