choreographic process thoroughly examines the intersection between gender, social, political and cultural constructs of western philosophies, and livelihoods from a African diaspora male and female perspective. Through the use of Brother(hood)’s personal experiences, historical and current references and accounts, the organization seeks to better understand how freedom has been an unattainable rig
ht due to governmental restrictions. By understanding the process of freedom, Brother(hood) Dance! uses movement to translate and discover humanistic and thought provoking questions, and resolutions. performances isolate the movements of humans and/or objects. By doing so, new sequences are created which reveal an inseparable relationship between motion and sound. By questioning the concept of movement, Brother(hood) Dance! creates with daily, recognizable elements, an unprecedented situation in which the viewer is confronted with the conditioning of his/her own perception and has to reconsider his/her biased position. As a collective, the organization uses an African diasporic aesthetic to create an multidimensional experience that includes text, movement, audience engagement, sound and vocal work that revolve around relevant and current topics like racial equality,gender roles, social and political rights, and racism. Through partnering work, we look at the cross- and multi- intersections of how our bodies as q***r African-American and Caribbean American men relate in spaces that are confined and restricting to one's natural way of life. Our movement vocabulary is indigenous driven from poly- cultural perspectives, modern, contemporary odissi, and the vernacular of African dance (i.e. Brazil, Haiti, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Senegal).Through these various lens we seek our truth within our bodies and movement. We remember the dances of freedom, which maybe considered the dances of the oppressed as a way to confront, yield and fight the unjust societal intersection of life including race, class, gender, ability, s*x, and religion. As a collective, our work demonstrate how life extends beyond its own subjective limits and often tells a story about the effects of global cultural interaction over the latter half of the twentieth century. It challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own ‘cannibal’ and ‘civilized’ selves. By rejecting an objective truth and global cultural narratives, we find that movement reveals an inherent awkwardness, a humor that echoes our own vulnerabilities. The collective also considers movement as a metaphor for the ever-seeking man who experiences a continuous loss. work urge us to renegotiate performance as being part of a reactive or – at times – autistic medium, commenting on oppressing themes in our contemporary society.
