Ni’Ja’s work serves as a conduit to action. In service of hosting the histories and complexities of both warrior and healer, they engaged exercises from resistance-based physical practices and creative cosmologies to move beyond sorrow, rage, grief and, for me, inaction. In a variation of Deidre Sklar’s 5th premise, there are things only the body knows and once the body can find itself activated, the spirit can find its power. I arrived weary and wary, would have called myself weakened and worn down from extensive engagement in the very specific hierarchies and oppressions of public higher education in NYC. But, after the group circled and rocked and rubbed and crawled and sweated, I found deep in the body my pelvic floor and from that floor, my voice. And, from that voice, my loud.  And, from my loud, action.  In vocally getting loud, I realized that my earlier inclination for quiet had been from a need to protect the self.  So, for me, I couldn’t know what I know or remember what I knew until my body could remember that it knew how to act. A fellow attendee pointed out that it wasn’t just physical practice that activated the power centers, but intention. With that final ingredient, I realized there is still much work to be done, to be loud for those who are not listened to. And, to remember, that the quiet is good when it is practiced with an intention to observe, but not hide, and the loud is required when my intention is to serve.

mayfield’s work on Improvising While Black informed the later afternoon workshop, though it was only mentioned briefly in the beginning and at the end. We were asked to share with the group something that we really, really wanted. Some wanted ginger tea. Someone wanted real healing. I wanted clarity. We were also asked to share with a partner what it was we hoped to rupture or disrupt. In the moment, I expressed that I wanted to disrupt my behaviors of obligation (perhaps, obedience) of behaving responsibly and appropriately. My partner didn’t have a word for it, but “white female performance art” collected some of the ideas and systems, ze were negotiating with. After lengthening, condensing and releasing our heads with our partners, we spent a lot of time letting our heads guide us in and out of the space. We’d cross the floor or circle in and out and sometimes rupture the improvisation of another by connecting with their hips and following the rotation of their hips or redirecting it ourselves. We built up tremors in the body, faced each other, began speaking in tongues and found ourselves in rousing bouts of laughter. There was a regular stream of bodies laying on the resting place mats in the corner and some of us gathered bits of our work into short “rupturings” that we shared. I shook and gurlged and kept my head off center and spun and teetered til I dropped and found in the pocket of sunlight my answer. In the bright, I found the clear. When the group gathered and shared last thoughts, my first partner spoke of the power of improvising in a room filled with people of color. I welled up and realized, I had not gotten as loud as I’d thought after Ni’Ja’s workshop, because I hadn’t even dared to express that want so explicitly to myself or the group. But, thanks to the festival’s curators, the safe and supportive space that Ni’Ja and mayfield established and the strong and present work of my fellow participants, I found myself well.

Curators Aretha Aoki, Elliott Jenetopulos, Eleanor Smith and Tara Aisha Willis wander in and watch as, eventually, Michael and Marissa separate. I watch their watching. Onstage witness. They thank Levi Gonzalez for years of support and down the stairs file Juliette Mapp, Donna Uchizono, luciana achugar, Kayvon Pourazar and Natalie Green. They wrap him in a blanket and each of them dance for him and then the entire group dances with him. Friends. Red eyes. Some sobs. In service of an artist who as been in service to so much art and to so many artists. In the margins of this evening there has been a constant hum of us, attending and attending. Being present to the unfolding. Levi has been such a pervasive presence. What will his absence feel like. What is a safe space? One where pain is open? Loss. How deeply will this cut to our community be? Will Levi’s departure leave a wound or a scar? The dances were so lovely and the tears were so true. A toast. A toast.