Published by Dancers' Group, In Dance is discourse and dialogue to unify, strengthen, and amplify.
in dance SPRING 2025 DISCOURSE + DIALOGUE TO UNIFY, STRENGTHEN + AMPLIFY
P.12 The Future is Behind Us, Too
P.37 Finance Your Freedom
P.52 Dancing on Unstable Ground
CONTENTS
37/ Finance Your Freedom:
12 / The Future is Behind Us, Too by Julie B. Johnson, PhD 20 / A Daily Booty Shake, Morning Doodles, and Whimsy by Veronica Jiao 24 / A Beautiful Future: Moving Together When the Journey Gets Bumpy by Hannah Schwadron and Ivanna Pengelley 30 / Instability and Intermediaries: How Major Funders Continue to Fail the Arts Ecosystem by Rebecca Fitton
Dancers’ Group gratefully acknowledges the support of Bernard Osher Foundation, California Arts Council, Fleishhacker Foundation, Grants for the Arts, JB Berland Foundation, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Koret Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission, Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, Walter & Elise Haas Fund, William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation and generous individuals.
A 20 year Critical Examination of Arts Management and Black San Francisco by Raissa Simpson
42/ Conducting the Future: How Disability and Improvisation Prepare Us to Be Unprepared by Stephanie Heit 48/ Movement Mapping Care by Yayoi Kambara 52/ Livable Futures, Climate
Banshees, and other Scores for Dancing on Unstable Ground by Norah Zuniga Shaw
By Our Hands , Georgia Incarceration Performance Project (2020), photo by Clay Chastain (Page 12)
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WELCOME SPRING by Bhumi B Patel, Guest Editor
historically had to dream other futures. And to borrow from June Jordan, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. Our survival(s) have always depended upon our capacity for connection and dreaming that another world is possible. Each of these authors have considered what it means to them or how they are able to imagine the world or dance or the arts otherwise and into the future. In 2000, Octavia Butler wrote a piece for Essence magazine titled, “A Few Rules for Predicting the Future.” She wrote: “Of course, writing novels about the future doesn’t give me any special ability to foretell the future. But it does encourage me to use our past and present behaviors as guides to the kind of world we seem to be creating. The past, for example, is filled with repeating cycles of strength and weakness, wisdom and stupidity, empire and ashes.” 4 The past for me is a way to look for those who have repeatedly been left out. I con- tinue to look for us and know we are out there. In this world where words like “activism,” “bias,” “BIPOC,” “disabilities,” “gender,” “LGBTQ,” “race,” and “women” (just to name a few) show up on a leaked list of “banned” words from the National Science Foundation, that is informed by the Executive Order 14151, “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Prefer- encing,” we need to hone our skills of imagina- tion now more than ever. In “The Future is Behind Us, Too,” Julie B. Johnson orients us toward the imperative of memory work and visioning forward and back- ward “leap over the time between then and now to find connection, clarity, and understanding.” Hannah Schwadron and Ivanna Pengelley write that “Like birds migrating, we don’t have a map, but we have practices to personally return to and to share with others,” carving pathways toward liberation through improvisation. Veronica Jiao
encourages us to consider the importance of booty shaking so that we can be “with childlike wonder that somehow still flourishes within colonialism before capitalism has the chance to squash it out.” Raissa Simpson takes on the “economics of dance through empirical stud- ies on Black dance” to challenge and reimag- ine how Black leaders in dance forge pathways forward for the field. Rebecca Fitton brings together the past to inform the future in a moment of upheaval in the arts funding land- scape to “share some mutual calls to action as we DREAM toward a more creative solu- tion than the current philanthropic approach.” Stephanie Heit utilizes the metaphor of con- duction to improvise through dancing and writing to “keep weaving these connections that slowly and with care are a pulsing thing, a web of antennaed knowing, so many strings, vibrating in song.” Yayoi Kambara comes home to her body as a way to face “the risk of living.” And finally, Norah Zuniga Shaw speaks through the Climate Banshee to engage with the ques- tions of what makes (our) futures “livable.” Each of these writers dreams, by way of past, present, and future to make and remake the world at every turn. Let us remember that Mariame Kaba writes, “everything that is worth- while is done with other people.” 5 This group of writers represents a window into the type of people with whom I hope to do worthwhile things in this world. So I ask you this now: Do you feel like you have the ability and capacity to imagine that the world around you could be different? What does that look like?
