ADRIENNE MAREE BROWN WRITES THAT “EMERGENT STRATEGY IS ABOUT SHIFTING THE WAY WE SEE AND FEEL THE WORLD AND EACH OTHER. IF WE BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND OURSELVES AS PRACTICE GROUND FOR TRANSFORMATION, WE CAN TRANSFORM THE WORLD.”
the charge from their record. In severe cases, youth are moved to the adult jail to be tried as adults. We know that in Florida, incarceration rates are higher than most countries, and that youth detention has been part of that story since the beginning. 11 Some of these youth will be assigned to adult jails where they will be tried as adults. Currently, six fourteen-year olds sit in our adult deten- tion center. Lead educator Eugene Hall teaches three 100-minute classes a day, divided into two genders. Volunteers are welcome to offer programming in a range of disciplines, and he is especially glad to have us volunteers pres- ent to get the kids moving. For the hundred minutes we are together, laughter, music, movement, sweat, brings life back into a room young people enter and exit with hands bound in invisible cuffs behind their backs; our circle which includes staff educators, guards, team lead- ers and youth offers an altogether reshaping of the sin- gle file lines whose visual legacy embodies chain gang choreographies still haunting the country, and especially the American South. 12 It is clear enough that dancing, laughing, being loud, playful and creative together pow- ers up a something like the “hope discipline” abolitionist Mariame Kaba describes. 13 As prison dance activist Suchi Branfman reminds,“To witness and be with people who are dancing while living in a cage is a direct antithesis to confinement.” 14 Ironically, the pleasure of speaking freely with kids at the center defies much of the current moment when it comes to teaching and learning in Florida schools. At the time of writing, Florida statutes in K-12 have erad- icated the very possibilities of circles like this one, with cancellations of “WOKE” locally leading the charge for the Department of Education and the dismantling of DEI nationally. 15 For us researchers and educators within higher ed, the scene is equally bleak. Email to faculty this semester has set the conditions for classroom teach- ing under new censorship laws. Course instructors are 11 Father Dustin Feddon’s research on “Florida’s First Seven” reveals that since the beginning of jails and prisons in the state, youth imprisonment has been a regular practice, a finding that used historical documents, incarceration ledgers, birth certificates, and personal journal accounts to correct public records listing a number of incarnated individuals listed in their thirties as in fact, sixteen years old. His study of North Florida prison history, and in particular the ties between convict leasing and the continued legacy of slavery is outlined as rationale for the Refuge House he runs for men coming out of prison. See https://www.joseph- houseus.org/why-we-exist. 12 Suchi Branfman writes of this phenomenon, too: “We danced in circle after circle, acknowledging the power of being in proximity to one another, seeing each other, and being seen by everyone. We acknowledged the ways that the cypher, the circle, the roda, and the ring actually held us together as a community of movers and makers.” Suchi Branfman, “Things to Remem- ber from Virtual Teaching and Learning Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic,” Dance Education in Practice , 8:1, 16, DOI: 10.1080/23734833.2022.2027168 13 Mariame Kaba, “Hope is a Discipline” Sept 17. 2020, Toward Freedom. https://towardfreedom.org/story/archives/activism/ hope-is-a-discipline/ 14 Sophie Bress, “How Dance Artists are Addressing the US Prison System in Their Work, Both Onstage and on the Inside,” Dance Magazine 7 November 2022. https://www.dancemagazine.com/dance-and-incarceration/?utm_source=The+Dance+Edit&utm_campaign=06bdeecd40- TheDanceEdit20201119_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_71d672be74-06bdeecd40-70139222 15 For those not yet familiar, see the Feb 14, 2025 United States Department of Education letter Office of Civil Rights letter to us colleagues in higher ed ensuring compliance with “an educational environment that is free of race, color, or national origin discrimination” by way of immediate eradication of racial diversity as college admissions factor.
