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  • a provocation towards moving
  • Clare Croft (bio), Efren Cruz Cortez (bio), Jennifer Harge (bio), and Leyya Tawil (bio)

A score can be an invitation, a provocation toward moving—moving together or moving alone, moving internally and into the world. As people who dance and study what dance can do, we know that dancing changes how we sense our own bodies, others’ bodies, and the world around us. As people who dance and people who protest and people who know dancing can be protesting and protesting can be dancing, we know the value of feeling another at your shoulder. We know that togetherness across difference can be, should be filled with conflict and empathy, a bubbling of resources and dreams.

We, as a group of dance artists and thinkers, composed this score together to think about how to move our bodies together, in the contemporary moment, into acts of anti-racist, feminist, queer resistance. To consider how dancing together can be our practice of freedom.

The score that follows—in its entirety or taken up in part—might be a departure point. Or it might offer language that becomes a chant. Or you might take turns reading portions as a mode of direction or instruction. Or you might read it once, and then begin to move. This political moment asks us all to consider our relationship to the information we receive. That is part of the choice here, too. Join us, and find the possibilities of (y)our resistance. [End Page 71]

((TOGETHERNESS SCORE – GROUP RITUAL))

In the togetherness, there is strength.

(Don’t step on those you can’t see. Don’t step on those. . . .)

Be where you are. Sense those around you. Distance between—the crossing, too.

Breathe. See. Hear.

One step forward, everyone.

one step beyond,   Negotiate new territory     with others,       eye contact,         with flexibility,           softness.

One step. Steady your gaze. Then let it widen. See them.       >>>>What changed?<<<<

Be here. One step forward. Steady the gaze. Widen the gaze. A step outward.

Keep going. Repeat. Keep going. Repeat.

Contact emerges: when can you maintain it? When can you let it go?

Contact happens, goes away; another comes and remains.

>>>How do you go forward now?<<<

We can free ourselves from the hard rules of stagnation.

First wave: observe/move. Second wave: observe, join, move. Third wave: move.

Sense. Move. Observe. [End Page 72]

Sense.    Move.    Observe.

As a group, move together in the same direction.

Logic and magic can help.

>>>How do you go forward now?<<< (Moving does not always mean walking.)

Support is essential. The protest isn’t its leader.

      If someone takes over, protest.         If you take over, protest.     If someone is not here, invite them. Here: your space, here: our space, here: their space.   Everybody inhabit the same space at once.

Inhabit yourself. Feel your place in the Togetherness.

  • Start small.

  • Smaller.

  • More.

((INTERLUDE))

  • Step 1: Add onion and garlic.

  • Step 2: Add some salt.

  • Step 3: Break some eggs.

  • Step 4: Lick your fingers.

  • Step 3.5: Wash them first.

  • Step 5: Break the system.

((DISRUPTION SCORE – OPEN PRACTICE))

Propositions for learning what we don’t know))

Remember the path to school.           Follow it.       Avoid scary places.   Visit a friend on the way.     Think about it again.         Avoid School      Think about it again. [End Page 73]

Walk asking questions. Let the questions dictate direction. Find an uncertain answer,     an       uncertain         form:           a dance.

ConstantdisruptionSOUNDconstantdisruptionBODYconstantdisruptionSOUND constantdisruptionBODYconsta

Constantdisruptionconstantdisruptionconstantdisruptionconstantdisruptionconsta

Be something   Dismiss Be something else   Dismiss Be a witness   Dismiss Be a defender.   Witness.

[End Page 74] [End Page 75]

Clare Croft

Clare Croft is a dance historian, theorist, and sometimes dramaturg. She is the editor of Queer Dance: Meanings and Makings (Oxford 2017) and the author of Dancers as Diplomats: American Choreography in Cultural Exchange (Oxford 2015).

Efren Cruz Cortez

Efrén Cruz Cortez studies large and complex systems through the development of Machine Learning theory and algorithms. Efrén takes dance and performance as antagonist forces to the discriminatory and parasitic implementation of Machine Learning technologies by state and financial institutions.

Jennifer Harge

Jennifer Harge is a Detroit-based performer, dance maker, and educator. Her work lies at the intersection of experimentation, African American...

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