HOPE IS A PRACTICE, I tell myself over and over again these days in the early months of 2025 when every news update indicates more upheaval and violence from the US Federal govern- ment, funding bodies across the US, and between individuals following the lead of those in power. These days, I feel simultaneously inconsolable
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and lit up by a willful fire to continue fighting for liberation. I write to friends, I attend actions, and very often, I cry as I ingest the state of the world. When I began the process of curating this issue of In Dance for Spring 2025, I reached out to artists, scholars, writers, movers with whom I feel deeply Judith Butler’s provocation that we must be “undone by each other.” 1 Butler writes, “if we’re not, we’re missing something.” 2 I am undone by the writers brought togeth- er in this issue: undone by their capacity to see the world and imagine otherwise; undone by their trust in me to bring some- thing into the world; undone by their artistic practices and willful choices to keep making art. None of us here have come up with utopia, but each of the writers, I believe, has found ways to be with what Anna Tsing calls an “impossible present, this time of rupture, a world haunted with the threat of extinction” 3 and to make it more bearable, more alive. As I reached out to folks, this issue became an issue high- lighting women or women-adjacent writers, many of whom are queer-identifying, many of whom are of color, and when I noticed this about this group, I realised that we are the people who have
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in solidarity and community, Bhumi
Cover: Left to right: Bhumi Patel, Stephanie Heit, and Raven Malouf-Renning, Queer Mad Electrics at Township Commons Park, Oakland Photo by Petra Kuppers
1 Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (Routledge, 2005), 19. 2 Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (Routledge, 2005), 19. 3 Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, A rts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts of the Anthropocene (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), G6.
5 Mariame Kaba, We Do this ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (Haymarket Books, 2021), 178.
4 Octavia E. Butler, “A Few Rules for Predicting the Future,” Essence Magazine , May 2000, 166.
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Dancing in the Park SF Mark Foehringer Dance Project | SF presents AN ADMISSION FREE OUTDOOR DANCE FESTIVAL
June 20 & 21, 2025 The Forum at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 701 Mission Street, San Francisco
Saturday, April 26 1–5pm Music Concourse Golden Gate Park, San Francisco between the DeYoung Museum and Academy of Sciences
WITH PERFORMANCES BY:
ODC/Dance Company Robert Moses’ Kin Soulforce Mark Foehringer Dance Project | SF and many more!
EXPERIENCE THE PIONEERS OF HIP HOP IN AN ELECTRIFYING, ONE-OF-A-KIND LIVE EVENT DIRECTED BY JOANNA HAIGOOD
Joe Conzo, Jr. BG183 Rokafella Kwikstep John Ensor Parker
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Helen wicks works +
alive & well Productions present:
an evening of live music & dance
Fri, May 2 - 8pm
Sun, May 4 - 3:30pm
Theater of Yugen
2840 Mariposa St, SF
with musical compositions by:
nadia boulanger, Kian ravaei
& Simon Linsteadt
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The future is behind us, too PHOTO BY CLAY CHASTAIN by JULIE B. JOHNSON, PHD
By Our Hands, Georgia Incarceration Performance Project (2020)
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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?
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Georgia’s history of convict leasing. 6 As UGA archivists pulled out box after box full of memories, it brought me back to the basement of my childhood home. The feel of tattered, old paper; the smell of weathered, crumbly leather book bindings; the yellowish hue of stained black and white photographs all felt familiar to me. The nostalgia, however, quickly turned heavy as we studied city records, police reports, whipping logs, photographs, and let- ters from elected officials in other states seeking guidance from Georgia’s lead- ers about how to grow their own con- vict leasing system. Dr. Amma arranged for the archivists to bring the materials into our creative space. Collaboratively, we reviewed the materials, reflected, and moved our bodies - not always in that order. The year-long process cul- minated in a full-length production called By Our Hands which brought the archives to life through dance, the- ater, music, spoken word and visual media technology to shed light on the development of Georgia’s carceral sys- tem from the turn of the twentieth cen- tury to today. This transformational experience taught me more about the lingering impact of slavery through the country’s prison industrial com- plex than I could have ever hoped to learn by just reading about it or listen- ing to a lecture. For example, it is one thing to read about the burgeoning railroad system in the mid 1800s and its role in proliferating convict leas- ing which disproportionately impacted Black men, women, and children, but it is quite another thing to hold a pair of 100 year old prison shackles in your hand, see photos of chain gangs driv- ing the railroad spikes into the Georgia red clay, and then deepen the inquiry through the body using collabora- tive choreographic devices. One of my favorite scenes was a dance created by Spelman students that drew on archival evidence of Black women’s resistance 6 Sarah Haley, author of No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity , explains convict leasing as a system of labor exploitation and state violence that builds on the legacy of slavery through “captivity, abjection, and gendered capitalism,” (2016, p 4). According to Talitha LeFlouria, author of Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South , Georgia’s convict leasing system began in 1868 as a form of punishment in which able-bodied men and women were “legally parceled out to a series of private industries and farms… Georgia’s state penitentiary… was composed of independently operated lease camps, governed by a syndicate of private contractors, ‘whipping bosses,’ and guards at the behest of the state” (2015, p 9-10).
