Idle Crimes & Heavy Work site responsive performance at Whittier Mill (2021), featuring Moving Our Stories and Giwayen Mata
pursuing a PhD in Dance Studies at Temple University, I thought about how significant embodied mem- ory was to my own journey through doctoral studies. I was researching meanings and experiences of ‘com- munity’ in Philadelphia-area West African dance classes. Research par- ticipants (an intergenerational group of Black women and men who either danced or played percussion in the classes) expressed inherent connec- tions between their sense of com- munal belonging and African dance classes as sites of personal and cul- tural memory. My field notes were full of embodied reflections of expe- riences on the dance floor that elicit kinesthetic responses every time I reread them. My knees are bent. My torso is pitched forward with my chest almost parallel to the floor. A rhyth- mic pulse is riding up my spine like a wave. I shift my weight side to side with a slight shuffle step from right foot to left. I dip my head and, as each foot returns from its shuf- fle, I thrust my hips back. My arms push out over each step, as if shoo- ing away some invisible nuisance. Right and left, right and left, a con- stant rhythmic bob. The air is thick but I cannot smell it; I feel immersed in the musty dampness collectively created by the moving bodies in the room. The heat of effort opens my pores, I can feel the sweat beading on the surface of my skin. The thirty minute warmup at the beginning of class prepared me for this moment, raising my heart rate and pump- ing the blood through my body... I am swimming in a sensation of ‘aliveness.’ In my periphery, I see a few of my classmates dipping their heads and pushing their arms, rid- ing the same wave. The dim flood- lights hanging from the ceiling and the pencil-colored wooden floor work together to cast a golden hue around this old dance space. Splashes of bright colors and patterns enter
my view as I turn my head and see all the lapas, the wrap skirts we usually wear to this West African dance class, tied around the waists of the women bobbing along with me. Syncopated movement of colors - greens, golds, and pinks, deep indigos and corals - offer visual layers of rhythm driving our dance. 1 This experience helped deepen my understanding of the role that the body’s sense perception can play in memory work. From there, I devel- oped a framework for embodied memory mapping that draws on a long lineage of memory workers – artists, scholars, culture keepers − who uphold the idea that our per- sonal and cultural histories are stored in our bodies. 2 This work is based on four premises: 1. Our memories live and move in our bodies; 2. Through dancing, observing, writ- ing, and discussing, we can draw on sense perception (what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and how we move) to locate and access embod- ied memory; 3. By mapping, moving, and sharing our stories, we can more deeply understand ourselves, each other, and the ways in which we operate in the world; 4. This understanding creates empathic connections that can effect personal and social change – starting at the level of the body (juliebjohnson.com) 3 In 2015, I established a creative prac- tice, Moving Our Stories, that would become the mechanism for exploring this framework. Moving Our Stories uses participatory dance and embod- ied memory mapping to amplify the histories, lived experiences, and bodily knowledge of Black women as a strat- egy towards collective liberation and 1 Julie B. Johnson, Dancing Down the Floor: Experiences & Meanings of ‘Community’ in a West African Dance Class in Philadelphia (Phd. diss., Temple University, 2016), xiii. 2 In particular, I draw from Kariamu Welsh’s theories on epic memory; Carrie Nolan’s work on memory and gesture in Carrie Noland, Agency and Embodiment . Harvard University Press, 2009; and Alvin Ailey’s concept of blood memory. 3 This paragraph on the four premises of embodied memory mapping appears verba- tim on the author’s website, juliebjohnson.com , and in previous publications.
I think there are many ways to be a Visionary, but I often associ- ate it with foresight… the kind of foresight that enables seeing and thinking about the world many years from now. I think about a Visionary as someone who is able to spend time in the murky, unknown void that is our “future,” to see possibility and build a world there. They leap over the time between now and then and generate potential strategies and tech- nologies, perhaps well before we have the means to make it so. When I spend time in the unknown, I am more often dreaming about the past. Who came before me? What did they create? Who did they love? What wisdom did they generate? How did they dance? What stories remain untold, and why? I believe
An Embodied Memory Framework I t was 2015 when I first thought about making this sort of mem- ory work an intentional part of my creative practice. A year prior, I attended Urban Bush Women’s Summer Leadership Institute in New Orleans and witnessed each member of the company present what they referred to as an “embodied history,” an intimate sharing of their dance journey through gesture, movement, and voice. It seemed to open a por- tal to the past so that we the audi- ence could see/hear/feel the events unfold that resulted in them becom- ing a UBW company member and performing for us, in that place, at that time. After the Institute, when I returned to Philadelphia where I was
that the answers to these questions might help me understand how we arrived at this moment now, where we go from here, and what strategies we need to build the future worlds that the Visionaries are dreaming up. In this sense, I understand myself as a Memory Worker. I leap over the time between then and now to find con- nection, clarity, and understanding. I don’t mean to suggest that one can’t work both in the past and the future. In fact, I think many people do. I am simply reflecting on hind- sight as an intentional mode of vision- ing. I have come to deeply appreciate mindful facilitation to explore mem- ory, perhaps because I have so many gaps in my own past (likely trauma-re- lated dissociation that created chasms of lost time in the archive of my
experience). Sense perception – sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, and move- ment, to name a few – serve as “happy helpers” to reintroduce myself to past experiences by focusing my attention on the past through my body. Remember a time when you experi- enced or witnessed joy. What sights do you see when you recall this mem- ory? What colors, what faces, what shapes? Are there pools of light or shadows? In this memory, what sounds do you hear? Are there voices, is there music? Sounds of nature or industry? What scents do you notice in this memory? What textures do you feel against your skin, under your feet, or in your palms? How do you move in this memory? Where do you feel this memory in your body?
14
14 in dance SPRING 2025
SPRING 2025 in dance 15
In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
unify strengthen amplify unify strengthen amplify
44 Gough Street, Suite 201 San Francisco, CA 94103 www.dancersgroup.org
Made with FlippingBook - Online Brochure Maker