Hands up DIS/UNITY: make this not us against them
Hands Up DIS/UNITY - make this not us against them
This excerpt is from a work in progress performance at University of Iowa. We created this work in a one-week residency with undergraduate and graduate students and collaborators from Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project.
Hands Up DIS/UNITY - make this not us against them was an immersive installation and performance in dialog with the anti-racist movement #BlackLivesMatter. This piece involved the Iowa City and University of Iowa community through performance workshops, classes, and word-of-mouth. The workshops interrogated infrastructures that criminalize and pathologize black bodies. Painters, dancers, printmakers, performance artists, and activists joined the project. An eight-member interdisciplinary team developed through this work. Through dance, video, and live music, the performance the project encouraged audiences to consider the efficacy of resilience, protest, and radical tenderness as strategies against institutional racism.
From this piece, the Propelled Animals were born.
Photos courtesy of Derek Blackman