eventually became my own. The deeper I delved into archival collec- tions, the more I realized that ances- tral voices aren’t always documented in written records. Many collections were initiated and stewarded by white men in power who either had no knowledge of/interest in/access to experiences other than their own, or they were actively committed to excluding/erasing/revising those histo- ries. So, when conducting my doctoral research from 2014–2016, it felt vital to include as many of those experi- ences as I could. I culled through the archives at the Philadelphia Folklore Project (PFP) searching for voices of elders and leaders within the city’s West African dance and drum commu- nity. I found oral history interviews, transcripts, and program notes that offered insights into how this commu- nity emerged, took shape, and thrived for decades. Paired with the embod- ied research on the dance floor, and the interviews with other West African dance class participants in the com- munity, my dissertation experience helped me figure out how to integrate the research of archival materials with the research of embodied memory. I continue this practice here in Atlanta every chance I get. Making a Way Back to Go Forward I n 2019, I had the honor of serv- ing as a co-director and choreog- rapher for The Georgia Incarcer- ation Performance Project (GAIPP) alongside some amazing faculty mem- bers from Spelman College (Kathleen Wessel and Keith Bolden) and The University of Georgia (Dr. Amma Y. Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin and Dr. Emily Sahakian). This cross-institutional col- laboration centered archival research and interdisciplinary creative devising. Together with students, faculty, librar- ians, and archivists from both institu- tions, along with Atlanta-based artists and designers and justice-impacted students enrolled in college courses at Georgia-area prisons, we explored
your great great grandmother lived at this address!” He talked about genea- logical research like an Indiana Jones story – but replaced the boulders, spi- ders, and Nazis with his embodied memories of what it was like to drive through the south as a Black man, imagining the ghosts of ancestors lurk- ing in the swampy forests as he trav- eled towards what he hoped would be answers to the questions about his past. He captured embodied reflections in his book, Who Came Before Me? A Story of the Search for my Tomes and Lightfoot Roots and What I Found, “I was scared to death. The murky waters of the Great Dismal Swamp came right up to the shoulders of the narrow winding road as I drove past Suffolk, Virginia… The ghosts of the past were all around, and they seemed to be summoning me… I had palpi- tations; my heart was in my throat. I could not catch my breath. And, it was getting dark.” 5 My father transitioned in 2009. Those who didn’t know him well likely perceived him as reserved and stoic... maybe even distant or unfeeling. He was pragmatic, methodical, and chose his moments to emote very carefully, so I understand this perception of him. But the rest of us, his family and close friends, knew that he had great capac- ity to feel things very deeply. He was sensitive and kind, thoughtful and con- templative, generous with his love, and he could be ridiculously silly. But his reflections on the Great Dismal Swamp caught me off guard. It let me know he could be vulnerable and afraid, and despite that, willing to face his fears to uncover the past – it was that import- ant to him. I imagine he felt it was the least he could do to honor his ances- tors who had sacrificed so much. It let me know what was at stake. My father’s curiosity and commit- ment to unearthing our ancestors’ sto- ries stand out in stark contrast to my memories of teenage drama and angst. His excitement for archival research
Dr. Julie B. Johnson at the Idle Crimes & Heavy Work archival & visual media installation, 7 Stages Theatre (2022)
Encountering Material Archives M y earliest encounter with an archival collection that I can recall was in the basement of our family home in White Plains, NY. We had moved from Baltimore in 1986 when I was 7 years old, and my older sister and I helped the family settle into our new home by removing all the stickers that the moving company had placed on every single piece of furniture. The lowest level of the house became the storage space for all the things that were never unpacked. Down the base- ment stairs felt like another world. I could barely fit my little body be- tween the mountains of cardboard moving boxes marked “memorabilia.” My sister and I carved narrow path- ways, nooks and crannies as we ex- plored these mystery boxes full of old family photographs, dad’s highschool sports trophies, documents, school papers, toys, yearbooks, tattered
restoration for all . I am grateful that the ten years since its inception have been full of generative collaborations with individuals, grassroots orga- nizations, and cultural institutions. Together, we honor dancing bodies as a vital mode of research, commu- nity connection, and social change. I learn so much from each encoun- ter, and strive to carry this knowledge into every new experience. Whether facilitating workshops, community dinners, video chat wellness check- ins, abolition study groups 4 , dance films, or site responsive performances, MOS projects invite inquiry about the relationship between our dancing bodies, the land on which we dance, the social and cultural structures that inform our dancing, and the experi- ences of those who came before us. 4 In 2020, collaborators and I found ourselves situated in national conversations about police and prison abolition since our work focused on exploring carceral histo- ries. We decided to host abolition study groups to learn more and grapple with some complex ideas around art-making and justice. Since then, I have been exploring how my dance practice might align with the praxis of Abolition Feminism, drawing from the work of Mariam Kaba, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Angela Davis, and Critical Resistance, to name just a few organizers and collectives in the movement.
