finding tiny freedoms
By Bhumi B Patel
I often begin my studio time by pulling a tarot card to guide my improvised practice - the deck depends on the day, but there are three that are in my rotation. Sure, I have prompts, parameters, progressions that I am interested in, but the card often gives me a context or a grounding to think and move through. I’ve returned again and again to a card that I pulled some time during the pandemic, the last line on the back reading: “You are never to blame for what colonization has made you believe is your fault.” The patterns in my body learned through movement practice, learned through code-switching, learned through a desire to belong are unlearned, retraced, grieved when I improvise.
When I am faced with a question like “Why improv?” it leads me back to fundamental questions like “Why breathing?”. The wondering about why I choose improv instead of other movement patterns and lineages that live in my body always lands at an understanding that there are few things that make me feel as alive as my improvisational practice. Few other practices bring me closer to my own ability to locate liberation.
To improvise is to center the mover (me) as an expert on my own experiences and to embody the pursuits of activism to which I commit my life. To improvise is to shift power. To improvise is to create with, not just for. To improvise is to respond. To improvise, in many ways, is to trace the evolving and changing definitions of decolonization through the body.
Improvisation is, in part, a pursuit for liberation, a mode to tell stories that don’t always fit into the structures created by codified form, and the very reason that my family emigrated to the United States - to cultivate a freer future. Can improvising lead to freer futures? Can improvising allow us to future new freedoms?
The truth is: I haven’t seen many people who look like me in improvisation spaces in the US: queer, brown, child of immigrants. I know you are out there, dear kin, but I don’t know you yet. I hope that we will meet soon.
The truth is: I am often disoriented with the tides of news and the ways that the world moves too quickly for my sensitive spirit. When I practice improv, I find ways of reorienting.
The truth is: I have become a person who lacks urgency, not because I don't care, but because I cannot move that fast while acting in alignment with what I believe. The way that I practice improvisation allows for the speed to shift. On some days, I feel like flying. On some days, I move glacially.
Lately, I am trying to see the improvisation in everything I do. Yes, there is the dancing: when I dance, it is often solo or duet practice where I set a timer and an intention and follow it through. When I work with my company, it is often a small group practice that is based in sensation and feeling. But I feel like I am improvising through everything: conversation, cooking, simply existing in public spaces. And allowing myself the opportunity to not have answers, to slow down and think, to really improvise and listen, that continues to deepen my love of improv.
In the many ways that I have never belonged, I find belonging through improvisation. I find liberation. As I continue to explore the sweet and delicious waters of my improvisational practice, I return to the question over and over again: When the story comes out through your body, is that called research? It is. It must be.
Bhumi B Patel is a queer, desi artist/activist, choreographer, dance writer/scholar, and director of pateldanceworks (she/they). In its purest form, her performance work is a love letter to her ancestors. Patel pursues liberation through dancing, choreographing, curating, educating, and writing/scholarship. Patel aims to support marginalized and oppressed voices through performance and movement education. She earned her MA in American Dance Studies from Florida State University and her MFA in Dance from Mills College. Bhumi is currently a doctoral student at The Ohio State University. She is a member of Dancing Around Race, and engages with curatorial practices for both performances and written publications. She has presented her research at the Dance Studies Association Annual Conference and the Popular Culture Association Annual Conference as well as having been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Life as a Modern Dancer, Contact Quarterly, and In Dance.
-----
Related posts:
Somatic Writing Series: Bhumi B. Patel, Andrea Olsen, and Elizebeth Randall Rains
Let us eat cake, consensually, that is: A Reflection on TALK.DANCE.CAKE - By Bhumi B. Patel
-------------
Comments