PR ARCHIVES
Questioning Disembodied Land Acknowledgements
Deconstructing notions of freedom in Settler Consciousness: Parcon Resilience @ Ontario Jam 2019
In this Parcon Resilience workshop at the Ontario Contact Improvisation Festival we deconstructed notions of freedom in Settler Consciousness. This class was constructed in response to an inadequate land acknowledgement at the beginning of the Festival that did not name the harmed indigenous tribes nor admit settler colonial culpability to being on their land. Participants were guided to access a sense of unbound freedom and exploration, then the history of indigenous genocide was shared, and participants were guided to refind their sense of fullness and expression knowing this history.
Thank you Sarah Jones for making such a wonderful documentary of the PR class on settler consciousness.
Fissure
In May of 2019, I went to Fissure at Earthdance with Kimberly Tate. The workshop invited the interrogation of identity and culture through breakages and new possibilities in CI, grounded by the embodied practices of mayfield Brooks, Karen Nelson and Ray Chung. Kimberly is a Filipinx who founded a somatic dance-architecture form called Dancitecture. She also studies Parcon Resilience with me in NYC. Through her involvement, we have connected our ancestors and cultural roots with our emotions and needs into Parcon Resilience. We came ready to engage. We worked through white fragility and boundary setting for POC affinity spaces through the somatic practices the facilitators shared with us. In my experience their facilitation catalyzed the community in moving forward, past old ways of being that have not served POC in CI.
West Coast Contact Improvisation JAM 2019
During the summer of 2019, I had the pleasure of teaching a 5-day Parcon Resilience Intensive for the West Coast Contact Improvisation Jam (wcciJAM). Ronja Ver and the other organizers were amazing and responsive. They took every suggestion I had to craft a race conscious jam, many of which were listed above in relationship to the July 4th Jam. Other interventions included a POC altar in the main space to invoke the energies of our ancestors and role models throughout the jam, the listing of Race Conscious Jam guidelines that I developed during a Parcon Resilience Intensive at Oberlin College, and bringing collective dance expression to the heart-to-heart process. Thanks to the organizers, many of the WcciJAM CI teachers were POC and were on the same page. This in combination with the above structures harmonized into a memorable, POC-centered festival.
Parcon at J4J EarthDance jam: and as the co-facilitator
The theme for the July 4th Jam was Knotty Growth, representing how growth can be messy. And it could also be heard as “naughty,” as in subverting expected behavior and encouraging play. À la PISAB, we began the festival with community agreements that called for respect and learning. Part of our definition of respect meant that in the event of backlash to the emergence of a newly race conscious space, white allies and organized emotional support would be the first line of contact to address threatened white people. We had POC meals and jam times, designated white ally workshop times and movement workshops integrated with social reflection. Roberta Wilmore, Earthdance’s new part-time diversity coordinator, led a workshop on intersectionality and lead discussions. I also modified logistical town hall meetings, to have “heart-to-hearts,” where the community could revisit agreements and offer appreciations. Although I was fairly alone within the organizing team as a person of color, the jam felt like a huge milestone in my learning and my facilitation of collective process. Most importantly, I felt respected, safe, seen, and a sense of belonging. I suspected that I was not alone.
Ontario Jam 2016, 2017
Each year we have had the pleasure of attending the Ontario Regional Contact Improvisation Jam and sharing Parcon. Here are photos from 2016 and 2017
Javaka Steptoe taught a Parcon class at the 2016 Ontario Jam!
The 2017 Ontario Jam I taught. It was amazing! 75+ people Parconning in the park. At one point in time I looked across the whole park and everywhere I looked people were engaging in weight sharing and climbing on the objects around them.