books, and more. Before this, I didn’t know what “memorabilia” meant, but this experience, looking through this treasure trove of memories, the word became magical to me. Some years later (in the early 90s), my dad embarked on a journey to dis- cover our family’s ancestral roots. He took several road trips down south to search through libraries, county and state archives, and to conduct oral history interviews with family elders. I remember how excited he was to come back with printouts of U.S. cen- sus records, wills, marriage licenses, and death certificates that collectively told the story of our family from gen- erations before. This was before the era of Ancestry.com, so he had learned a lot about how to put the pieces together himself. He shared conver- sations with archivists and family members that would reveal a clue that would lead to the next clue and on and on. “Look, this record shows that
5 Calvin Johnson, Jr. Who Came Before Me? A Story of the Search for my Tomes and Lightfoot Roots and What I Found (Baltimore, MD, Gateway Press Inc., 2009), 1.
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ERIKA CHONG SHUCH | INTERVIEWED BY ROWENA RICHIE PHOTO BY HECTOR ZAVALA
labor through the lens of Black women’s experiences. Driven by archival research (material and embod- ied) and site-respon- sive performance, and grounded in the principles of commu- nity-based participa- tory dance research, ICHW collabora- tors connect the sto- ries of women past and present to sites in Atlanta embedded with their carceral labor. Like GAIPP, our collective is made up of dance artists, archivists, activists, educators, architects, histori- ans, and justice-im- pacted citizens who endeavor together
changes and budget cuts to fed- eral institutions like the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Parks Service, the Depart- ment of Education, and the National Archives and Records Administra- tion to name a few. They introduced a long list of words and phrases used to review federally funded programs like the NSF, including “women,” “race,” ”black,” “diver- sity,” “historically,” “cultural dif- ferences,” and many more. 9 These words allow us to name our experi- ence and hold institutions account- able to the way they treat us. By using these words to flag and dis- mantle programs, the Trump admin- istration has now weaponized these words in the effort to erase the expe- riences of anyone that is not like them. When systems of oppression attempt to disembody us from our experiences, past and present, it puts our future in jeopardy. Dance keeps us in our bodies. It lets us connect. It is a way to remember who we are. I am grateful for every collabora- tor, mentor, and ancestor who has helped cultivate embodied memory work practices as modes of vision- ing. Now, more than ever, I under- stand what my father knew, we need to look back to move forward. JULIE B. JOHNSON , PHD, is a dance artist and educator whose work centers on participatory dance and embodied memory mapping to am- plify the histories, lived experiences, and bodily knowledge of Black women as a strategy to- wards collective liberation for all. She does this work joyfully with community partners through her creative practice, Moving Our Stories (es- tablished in 2015), and at Spelman College where she serves as an Assistant Professor of the Department of Dance Performance & Chore- ography. She brings this work to the publishing realm as a Co-Founder/Consulting Editor of The Dancer-Citizen, an online open-access schol- arly dance journal exploring the work of socially engaged artists. Julie earned a PhD in Dance Studies at Temple University’s Boyer College of Music and Dance.
Cover of Dr. Julie B. Johnson's father's book, published 2009, featuring the author's great great grandparents.
in the labor camps by sabotaging equipment, burning prison uni- forms, and protesting corporeal punishment (whippings). Working on GAIPP changed me at a cellular level, I will never see this country the same way again. In conjunction with my partic- ipation in GAIPP, I initiated Idle Crimes & Heavy Work through my creative practice, Moving Our Stories and worked with key Atlanta-based community partners such as Giwayen Mata (an “all- sistah, dance, percussion, and vocal ensemble”) and The Chattahoochee Brick Company Descendants Coa- lition (a grassroots organization working to honor and preserve sites built by convict labor), to name a few. 7 Idle Crimes & Heavy Work (ICHW) is a collaborative dance research endeavor that explores Georgia’s history of incarcerated 7 I give thanks to these wonderful thought partners and collaborators; Tambra Omiyale Harris, Artistic Director of Giwayan Mata; Donna Stephens and Genia Billingsley who created the Chattachoochee Brick Company Descendants Coaltion; Victoria Lemos, historian, tour guide, and host of the Archive Atlanta Podcast; Robert Thompson, historian and tour guide with Insight Cultural Tourism; and the team of Community Visioners, including: Lauren Neefe, Holly Smith, Dr. shady Radical, Dr. Vernelle Noel, Hawkins, and Christiana McLeod Horn.
to understand our own relationship to the U.S. carceral system – how it has impacted us and our communi- ties as citizens of this country built on forced labor and entangled in the prison industrial complex. We use embodied memory mapping, archi- val research, interactive performance, workshops, dance films, and com- munity gatherings to build empathic bridges of connection between past and present. We dedicate our own creative labor to restoring erased his- tories and emblazoning the experi- ences of incarcerated Black women on the cityscapes of our community as an act of resistance through com- munal dances of love, liberation, and joy. 8 We look backwards to reckon with the past, and along the way, we discover ancestors’ strategies of survival that may be the key to our future liberation. As I write this, the Trump admin- istration is conducting rapid, wide- sweeping, and devastating policy
9 Joel Achenbach, “Here are the Words Putting Science in the Crosshairs of Trump’s Orders.” Washington Post . Feb 4, 2025; Karen Yourish, Annie Daniel, et al. “These Words are Disappearing in the New Trump Administration.” The New York Times . Mar 7, 2025.
