T he following is a series of short meditations and improvisa- tion scores for living in tur- bulent times. Words and ideas are drawn from the resources of Livable Futures , a social practice project I have been co-creating over the past 10 years, these words are offered as embodied acts of resistance, connection, and imag- ining (I often write in community and am integrating here some language co-created with Michael J. Morris, Bhumi B Patel, and LROD). Livable Futures fosters cre- ative responses to conditions of crisis and uncertainty on a planet in need. Our work together has generated and supported 100s of artistic and scholarly projects, field courses, community workshops, performances and exhibitions, and a public idea archive. Our Sub- stack community newsletter and podcast offer action- able ideas, focusing on artistic tactics in response to the intersectional issues of ecological, social, and algorith- mic justice and foregrounding Black, indigenous, and queer feminist projects and practices. Our transme- dia performance rituals offer immersive environments for healing, community connection, and facing into the magnitude of the issues with creative intention and support. Centering livability encompasses social jus- tice and ecological ethics. It invites critically rethinking about who survives and who gets to thrive in our com- munities, including all biological and artificial life now and in the future. De-centering the human reframes progress in favor of a posthumanism that is neither anti-human nor solely about sustaining human life as we currently know it. I bring to these meditations my experience as an interdisciplinary artist, writer, dance improviser, teacher, and creative director for perfor- mance and technology projects grounded in practices of liberation and collaboration. ARRIVING As the tectonic forces of political extremism collide with the extreme events of climate change, we are left with- out any remaining illusion of stability. We are all liter- ally dancing on unstable ground. Of course this is not the first time this has happened, and many in the world have already been living in abject societies and cond- tions far worse than what is now happening in the U.S. but that does not mean it doesn’t matter. It means we move in solidarity. We fight, we resist, and we learn how to make lives amidst the crumbling foundations. We take solace in the fact that we do not know the future. And we seek to make futures together through practi- cal skills and poetic interventions, through sharing and
or tuning out. I made the perhaps absurd leap of assum- ing that dance could do something about climate change, about misogyny, anti-blackness, about overlapping crises. Not dancing about those things (that would be instrumen- talizing dance which is also good but not my thing) but using the intrinsic practices of dance improvisation and intermedia directly to address the issues at hand. Over the years of facing into the climate crisis, we have been devel- oping a kind of score for moving out of paralysis and into action, arriving again and again into the current moment, turning toward what is, sensing what wants to be known, re-centering around voices that have long been offering alternatives, and feeling our way into motion. Score: Softening Turning toward the fear, the insurmountable problems, the crises
gathering, and seeking peace in any of the ways we know how. We ask with each other; how do we locate resilience even as we fight the forces requiring it of us? What is a future? And how might we continue to imagine arriving at the unarrivable horizons of carbon drawdown, radi- cal tenderness, [1] and humane technologies? What do we already know as artists? Might we enter the unknown of this moment with a powerful willingness to do what needs to be done? I sometimes have the privilege of working as a birth justice doula helping birthing parents prepare for the unknown of labor and we always start with one ques- tion: What do you do when you don’t know what to do? No answers. No list of prescriptions but instead, how can I support you in accessing your own deep wells of capacity and capability? So many of our experiences exceed our ability to com- prehend them, articulate them, or even fully grieve them. What if you simply put these things together: memory, strengths, your sensory awareness of what’s at stake, and your creative practices? In the days that are here and, in the days, to come, all your talents and strengths and capacities are needed. Score: Radical Juxtaposition What do you do when you don’t know what to do? How have you already navigated the unknown in your life?
LIVABLE FUTURES, CLIMATE BANSHEES, AND OTHER SCORES FOR DANCING ON UNSTABLE GROUND
The first action is non-action, breathe, sense, pausing, pacing
Softening into the magnitudes, sensing
What if you took this moment right now to accept the immensity of these feelings? What wants to be said, moved, sounded, felt, heard? Sense what wants to be moved and move from there. Feeling into action, power, poetics, prose, intention, offering, voice, motion
What are you particularly good at doing?
Now take the leap of assuming that whatever you are good at—dancing, managing projects, decluttering, nurturing—whatever your greatest skills, they are exactly what is needed right now. Take the leap of putting your
What if you already know everything you need to know in your body now?
super- powers together with the issues at hand and listen for what hap- pens next.
What if you move from there? Make from there.
TURNING TOWARD
In 2015, in response to the uptick in violence and vitriol of the first Trump campaign com- bined with cascading extreme climate events, I felt called into fac- ing the things that were most frightening for me instead of turning away
by Norah Zuniga Shaw
ZShaw as Climate Banshee in time traveling collage
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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
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