Projects

Afro-Feminist Performance Routes

What are the interrelated processes of movement, migration, and memory, as they are forged and reconfigured through dance and gender for African diaspora women artists?

A performer with a black hood, leans against a wall in a squat with their hands in the air while a projected image is displayed on the wall behind them.

The Premise

The premise of this project relies on an understanding that Dance Studies and Migration Studies have much to contribute to one another, for both take human movement as their focus of investigation.

In this project we center this convergence within African and African Diaspora Studies, acknowledging the many ways in which migration from Africa is not a new phenomena. How can previous iterations of migration and diaspora inform current investigations of African migration, and migration in general? We are curious to convene this meeting of diverse African and African diaspora dance artists to explore the many manners in which movement constitutes culture, embodied practice engenders place, and travel informs kinesthetic imagination.

The Gatherings

We met in 2016, 2018, and 2020. A gathering to catalyze a dialogue around experimentation and global Black presence in diasporic women’s creative work, exploring how African diaspora dance arts mobilize feminism’s, memory, and decolonizing pedagogies.

The Gatherings:

The researchers worked from their creative practices and constructed responses to a series of prompts, including:

How do you conceive of diaspora, and what does “Africa” mean to you?

How do you engage its contours? How do you imagine an embodied philosophy that feeds your practice?

In what ways do you cultivate collective possibilities and the presence of the individual in your work?

How do you think of “feminist performance?”

Is there an “essential feminine” energy that is important to your creative practice?

Learn More About This Project

About the Afro-Feminist Performance Routes Project

A Dialogue in Movement

A gathering to catalyze a dialogue around experimentation and global black presence in diasporic women’s creative work.

Contours of Diaspora

How do you conceive of diaspora, and what does “Africa” mean to you? How do you engage its contours?

Embodied Philosophies

How do you imagine an embodied philosophy that feeds your practice? In what ways do you cultivate collective possibilities and the presence of the individual in your work?

Feminisms

How do you think of “feminist performance?” Is there an “essential feminine” energy that is important to your creative practice?

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