8 This sentence also appears on the author’s website, www.juliebjohnson.com, www.idlecrimes.com, and in previous publications.
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H ow do you imagine worlds/ cessing practices (the healthy ones, teehee) of my child- hood and younger adulthood. In middle school, I would draw word-collages of inside jokes with my friends, much like the one included here (probably more intricate and exciting back then though), and in young adulthood— and now, although less often—I would open discussion on social media on nuanced topics via micro-essays on my Instagram Close Friends Stories. Because I am constantly being stimulated, answering big questions like, “How do you imagine THE FUTURE?” is more easily digestible when I connect the inner child to the present adult human. Please envision these paragraphs as a “tap / hold to read” IG Story post, white text on a black screen, and that privi- leged little green-highlighted white star in the top corner. *tap* *hold to read* When I imagine worlds into the future, I’ve realized that descriptively, none of the anti-isms are the first things that pop into my head. Of course I imagine a world of anti-racism, anti-capitalism, accessibility, trans and queer as f*ck existence— but I’m not using those descriptors as the main foundation of the world I imagine. *tap* *hold to read* dance/the arts/otherwise into the future— “how” as in what do I imagine, or “how” as in the actual practice of imagining? As I con- tinue to heal my inner child and various traumas while navigat- ing the current state of the world, I’ve found myself revisiting pro- Anti-racism, anti-ableism, anti-capitalism, anti-sexism, etc. only exist because of the systems of oppression that they aim to dismantle. Though they are in opposition to these systems of power, they are still created constructs and spaces that ultimately center the oppressive systems because the systems must first be defined in order to defy. In my imagined future, all of that goodness is already inherent to basic living. The “how” I’m caught up on at the moment is whether or not we arrive there linearly, or if we’ll have taken a quantum leap across perceptions of time. Likely the latter, as my imagined future is grounded in practices of community building, shared leadership, and humanity and art-centered living, imagined through my personal lens of Filipino indigeneity. Ways of life typ- ically associated with “developing” and “impoverished”
countries, ancestral knowledge that existed before colo- nialism, but also ways of life associated with childlike wonder that somehow still flourishes within colonialism before capitalism has the chance to squash it out. When I imagine this global Wakanda, it’s less heightened— lib- eration is expected and understood universally, in a com- mon-sense way of, “Well, of course. Well, yes.” The term “embodied liberation” is nearly unheard of because it’s so inherent to everyday life at this point in the future. (Right now it is nearly unheard of because only artists and activists are really using this language reg- ularly.) Pace of life is easy-going, free from the need to produce goods for consumption in order to survive. The looming air of “The Administration” and “Politics” is non- existent. It is a very tranquil state where society’s needs of food, shelter, water, preventative health practices are all met easily, willingly, and through community-sourcing (mutual aid as the standard, as opposed to mutual aid out of last-resort). The kids on the internet would call this tranquility of being “whimsy,” or “delusion.” The older kids on the inter- net would refer to that as “toxic positivity.” The activist/ organizer circles call it “radical dreaming for the future.” I am at the intersection of all three of these pockets so I use all those terms interchangeably and within this context of an imagined future. *tap* *hold to read* More of my “how,” as in rooted in what has existed for ages: We are at a period of time where those who are just now awakening to the systems of oppression through which we’re forced to move have finally arrived at trying out the vocabulary of “white supremacy,” “dismantle,” or “colonialism” in their every-other-day language. Whereas those of us who have understood these truths for a while are now at, “DON’T LOSE YOUR FUCKING WHIMSY BRO, DAYDREAM 25/8,” an understanding that reaching back to our inner-child, inherent indigeneity as humans and not only geographical ancestors (hat tip to j. bouey for that concept), and creative wonder will fuel the aboli- tion of all oppressive systems. That’s not a dig on those who have lived life privileged enough to thrive in these systems that it takes a gentle cre- scendo into fascism for them to awaken. Truly, it’s not. But I do think we need to put them in little incubators of art therapy so that they can arrive with us at this dreamy state. *tap* *hold to read*
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A word collage of thought processing the question “What does it mean to you to imagine into the future?”
