THIS IS DANCE: The Brutal Joy by Justine A. Chambers

From Fri 16 Oct View Venues, Dates & Times

UK premiere

Emerging from traces of family gatherings on the South Side of Chicago, The Brutal Joy is a scored improvisation which unfurls Black vernacular line dance alongside sartorial gesture in the lineage of Black dandyism - as intellectual discourse, reverie, and devotion to Black-living.

The Brutal Joy is a choreography of movement, sound, and light. As a counter-archival practice, it offers a way “of knowing the past in excess of the fictions of the archive” (Christina Sharpe). It serves as the other citation - a collection of footnotes, physical anecdote as theory, and an otherwise imagining. The Brutal Joy is a reservoir for inherited gesture, individual and collective affective memories, and under-documented histories.

Content warnings: flashing lights, loud music and theatrical smoke/haze

Image credit: Dan Loan

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