Belonging describes porches as liminal spaces, meeting places, places for Black fellowship and “a willing- ness to be known.” 1 hooks writes, “A perfect porch is a place where the soul can rest.” 2 I’ve been practicing letting my soul and body rest, and allowing myself to know and be known by the land. This has been the crux of my creative work here really, once I let go of the expec- tations/assumptions that a residency should be more “productive” cre- atively than my life at home. Taking full breaths. Naps. Walks in the trees. Gazing at the sky. Time to listen to the plants and bugs, tracking the rhythms of the cicada and cricket chorus, their shifts in musical scores throughout different parts of the day and night. All of these practices have been, for me, methods of attunement: to the land and to ourselves. My project land|body|memory has become another one of these slow- ing down time, sitting and gazing out, attuning and listening practice spaces. The work has appeared in the world as a solo outdoor popup at Fort Mason in October 2022, and at ODC’s State of Play Festival in August 2023 as a duet with my dear friend Laila Shabazz. These perfor- mances and the coming iterations I am building now activate movement towards spacious breaths, body con- nected to the earth, attuned to the connectivity of being on this planet. There is an ache I cannot ignore that arises within the capitalist, colonial project that rules many of our com- monly accepted orders of space and time; an ache that no longer wants to deny our inherent connection to each other and the land, that instead asks for breath and healing connec- tion to the land and each other. I am asking myself how the dance and performance making space I embark on can be a salve to that ache: a
re-membering 3 of ourselves as part of land, and a reminder that we can do this re-membering in the most simple of ways, ways that allow our souls to rest, such as sitting on a porch. My residency time in Georgia has asked me to go still, be quiet and notice, dancing as a place where the noticing blends with the being, the stillness spreads open like unstruc- tured time; memories, dreams and visions mesh. While I pursue making dances that allow for this kind of spa- cious freedom, I am growing in ques- tions of how to keep working in this field in ways accessible to my own human body, a body that is chang- ing—just like everything else. Out of physical necessity, I’m straying away from “impressive” moves or phrases that rely on a certain physical capac- ity, and moving into a rigorous com- mitment to presence, a space that asks me to really listen. As I continue to understand land|body|memory as a project and a practice, I commit to my contin- ued attunement process, dropping my shoulders when I can, breathing in rhythm with the earth when I can. 3 The space between re and member is intentional. I recall a talk in which Alexis De Veaux described the word remember as a calling back of something in our bodies, a return of “member” as in a part of the body, a piece of ourselves. Allied Media Conference, 2020.
Perhaps the next time we meet danc- ing, we’ll start by just breathing. Hopefully we’ll get in some good time just simply “being.” Pretty much all of the ways I think about land and presence, and rest as radical practice, come from Black people and Indigenous peo- ple. I am thinking and making dance inside of a lineage of Black feminist thinkers, Black women, Black queer people. Additionally, as I learn about ways to connect with land and empower myself and community through my pas- sion in plant work and herbalism, my teachers are and have been Indigenous folks, Black folks, and Brown folks. If you, like me, live on colonized land and have some access to resources like money or time, consider paying a land tax to Shuumi land tax/Sogorea Te’ or to the Ramaytush Ohlone land tax and advocate for rematriation in moments possible. Land Back! AUDREY JOHNSON (she/her) is a queer, Black, mixed-race dance artist and plant worker with roots from Detroit, Michigan/Anishinaabe land, currently based in Oakland, CA/Ohlone land. Audrey’s work experiments with improvisation and embodied time travel in refusal of colonized time and space. www.audreyjohnson.space
1 Belonging: A Culture of Place , bell hooks, page 144 2 Belonging: A Culture of Place , bell hooks, page 152
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