A Daily Booty Shake, Morning Doodles, and Whimsy by VERONICA JIAO
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We cannot create a future we haven’t imagined, and imagination takes creativity and dreaming.
More of my “how,” as in what I imagine: Imagine if every single human on the earth woke up with a little booty shake, a whole glass of water, a little food treat, and some doodling/painting/scribbling before doing anything else. That’s radical and anti-capitalist as f*ck already, and that’s only the first 45 minutes of the day. A little booty shake to reclaim the body outside of physical labor and awaken serotonin and joy; a whole glass of water and a little food treat as pleasurable nour- ishment outside of just food for survival; some doodling/ painting/scribbling as tangible art not simply made for consumerism or money. The only way I’ve been able to wake up remotely similarly to a little booty shake, water, treat, and art- therapy was on the tail-end of a debilitating depression. I was only able to have time for these things because my mental health had declined so badly in the months prior that I had no choice but to slow down. Even as I slowed down, I didn’t have other sources of income, so I was still working, as much as I could manage between depressive episodes. And this is speaking as someone with drinkable water, a grocery store within a block, a conscious practice of desocializing the pelvis over the past few years through dance and discussion, and access to financial support from friends, family, and mutual aid. *tap* *hold to read* More of my “how,” as in what I imagine, cont’d: Also, money doesn’t exist in my future. Our currency exchange is Exchange itself. Example: my community has clean water, and we’ve figured out how to filter our water. We’ll teach you how to do this, and in exchange, we’d love for y’all to teach us your particular way of writing and speaking. And we’ll dance and sing together. At its core, this is just cultural exchange, pre-capitalism and pre-colonialism/imperialism. It’s not that the value of services and goods did not exist; it’s that each com- munity’s well-being and genuine curiosity was the cen- terpiece to Exchange, and neither community’s knowl- edge was deemed as superior or more valuable than the others. I’ve been fortunate to have friends in the present already building this future of barter, rooted in the past. Example: I performed in a benefit for my friend under a short rehearsal process, and in exchange they took
my headshots. (High quality headshots cost about $300 edited.) I have another friend who provides astrology readings in exchange for having guests on a podcast. *tap* *hold to read* Cultural exchange and community-building outside of superiority and money, childlike wonder and whimsy, and bodies without social constructs all sounds so basic , and is , at its roots. The part where imagination comes in is how to get back to that from the point we’re at now. We need every single person in on this thought process and brain- storm. For example: cultural exchange happens— every- one is trying their best on their DuoLingo streaks, and Gen Z is very interested in Mykonos, Greece all of a sudden; childlike wonder and whimsy exists in adults– I’m pic- turing all the sunset content and “I wish I was a fairy in a forest” content on the internet; and bodies without social constructs– well, we’re all still working on that one…but line dances and TikTok dance challenges are out there. I fully acknowledge and feel that I’m not sharing any new knowledge. And I love that. We cannot create a future we haven’t imagined, and imagination takes creativity and dream- ing. Pieces of my imagined future exist in the present, but we are stuck in such a cycle of survival mode that even though we are shaking our hips, exchanging time and services for other time and services and friendship, and staying whimsical at the first sign fireflies in Central Park every year, we still have bills to pay and mouths to feed. Liberation is happening on a micro-level, but it will take more people brave enough–or more delusion and toxic positivity–to really push us over the edge to embodied lib- eration on a macro-level. Born on the traditional land of the Edisto Natchez-Kusso, Etiwan, & Kiawah peoples (Charleston, SC), VERONICA JIAO is a Filipino-American dance creative, educator, and administrator. As the grandchild of immigrants, she is engaged in the work of dismantling white supremacist structures as they exist in the arts. Her creative practice renders this work by archiving the embodied Asian-American experience through the mediums of dance improvisation, facilitating critical conversation, writing, collaborative community building, and teaching youth of marginalized backgrounds. She also co-hosts The Dance Union Podcast with j. bouey. As a performer, she has danced with Designated Movement Company, BABEL Movement, Josh Pacheco Dance Theater, Virgin Voyages Cruise Line, The Tallahassee Ballet, and on the National Tour of the Broadway musical Anastasia. As an administrator, she supports Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, founder of Urban Bush Women, and assists planning and team-building at CREA Interactivity.
