This is No Substitute for a Dance. This is Dance and Process 2020–2021. This is our webpage. It will change, morph, grow and shrink every month, for the next four months. This Process will unravel onscreen until it doesn’t. It will end at Queenslab in May 2021.

We created a publication over the summer. For a free copy, sign up here.

December | January | February | March | April | May

Alex Rodabaugh

From L-R: Toni Carlson, Charles Gowin, Alex Rodabaugh, Avery Anthony, and Laurel Atwell.

Watch the 1st Edition here.

[Kris K. Q. Pourzal is here and also he is not. While at the University of Maryland College Park pursuing a PhD in Theater and Performance Studies, he finds himself in the middle of so many things, including this very extended Dance and Process.]

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With Marion

Leslie Cuyjet

4 / Process

I’m writing to name the bind to this performance. I’m writing to call out the source. A spring overflowing, and the incessant buzz of a stereo without a groundwire. I’m writing to name her. I know the words. They fall on my ears like a good beat and make my head nod. They cut quick little murders in my heart. They create an entire picture of the past or perhaps a future, complete with smells, taste, and weather. She has a name. She is testing me with the trope of the Angry Black Woman. I am almost ready to introduce her.

I sit between her legs, hairless and like two twigs. My nightgown is paper thin from my sister having worn it until she grew too tall. A handmedown. She takes a comb and tilts my head slightly to the left, draws a long part on the side of my crown and presses her hands down on my stubborn wiry curls. It never went where either of us wanted. I wanted long, straight, and down. She wanted back and off my face. Frizzy, thick, coarse. These were things that were definitely a problem. A mistake to be corrected with heat, pressure, and efficiency. An heirloom to manipulate into my character and good fortune. To weave and churn until an alchemical shift presented me as the version I was expected to be. Because her mother expected this from her too. And this is love. This transference of transformation of what was into what can be, starting with a comb to my scalp. She tilts my head from one side to the other, and down and back. One side to the other, down and back. Taking cues from the tip of her fingers. Our first collaboration. Choreographies of many. 

This performance is expansive. This is not a rehearsal. I’m unsure if I can stop. I’m asking myself “how long will this go on?” I’m asking myself “do you have to?” I’m asking myself “please stop.”

Images: 1) Courtesy of Leslie Cuyjet, Kennis Hawkins, Kristopher K.Q. Pourzal, and Alex Rodabaugh. 2) Courtesy of Alex Rodabaugh. 3) Courtesy of Kennis Hawkins. 4) Leslie Cuyjet, With Marion, 2020. Detail 4 of 5.

Dance and Process is made possible with commissioning support from Marta Heflin Foundation; annual grants from Howard Gilman Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The Jerome Robbins Foundation, and The Harkness Foundation for Dance; and in part by public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.