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| Collage of photos I took at the Blank Map performance. |
On Friday, I had the pleasure of seeing a black performance
collective entitled Blank Map at the Dance Mis-sion Theater in SF. The collective consists of
artists/dancers/musicians/scholars Tasha Ceyan, Brontez Purnell, Adee Roberson,
Keyon Gaskin and Wizard Apprentice.
A mix of abstract dance and music, the performance, for me, transcended
the contemporary moment to an alternative spiritual space that deeply considers
the body in all its states with equal weight and validity.
The tempo of experimental movement switched from tap dance,
drumming and choreographed group dance to settle gestures, shadow play and
performers leaving the stage/hiding from the audience. All stages of the body (visible,
invisible, speaking, silent, fast, slow, together, apart) were given equal
weight as they informed each other.
I particularly enjoyed the moments when Ceyan and Brontez
linked up together in movement across the stage and in shadow play. The two bodies made me think a lot
about Afrofuturism in the sense that I felt like I was witnessing energies of
the past in present embodiment moving together towards a future where comfort
is located in the unfixed and the idea of constant change. This is what I took from the piece as performance
is, for me, always in conversation with the spiritual.
Overall, it was a beautiful piece that has me thinking about
queer spaces that are reaching through and beyond dualities, polarities and the
suggested linearity of time to provide a glimpse of how bodies can exist
confidently in their entirety. The
recent hate crime massacre at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando has also informed my
continued meditation on Blank Map.
I am thinking about the mediation, restraint and murder of queer bodies
(and in particular, queer black and brown bodies-- including queer Muslim bodies) through erasure and
hyper-visibility. I am also
thinking a lot about narrative and the control of that narrative in both
situations.
I am still digesting, writing and thinking about both the
performance and the tragic event in their complexities. At the moment, in my meditation, Blank
Map is serving as one site of many where queer black bodies can exist at their
intersections in their entirety with power over and through their
narratives.