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it”. 4 What emerges from these cycles are complex organ- isms, systems, movements, and societies, brown teaches, and like birds, they respond to destiny together. The destiny line stands out. It perks heads off desks and up out of sweatshirts, it invites the wise words of the female detention officer, until then silent behind her mask, who describes a kind of predestined force bigger than what we know. Once in the sunny courtyard, we set the destiny line to a melody that etches into a groove the more we repeat it together, a kind of iterative development that tries on different pitches until it finds its tonal agreement. Snaps, head bobs, and shoulder sways keep time, and other lines layer in, inspired by the text. “Nothing is wasted, never a failure.” Then: “From worm to butterfly”. And last: “There’s a purpose to it always, always, always”, each “always” creeping up to the highest notes the group of us can hit. This gets a laugh each time and the song sort of explodes by the end in loud sounds and smiles. There’s something contagious about making fun of the seriousness while reaching underneath to make sure the meaning counts. We perform the song for Coach Hall, detention center lead educator, and the rest of the group who have been our seated witnesses in the chairs away from our small circle. Applause and a sense of accomplishment has us search for a name for the song. “Beautiful Journey” gets a few likes, but it’s K whose idea gets the vote. “Nah” she says, “I like Beautiful Future” she waits a beat as others turn toward her, “Beautiful Future is better because the journey can get super bumpy….like these rocks in my shoes after sitting out here.” K is the most vocal in group discussion that day. It’s her input that guides the move toward songwriting, since she liked to sing but hadn’t done it in a while. Her memory of chorus resonated with the “cohesive,” “shared direc- tion” of emergence brown described, the recollection of which spurred others to bring in comparisons to basket- ball and dance team. Inviting in movement, we try to flock together, a dance improvisation us co-facilitators introduce which raises eyebrows and seems to cement some deeper into desks. Eyes move around the circle of chairs like, is this for real. Some egg on others, come on, get up. We find this together and in different ways. I ground in and take
by HANNAH SCHWADRON & IVANNA PENGELLEY
WE HEAD OUTSIDE in single file for the second half of class to be in the sun. One student flattens herself on the asphalt, chest down, hands folded under her head. Another slips socked feet out of laceless shoes, warming her toes on the hot court floor. A third moves against the concrete wall and into the shade, her back against the cool- ness with knees pulled up, and a group of us five stand and then sit as we draft the lyrics to our emerging song.
“Destiny is a calling that makes a beautiful journey.” 1 It’s the line from the text we’ve been discussing all after- noon; a passage from adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy on the art of flocking and the migratory patterns of birds, which then opens up to other profundities like the underground reaching of oak trees, who “grow such that their roots are intertwined and create a system of strength that is as resilient on a sunny day that it is in a hurricane.” 2 And dandelions who “don’t know whether they are a weed or a brilliance”. 3 And cells, who “grow until they split and complexify” and in doing so, “interact and intersect and discover their purpose… and they serve
1 adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (AK Press), 12. Full text available here: https://ia803401.us.archive.org/20/items/brown-emergent-strategyfullbook/brown%20Emergent%2BStrategy%2Bfull%2Bbook. pdf. For readers who want to follow along with us, we cite pages from this copy of the book.
2 Ibid. 3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
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INVITING IN MOVEMENT, WE TRY TO PHYSICALLY FLOCK TOGETHER, A DANCE IMPROVISATION US CO-FACILITATORS INTRODUCE WHICH RAISES EYEBROWS AND SEEMS TO CEMENT SOME DEEPER INTO DESKS.
found even fleeting pockets of head nodding relatability) noticeably helped shift the reception of us female guests in the room about whom the multiple authorities pres- ent made several reminders to respect and obey. For the majority of boys in the session who have to take heavy psychotropics daily at the center, the drumming appeared to create a kind of contagious mood that made it more possible to be present and at the least, stay awake. We leaned actively on the words of brown as we faced an unknown experience, seeking primarily to connect and support the groups of beautiful teens in front of us, whom we were warned “came from deeply troubled homes” and that were “very difficult.” brown’s “Less prep, more presence” guided us to “move at the speed of trust” as we explained that we came to talk about a book that we found personally helpful and wanted to share, and that we found personal joy and freedom through dance and music, so that was how we wanted to connect and play with them. We introduced ourselves, the text, and each activity amidst a near constant stream of jokes, between the teens, and also, distractingly, from the offi- cers in the room. On day 1, an officer joined our circle to support the music making and conversation, and the result was something gorgeously connective, but on day 2, several new officers lingered in the back and walked through the circle as they focused on their tasks (and teasing jokes). One joke eventually escalated as a teen took the bait an officer laid for him, grabbing a forbidden pen, invit- ing physical retribution that cascaded into a full fight as other officers and teens jumped in. Concern was high in the room because we were present throughout the prov- ocation, and the teens were visibly and verbally upset about the fairness of this experience. Leaving room for breath, we moved slowly as staff instructed us to con- tinue the lesson. Guided by brown to be present, and that “change is constant, be like water”, we shifted back to the text, which offered us a framework for what was unfolding in the room. “Trust the people and they become trustworthy.” This concept had played out pain- fully clear just moments before: a taunt became a fight that ended after the facility’s Captain came in to reassure the group that he understood what happened and was dealing with the offending officer. He brought the fighter back in and thanked him for his calmness after such an experience. The contrast between his respect shown to the Captain or the officers with rapport, prompted our group reflection on trust. brown helped us flip the