required to confer that all course materials have been read and vetted in alignment with state policy, with subtext stunningly aligning with the governor’s newly instituted import of a statewide DOGE, promising to audit Florida universities and cut the stated waste of state spending. As we face this experience, the words of brown re-emerge as powerful and helpful guidance. She writes that “emergent strategy is about shifting the way we see and feel the world and each other. If we begin to under- stand ourselves as practice ground for transformation, we can transform the world”. 16 She asks us to consider what practices can unlock the emergent potential we hold. I, Ivanna, have personally migrated from a place of paralyzing fear around dancing and singing, to find myself leading a call and response song while dancing with this group of high school boys. I want to take a moment to reflect on the journey. It happened over many years and also in an instant, as Hannah, my friend and co-facilitator, shifted from singing, to hold- ing down the beat for us. I didn’t have time for con- scious thought before I found myself in a surreal moment of leading others in something that previously felt impossible for me. During the darkest years of my life, I took dance and singing lessons. It’s hard to say why I would choose to add something so challenging to my life when every- thing else felt overwhelming, but maybe that is the rea- son. I needed to find my way somehow, and despite the fear, I did enjoy dance and music. I wanted to no lon- ger be afraid. My journey started with a West African dance class, and then when I found contact improvi- sation, I knew I was where I needed to be for several years: experimenting with self expression and vulnera- bility in community. I felt deeply uncomfortable, but I understood most others in the room with me felt sim- ilarly. I was in classes with trained dancers but find- ing our own unique ways to dance together, to navi- gate each moment together, was new to us all. Through movement exploration AND discussion, we built trust over time. It was a sensitive space where we were asked to be very mindful of each other’s responses, to notice and listen carefully, to hold our own boundaries, to think about how we would do this. We discussed race and gender, noticing differences and points of connec- tion. Contact improv asked us to connect, listen, and
communicate deeply. By the time singing lessons emerged for me a few years later, I was ready for its lessons: to try making sounds until I found the notes I was looking for. It felt so terrifying and then, so rewarding. Such helpful life lessons. I didn’t decide to become a facilitator of dance and music with detained youth, but I followed others in a direction that felt life-giving and found myself happily here. As a science educator and scholar, this pathway into art practices aligns with my goals of supporting creative and generative thinking, as scientists are faced with countless challenges and puzzles to solve. Academics from seemingly opposite ends of the spec- trum, Hannah and I enjoy a long history of working together and thinking expansively about “science” and “art” ed as not mutually exclusive. We find brown’s text(s) to be a incredible example of this. The lessons brown illustrates from the natural world around us in Emergent Strategy offers us support that we find our- selves sharing. Currently, we work alongside many others who feel scared and hopeless in the face of our political climate and with the massive threats of cli- mate change. A colleague who teaches in the college of medicine shared that she does not know how to do her job with the current restrictions. How can she instruct ethically and effectively if she cannot talk about med- ical conditions and needs unique to various communi- ties? Our colleagues in dance, theater, music, visual art, as in so many disciplines, wonder what in fact is meant by the so-called Western Canon now enforced as cur- ricular emphasis as if devoid of racism or sexism, let alone the myriad questions of identity and experience that make and remake our fields everyday. In Florida as
increasingly across the US, all working for the kinds of teaching and learning that invites instead of restrains find ourselves in need of strategies for how to move for- ward in a time like this. Like birds migrating, we don’t have a map, but we have practices to personally return to and to share with others. Presence and freedom dreaming can lead us into an era of improvisation that requires deep listening, compassionate communication, and radical imagination as we create new pathways for ourselves and our communities. Dancing, singing, and syncing together is a helpful step for us, and we wonder how this sounds to you? HANNAH SCHWADRON (MFA, PhD) is Associate Professor of Dance at Florida State University where she teaches dance history, improvisation, and the cultural politics of performance. Her writing and performance explore themes of Jewishness, dance, humor, migration, and decarcer- ation, is published in Choreographic Practices , Shofar, PARtake, Limi- nalities, International Journal of Screendance , the Oxford Handbook on Dance and Politics , the Oxford Handbooks Online in Music , the Oxford Handbook on Jewishness and Dance , American Perspectives in Dance II , and Dancer Citizen among other places. She is cofounder of the Talla- hassee Bail Fund which pays bail for people who cannot afford it and helps access needed services upon release. IVANNA PENGELLEY earned her Doctoral degree in Science Education at Florida State University, her Master’s Degree in Agricultural Education at the University of Florida, and her Bachelor’s degree in Educational Stud- ies at Washington University in St. Louis. Ivanna’s career has centered around supporting the education of marginalized youth, with a focus on those who have experienced the foster care system. Through this work, she studied and practiced the skill of empathetic communication, as a tool to facilitate understanding and connection. Ivanna is also actively engaged in developing intentional community centered around empa- thetic communication and sustainable designs.
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