traditional script around “earning” trust with giving trust, and that seemed useful for us to explore and to establish some understanding. Most people in the room resonated with this idea, even though it went in the face of what some might have previously thought or said. Not only did we talk through how this could be true, we had witnessed it. The choice to work with brown’s text was an organic one between us co-facilitators as a kind of extension of other themes and source materials we have worked with in the past. Sessions together here during past vis- its engaged Robin G. Kelly’s Freedom Dreams , and Black feminist abolitionist anthems of “We keep us safe”. These were guiding texts for our own life and movement explorations, and they supported us in the invitation to “lead a dance workshop” at the youth detention center. The juxtaposition of themes around freedom, safety, and radical imagination seemed big and ambitious, but we and the youth found them to be a logical place to begin. What else could be more rele- vant in such a place? We like that brown calls us readers to create focus groups of all kinds, building/mapping/creating in all the ways we can imagine, and especially encourages us to underline the text and pass it to younger generations. 9 For teens sitting in jail as for the two of us, this capac- ity to continue imagining, continue “re-rooting” in the earth, in creativity, and in community… having visions that are longterm” as brown does seems especially important. 10 We could not “plan” for these workshops any more than we can plan for life in this world. We can only face it with the skills we have, like birds preparing to migrate. brown reminds us that birds do this incredi- ble feat without packing or maps, with simply a lifetime of learning and a legacy of experience built into our bodies. We remind ourselves and the youth of this [our] capacity as we spend a few hours with them, leading a “dance class.” We learn that these youth spend an average of twen- ty-one days at the center. There they take classes in Math, Language Arts, and Life Skills while waiting to meet with a judge to assess their case. Some are for- mally adjudicated, receiving probation, a mandatory diversion program, or a move to a residential program for evidence-based treatments. Others receive designa- tion as “adjudication withheld”, the judge absolving
flight: “Some of us can be the birds, some the bird watchers…” This lets out air and a small handful of us move into position, like brown writes, “staying separate not to crowd each other”, 5 following the one in front, modulating our speed to keep the group together. A cou- ple rounds in, through the false starts and giggles, we stop to ask the bird watchers what they notice. “Team- work” one says, “Sync” another says and heads nod. We take it back to the text. “Birds don’t make a plan to migrate, raising resources to fund their way, packing for scarce times, mapping out their pit stops.” We read and discuss each line. “They feel a call in their bodies that they must go, and they follow it, responding to each other, each bringing their adaptations”. 6 This inspires the next thought. I, Hannah, call back the goofy backbend I did in the first minutes of circling up, teasing-bragging-confessing I am turning 43 yrs old and still like to play. “Like more than ever before! The way I do it is my own thing, my own adaptation!” Eyes on me, I continue, “What do I know now at 43 yrs old? That I’d willingly negotiate a lot in my life, my contract, my schedule, my work-life balance, but not my uniqueness.” Yes, I add, this place insists on a certain kind of cohesion; same clothes, same food, same schedule, same everything, seemingly, and there is a logic to that too, a concept of consequences, a concept of structure., But this flocking art reminds that even and maybe especially here, we can find something in our sync that -- far from punishment -- is a kind of emergence, a kind of system that asks each of us to find our own way through. “Emergence is beyond what the sum of its parts could even imagine,” brown writes and we then discuss. After all, as she goes on, “ A group of caterpillars or nymphs might not see flight in their future, but it’s inevitable. It’s destiny.” 7
The session was the third in this month’s return to the youth detention center in our North Florida town. The earlier two sessions were with the boy’s group, about half of whom were present both days. With them, we spend the time exploring brown’s core principles in the study and practice of emergent strategy, copied here to ignite something in the reader, too:
Small is good, small is all. (The large is a reflection of the small.) Change is constant. (Be like water).
There is always enough time for the right work. There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it. Never a failure, always a lesson. Trust the People. (If you trust the people, they become trustworthy). Move at the speed of trust. Focus on critical connections more than critical mass—build the resilience by building the relationships. Less prep, more presence. What you pay attention to grows. 8 The rap-poem that emerged from group discussion then found its rhythmic accompaniment in the drumming call and response pounded on desks. The hollow middle of the bathroom door rattled a deep base type heart beat, while short pencils on metal table legs added a bell. Some used the meaty part of the hand to build the musical changes while others joined in with palm slaps for accents. Across the circle danced fast fingertips for a high-toned tap. Find- ing rhythm together seemed to make more room for active participation than discussion, and the cohesion of the group sound (a collective groove of polyrhythms that
9 brown, 9. She invites readers to “play with all of these observations and their own, add to it, discard what doesn’t serve, and keep innovating.” 10 ibid.
5 brown, 12. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid.
8 brown, 27.
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